Responsibility and the vaccine 18.4.21
Introduction
I feel the need to explain my own reasons for declining the vaccine and to invite others to decide what impact this may have on their own decision.
This decision is not related to anything abroad at the moment which bears the stamp of ‘conspiracy theory’ nor has it to do with the safety or effectiveness of the vaccines.
That is not something on which I can conclusively comment.
But it does bear on whether we should be relying so much on vaccines to address this situation, especially after the most vulnerable group groups in this country have either been vaccinated or offered the vaccine, and whether we should now be adopting a different approach.
It also looks at the case for vaccine passports and whether, given what we know about transmissibility,
a case can really be made for these on the evidence.
This also then takes in the question of just what our social responsibilities are in the circumstances and
how far these accord with current or developing perspectives.
Also relevant is the language being used to describe ‘vaccine hesitancy’
and the implications carried by this language itself and how this seeks to be determinative.
Also, how much we should be concerned with a process rather than a product and what is actually required to enable us to ‘build back better/greener’ and so forth; how we restore the balance to nature disturbed by our own actions - directly or only indirectly - and achieve greater ‘resilience’.
To prepare the ground for this it may be necessary for me to make some stark assertions!
Nature, God and the new moral universe
At one time, faced with a pandemic such as we have now, all we could really do would be to take whatever natural or herbal remedies were available and hope for the best, possibly consoling ourselves with the thought that, if this and our own immune system failed to do the trick,
nature and the divine know best.
The one decrees that death must occur to make way for new life and the other that when it is your time to go, you go graciously;
‘God knows best and you do well to recognise that’!
But through our development as humans, we have found the way to defeat or modify these ‘laws’
and to escape at least to some extent their conclusions.
To that extent we have won a certain freedom for ourselves and this is the reality we now inhabit.
With this freedom however comes the responsibility to decide how we are to exercise it,
so as to enhance the natural world and our relationship to it as a result.
For without that we might further imperil both.
Establishing the basis for our moral decisions
How do we see the virus in these terms? As best we can know what the moment the ability of a virus ‘natural’ and inherent to one species of animal
to cross or ‘jump’ the species divide arises when through our actions we place the creature in question and its environment under abnormal pressure.
If this then finds its way into Man, it can create a pandemic.
So this relationship between the behaviour of Man and the outbreak of viral infections is established.
A recent Radio Four programme called ‘The Jump’ offered an excellent and well researched analysis of this in relation to various examples.
How are we then rightly to respond?
Does this require that we take our own medicine by allowing ourselves to absorb, ‘digest’, transform and ‘eliminate’ the virus whilst strengthening ourselves in the process; by building our resources, resilience and ability to respond to the corresponding challenges posed by the virus?
Once we have protected the most vulnerable, how do we go about this?
This has been the question for the last year, where do we stand in relation to it now?
Do we already have the answer or is there more we still need to ‘take on board’ and realise?
How far is it necessary to accept the invitation to be transformed by the resulting bodily process rather than seek to avoid it?
How do we adjust our own approaches in the light of this?
A process or a product
Going through an illness changes us. The process of overcoming the illness on a bodily basis offers also the opportunity to develop new capacities, greater resourcefulness as well as resilience and resistance not just in the body but also in the mind.
We seem to be denying ourselves the opportunity to develop all this just when it is most needed.
Are we favouring a product over a process when the latter is really needed?
The process of going through an illness, yielding to it the better to overcome it,
developing our ability to ‘fight it’ allows a process of reflection and ‘resetting’ to then take place during and after convalescence if we allow ourselves the time and the mood for this.
And this can help bestow upon us the new insights and capacities we need for what we then have to face.
In so far as we make a full recovery, we are changed and for the better.
In the case of a pandemic, in meeting the imbalance we have created in the world (and if only as consumers we are all implicated in this somewhere) and in allowing this correction to then take place in ourselves, we have offered something back to nature. We have offered back something similar to what we took from there. We have made the requisite adjustment.
