Unscientific Covid-19 vaccine mandate needs to go

 

As I sat at home recuperating from Covid-19, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that something is remiss about Malaysia’s – and much of the developed world’s – Covid-19 mitigation strategy.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that we have been misled, even lied to on many fronts.

In early 2020, when the virus first started spreading, we were told that we needed just a few weeks of lockdowns to flatten the curve. We were told that this small sacrifice would break the chain of infections and stop Covid-19 in its tracks.

Being the obedient citizens that we are, we followed the government’s orders without much opposition, even though to many the lockdowns meant losing their livelihoods. In fact, many welcomed it, saying it was a small sacrifice for a greater good.

“Don’t be selfish. Look at your elderly neighbour. Don’t you care about their health?”. Permutations of this argument were thrown around in real life and on social media.

Then what happened? We had some of the most extensive lockdowns in the world and yet the virus continued spreading like wildfire. The lockdowns were an abject failure.

Once that was over, we were told that we could go out but had to follow social distancing and mask mandates. In addition, we were told to download a tracking app (MySejahtera) that would monitor our health status and keep tabs on all the places we visited, depriving us of our privacy and giving information about us to the government.

We were told that this was for our own safety and would greatly reduce the transmission of the virus. Again, we obeyed without too much opposition.

We’ve had mask and social distancing mandates for the past two years and what has that done? What has MySejahtera accomplished? The virus is spreading unabated. Aren’t these mandates failures too?

Then we were told that the vaccine was the silver bullet. We were made to believe that once we were vaccinated, we would be immune to Covid-19 and life would go back to normal.

We’ve had a history of highly successful vaccines such as the polio and smallpox vaccines, so we celebrated the technological breakthrough and embraced the Covid-19 vaccines. I certainly did.

Then something weird happened. The vaccines did not confer us with immunity.

Even if we were vaccinated, we could still get Covid-19 and pass it on to others. This is evident in today’s sorry state of affairs: The overwhelming majority of us are vaccinated and yet Malaysia is recording upwards of 26,000 cases a day, frequently above 30,000.

This, of course, goes against the very definition of a vaccine, and our prior knowledge of other successful vaccines.

According to the authoritative Encyclopaedia Britannica, a vaccine is a “suspension of weakened, killed, or fragmented microorganisms or toxins or other biological preparation, such as those consisting of antibodies, lymphocytes, or messenger RNA (mRNA), that is administered primarily to prevent disease. A vaccine can confer active immunity against a specific harmful agent by stimulating the immune system to attack the agent”.

The keywords are: prevent disease and confer immunity. For instance, the smallpox vaccine prevented people from getting smallpox and eradicated the disease in many parts of the world.

The polio vaccine prevented people from getting polio and eradicated the disease in many parts of the world.

The measles vaccine prevented people from getting measles and eradicated the disease in many parts of the world.

Is the Covid-19 vaccine preventing people from getting Covid-19 and eradicating the disease in many parts of the world?

Okay, never mind that inconvenient truth. But are we out of the woods now that we’re fully vaccinated?

No, now we’re told that being fully vaccinated – two doses of the vaccine – is inadequate and that we also need to get a booster dose. Remember, this is the same thing we were told about the lockdowns, and then about the mask mandates, and then about the MySejahtera app and then about the first two doses of the vaccine.

I can already predict what’s in store for the future. Just as some countries have already done, the health ministry (MoH) may decide in the next few months that the third dose is inadequate, and that, in fact, we need a fourth dose.

Where does it end? Especially since every study says the efficacy of the vaccines, including booster shots, wane after a few months.

Sure, if a booster dose is what some people want, they should go for it. More power to them.

But why force vaccinations, especially booster shots, on everyone? It’s clear that vaccinations don’t reduce the chances of infection, so the unvaccinated don’t increase the chances of the vaccinated getting infected.

In fact, Dr Mahesh Appannan, the head of data at MoH’s Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) admitted just as much in a recent tweet:

This contradicts what health minister Khairy Jamaluddin said just last month: that vaccines provide 90% protection against Covid-19 infection:

There seems to be a disconnect here.

Where is the “vaccines reduce deaths by 90%” statistic coming from? From what I can surmise, it’s coming from the vaccines’ relative risk reduction (RRR) data.

However, there’s a lot more under the hood than the headline data would have you believe, a point that is excellently explained in a document published by the Independent Citizens Against Covid Corruption (ICACC), and excerpted below:

“Before the emergency use authorization (EUA) was given by the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to Pfizer for their new mRNA “vaccine”, the company claimed that the Pfizer–BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine gives a 95% relative risk reduction.

