Yesterday, the Spectator published a piece by me setting out the case against linking the reopening of sports venues to vaccine passports, something I’m particularly concerned about because the one thing I’ve missed more than anything else in the past year is going to QPR games with my son Charlie. Today, I’ve composed a more detailed version of that case. Here’s an extract:
Would it be too much to ask the Government to monitor the risk of allowing sporting venues to reopen in other parts of the world without an accompanying Covid status certification scheme, such as in Texas and Florida?
Better yet, why not just look at the data from the NFL Super Bowl, which took place in Florida on February 7th, at the height of the ‘second wave’? 25,000 fans were admitted, along with 12,000 staff, and even though only a third of fans had been vaccinated at the time, health officials have only found three people who were infected as a result of attending the game. Three in 37,000. Why don’t the clubs tell that to the fans if they’re worried they’ll be too paranoid to come to games if they’re not asked to show vaccine passports at the gate? I reckon most of us will happily take those odds. Three in 37,000 sounds a lot like QPR’s win rate for the last few seasons.
Please do read it in full and forward to your MP.
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If you’ve been tested, had the vax and got your permit yet still think attending a football match is dangerous > > Don’t Go.
I suspect we are going to have to argue at a higher moral level.
Once we have a vaccine and we have healthcare free at the point of delivery, then that is as much as an individual can reasonably ask society at large to do. Anything further is unreasonable.
Otherwise you are elevating individuals with ‘issues’ ahead of those who are ‘normal’.
And that is likely the philosophical battle that is ahead of us. It is for ‘normal’ people to restrict their lives excessively because of a minority with ‘issues’, or is it for the minority with ‘issues’ to stay to one side so the majority can get on with their lives. Who stands the cost of ‘issues’?
Ultimately this can only go one of two ways. To mirror the complete closure of the borders and military lockdown of Australia and New Zealand, or to open back up.
This waltzing around in the middle goes nowhere.
It was unreasonable to ask for a vaccine.
Sadly, from the recent polling (opinion and party political), it appears that Korona Karen is the New Normal, and it is rationalists – “covidiots” in the Lügenpresse parlance – who are the shrinking exception.
During 2016 ID2020 was born.
During Oct 2019 Event 201 was delivered by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the WEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Nov/Dec 2019 the GoF SARS Cov2 lab cultured virus is released and quickly vectors around the globe, due to the initial WHO miss-classification.
A draconian u-turn then led swiftly to mass mask wearing and global lockdowns from March 2020 (never historically applied as public health protocols for any previous
pandemics)
These lockdowns then shifted to necessitating new experimental gene therapy/vaccines rolled out, end of 2020 and likely ongoing.
Vaccines then moved onto quickly requiring implementations of global common pass digital health security status certification.
See where this is going?
What do you imagine comes next?
Your photo is too ‘1984’. We are being shepherded into ‘BNW’ and won’t know when the gate clangs shut.
Your welcome back to EIRE
https://twitter.com/NewsForAllIre/status/1382447041033482242
A fully committed reset nation….
1984 or Brave New World? I think the jury is out on that. Maybe some half-way house: in any case, it is not looking good.
A link to the story notes that the American Super Bowl featured the “highest percentage of stadium capacity (38 percent) for any sporting event in the country since the pandemic started.” This is not a correct statment. Many high school football (and basketball) games in America have featured games with at least 50 percent or more capacity in the stadium or gymnasium. Many of the fans at these games did NOT practice “social distancing” and did not wear masks. Still, there has been no “super spreader” events assocaited with these high school games. Also, I am unaware of a single high school athlete (male and female among all sports) who has died of COVID. 98 percent of the “mitigation” strategies involving athletics were probably unnecessary.
The example from high school athletics had been completely over-looked (with professional and college sports getting all the attention). However, the fact is that MILLIONS more athletes play sports at the high school level compared to colleges and the pros. This is the best “laboratory” where the “risks” to the “health and safety” of athletes can be measured …. via a “study” of massive scale. And on a time line that now stretches back to early August (when high school football practices started in the U.S.). I have yet to see a reporter (other than myself) who has noted the fact that there has been no high school athletes who have died from COVID in these NINE months. I’m not even aware of any who had to be hospitalized, but maybe there has been two or three (out of five or six million participants).We’ve all heard a million times that the “health and safety” of young athletes is the “first priority” of coaches, schools, athletic conferences, etc. Okay. Fair enough. By now, one can certainly quantify that these “risks” are essentially non-existent … Of course, some of us knew this 11 months ago.
This pre-supposes that “vaccine passports” have anything at all to do with health, or even vaccines.
I have no illusions about that, and I fear that Toby is politely playing chess against a bare-knuckle boxer. We can say “I think that might be check” all we like, but that doesn’t stop the pummelling.
I wonder what the crowds reaction to the knelling will be?
Just for Football Games, Toby?
Cute headline.
Good to see that an opinion-influencer like the Wall Street Journal is on to this:
“The idea that everybody needs to be vaccinated is as scientifically baseless as the idea that nobody does. Covid vaccines are essential for older, high-risk people and their caretakers and advisable for many others. But those who’ve been infected are already immune. The young are at low risk, and children—for whom no vaccine has been approved anyway—are at far less risk of death than from the flu. If authorities mandate vaccination of those who don’t need it, the public will start questioning vaccines in general.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccine-passports-prolong-lockdowns-11617726629
The young aren’t just at “low risk,” they are at, really, “no risk.” Or I guess this depends on how one defines “risk.” Are the young at risk of being struck by lightning? I guess they are, but we don’t keep kids inside all year to protect them from being struck by lightning. … I use this “lightning” example on purpose. I’ve actually researched the odds a given American would be hit by lightning in a 12-month period. Those odds are roughly 1-in-700,000 – which is almost the exact odds a non-minority child under the age of 10 will die from COVID.
We need to remember that all of the vaccines only have emergency use authorisation. That will remain the case until the ongoing phase 3 clinical trials have been completed, currently estimated 1st quarter 2023, and the final data & analysis have been submitted. Until a full licence has been granted it is, I suggest, unethical to use any measures to coerce people to take the vaccine – that includes certification, passporting or status schemes.
But I’d be surprised if this “emergency authorization” designation remains until the first quarter of 2023. It, one assumes, can be changed, and probably will be.
If a jab is required to enter a stadium, pub, restaurant or anywhere else, I won’t be going there. It’s up to the owners to allow the unvaxxed in if they want to stay in business. This road leads to the obvious next stage (just when you had been a good sheep and had your vax, and think you can enter a venue): “your vaccine has expired, get another one”…better not to get one in the first place.
We’re still waiting for QPR to be docked points for financial irregularities when buying promotion to the Premier League in 2011……