This involves risk, just like any other ‘enterprise’ does, but we cannot achieve this so well or at all through ‘avoidance’. And we may see vaccination certainly for those who can well enough cope with the illness and emerge better equipped to deal with the situation on the other side of it, as avoidance. We likewise then deny ourselves the very process we need in order to develop the capacities to ‘build back better’. To do this requires an ‘embodied’ response to the virus. This also builds resilience and resourcefulness.
Illness, even if we have to some extent brought it upon ourselves, plays an important role in this respect.
It confers on us an awareness which has fully integrated itself into us. It is no longer just an idea. It is more than that. We are clearer about what we need to do but we are also better equipped to do it.
This capacity can be further enhanced the more we can accompany this process consciously.
Then we can more fully reap the benefit.
Working with not against the disease
A principal feature of this is that we work ‘with’ not ‘against’ the disease.
Our bodies are involved in a fight for sure.
But we may resource our bodies better for this if we have an attitude of not trying to fight it as well.
For this fight for all its bravado will usually be based on fear.
And fear can militate against the ‘acceptance’ which provides the best mental climate in which the necessary transformation can take place.
A ‘yielding’ can be seen in these terms as an acceptance of whatever comes knowing that this too is an outcome and a working out of a wise guidance, wherever we feel this comes from, only a fraction of which our conscious minds have access to. But this yielding is not to be seen as a giving in to or even a giving up. It is more about an acknowledgement and a willingness to work with whatever this requires of us.
This quality of ‘acknowledgement’ is reflected in the way it has become of increased importance to many people to have a pet during lockdown and especially a dog. And dogs - even in what they wear - have become more personalised! They may be in some ways an extension of their owners but even more than this, I think it is better to see them as an acknowledgement.
They reflect ourselves back to us and at a time of isolation and uncertainty that is even more important.
Medicine has made so many advances. It has achieved such miracles and wonders. We rightly revere it. Just as we rightly revere the wonders of the human body and the world and the interworking between the two (for all disease can interfere with that) and see our own huge strides as being also in our ability to comprehend and work with that; to mimic nature and to adapt to it.
Valuing what went before, as well as what is available now
But there is a danger here. And that is to believe that what went before that and to an extent seeks still to run alongside it is no longer relevant or is to be seen as wrong, deceptive and primitive. For what preceded the medical revolution and want still to be recognized are approaches that ‘acknowledge’ and ‘work with’ the illness, not just ‘against’ it. These are approaches that also acknowledge illness as a way towards resolving whatever is before us. Imitation towards avoidance is not the same as going through this required process.
With the best will in the world, you do not get that from anything which works solely from or towards ‘avoidance’. And how is it possible to see the vaccine, for all that it may embody all or much that is wonderful (and wanted), as other than that? It may be that for some this ‘avoidance’ is justified; especially for those who otherwise would be the more likely to perish. But not for the majority who have more to gain, for themselves and others by turning to meet it. We should make this miracle of medical engineering available for those who want and need it. But we shouldn’t otherwise insist upon it.
Having said that, I know we will each of us have our own positions and dispositions towards this. For me, the socially and morally responsible thing to do however is, in light of the above, to not take up the offer of the vaccine. I will instead strive to accept whatever comes and to do so also with equanimity. Feeling that this is not only the greatest deed I can perform for myself but also the world and humanity.
I hope you can respect my decision as I respect yours. And not just dismiss it as some ignorant and selfish personal foible.
Political aspects
The above is the most personal part of what I have to say. I turn now to more political aspects but these have also impacted me personally. My response might take the form of two open letters to the government. They deal with two principal issues: shame and trust. The final part looks at what immunity might mean for both the human being and the earth, at this time of concern about climate change.
The shame issue (open letter to the government)
I want to believe you but things are now getting in the way. I think these things have their origins at least partly in shame. So I am heading this letter accordingly.