Based on various studies that have been done, the efficacy for other Covid-19 vaccines on the market (reported as relative risk reduction) was 94% for the Moderna–NIH, 90% for the Gamaleya, 67% for the J&J, and 67% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines.2

“Very quickly this information became sound-bites for the media, with claims being made of 95% effectiveness for Pfizer-BioNTech, 94% for Moderna, etc. This sort of result sounds very impressive. It sounds like a person is protected 94% or 95% of the time. However, as with many things in science, the devil is in the details.

“What most people don’t understand is that the efficacy numbers reported were for Relative Risk Reduction. This is defined as: “the ratio of attack rates with and without a vaccine”. What is attack rate? It simply refers to the percentage of a group of people who become infected with the virus.

In the Pfizer trial, 18,198 people were given the vaccine and only 8 developed Covid-19. That’s an attack rate of 0.04%. There were 18,325 people in the unvaccinated group, and of those only 162 people contracted Covid-19, which is an attack rate of 0.88%. This difference was then used to calculate the Relative Risk Reduction of 95% (0.88% attack rate dropping to 0.04% attack rate).

The problem with Relative Risk Reduction is that it does not tell you how much your overall risk is reduced by vaccination. In order to know that we have to use Absolute Risk Reduction.

In the above example for Pfizer BioNTech, 0.04% of the vaccinated group became infected with Covid-19 and 0.88% of the non-vaccinated group became infected with Covid-19. As you can see, the risk of a Covid-19 infection for the non-vaccinated group was already very low, at less than 1%. The Absolute Risk Reduction is therefore only 0.84% (from 0.88% risk down to 0.04% risk).

As the authors of: “Covid-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not) in the room” write: “ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.”

We can see this clearly in the following table:

Table 4. Comparison of RRR and ARR for Different Vaccines. Source: The Lancet

So, what do we believe? If you were told that the vaccines reduce risk of Covid-19 by around 1% – as the absolute risk reduction (ARR) data above suggests – would you have taken it?

Or maybe MoH’s “vaccines cause 90% reduction in death” claim is coming from this graph they put out recently:

Sure, that’s a scary looking graph, but again, the devil’s in the details. This data set entirely omits the partially vaccinated (1 dose). The logical thing to do would be to clump them together with the unvaccinated since a single dose isn’t supposed to confer any protection anyway. If the partially vaccinated were included with the unvaccinated, the unvaccinated death rate (red bar) would drop in height.

In addition, the elderly (above 80 years old) account for a tiny portion of the population (~30,800 people). With the denominator being this small, it’s not unsurprising that death rates seem high in proportion. This, of course, is in addition to them being a high-risk group anyway due to their advanced age and frequent comorbidities.

Having said that, the data above does suggest that Covid-19 vaccines reduce the severity of the disease in the elderly. And I’m happy it does. The elderly should be encouraged to vaccinate.

But why force children and even young adults to vaccinate when the risk of death due to Covid-19 for them is near negligible, as MoH’s own data suggests?

Shouldn’t we, as individuals, be able to decide whether we want it or not, especially considering the number of suspected adverse events following immunisation, or Aefi, cases that have come to light recently?

For instance, taking Vitamin C supplements prevents us from getting scurvy. Should the government mandate Vitamin C supplements? And heart disease caused a high 17% of all deaths in Malaysia in 2020, multiple times more than the deaths caused by Covid-19 in 2020. Should the government ban all oily and processed foods, since they are said to be the primary causes of heart disease?

No, because people are sovereign beings who should be able to make decisions about what they choose to put in their body.

Why should vaccines be any different, especially when being unvaccinated or unboosted doesn’t change the likelihood of infecting someone else?

Why chastise and sideline those who choose to not vaccinate or not get the booster shot? Why only allow those who are vaccinated to dine in or enter buildings when it’s clear that being vaccinated doesn’t prevent the spread of the virus?

Freedom of choice should invariably include bodily and medical freedom.

PS: Before anyone starts accusing me of being an anti-vaxxer or a Covid-denier, please be informed that I am fully vaccinated (with one of the health ministry’s preferred vaccines), and have had Covid-19 post-vaccination. In fact, more than half my family have had it and I even lost a grandparent to it, so I’m fully aware of its effects and the emotional distress it causes. Having said that, this still doesn’t mean I would support any policy that’s ungrounded in facts.

 -FMT

The writer can be contacted at kathirgugan@protonmail.com.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.