A year ago I was sympathetic towards you. For longer than many others I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. I was concerned that as you faced more criticism, the shaming of the ministers held responsible for what was happening or failing to happen would rebound on us all. The worst possible way to address any questionable behaviour is to attempt to shame the person concerned. This always reaps a bitter harvest. And now I am wondering whether we aren’t seeing some of the consequences.
The lockdown measures introduced a year ago were justified in the circumstances, especially those in the ICU wards. Concern about authoritarian measures seemed premature and misplaced. But we now have these very measures, emanating from a government which committed to ‘coming back with a vengeance’. To restore its reputation, the government has had to take extreme measures. It will be said that these were necessary to handle the pandemic itself. But now I find the case for this much less convincing. And the control of the narrative and the fashioning of the strategies accompanying this have introduced measures (and means) which certainly are more authoritarian in their own right; some would even say totalitarian.
So we have come full circle. Now you are riding high on the back of the successful vaccination programme. But the whole thing is in danger of running out of control.
We are hurtling downhill like a bus with no brakes and a hapless driver at the wheel.
The momentum itself is now dictating events and we are all getting swept along.
We are offering the vaccine to healthy young people who don’t need it. Worst of all we have started testing it on children.
This shows the extent to which we have now lost our moral compass.
And fear about variants and pressures being applied through vaccine passports to ensure compliance or out of all proportion to the relevant risks, or the best ways of tackling them.
We have lost our sense of proportion and the shame you had to shoulder alone a year ago is now being deflected elsewhere.
Nothing is really being resolved but individuals are being set at odds with each other.
The furniture has been rearranged but it’s the same furniture in the room.
There are just different people sitting in the chairs, and ‘building back better’ lacks the transformational process which is its necessary prelude.
This cannot be found by avoiding the virus, only by meeting it.
A synthetic product can never produce the benefit of a natural process.
The vulnerable can be protected and in a civilised society they need to be.
But protection at best can only be a fragile remedy and fear will continue to hound us, just as it is doing now with regards to ‘the variants’.
The only way to counter this is to proceed with courage.
And to allow each one to make up his or her own mind as to how they are to proceed.
Otherwise democracy itself becomes a major casualty.
Individuals are not given the freedom and ability to truly arrive at informed consent.
Without this our apparent freedoms can only be just that - apparent and not real. These are the freedoms which grow out of shame.
The trust issue: another open letter
Rarely has there been a time when I’ve needed to trust you more; rarely have you made it more difficult for me.
Where is the ground of trust on which I feel I can build my own decision so that it can fully and freely accord with your exhortation?
To be able to trust what you say to me about doing the right thing at this time, I need also to be able to see how the case you make for whatever aspect of it is before us also accords with the facts as best we can know them. There are major issues in this regard.
Vaccine passports and the transmissibility issue
Here I need to feel that due regard is being had to the known facts and the claims made and that closer scrutiny supports what is offered at face value. If manufacturers’ claims of over 90 per cent protection are to be relied on, then introducing vaccine passports or immunity certificates or whatever else they’re called would mean that because of a less than 10 per cent chance of infection on your part (as a vaccinated person) I am to be denied all my rights to refuse the vaccine if I also want to be able to have something resembling a normal life.
On the figures, this equation makes a very poor case for the denial of my civil liberties.
Your less than 10 per cent chance of catching the virus from me and falling ill, is enough to say I should not be allowed anywhere near you.
That is already very debatable but it gets worse.
The evidence is not available to support the view that a non vaccinated person is more likely to pass the virus on than a vaccinated one.
Or at least the difference is only marginal.
Unless you treat this marginal and disputed difference as substantial, there is no case for introducing vaccine passports on the basis of transmissibility.
And yet you are still going ahead. So what really is behind this?
It looks for all the world like you want me to be vaccinated no matter what.
Whose interests are really served by this?
An illusion of a balanced consideration is being practiced but the policy is pursued even though it is barely supported by the evidence and contradicts all or most of the previous reassurances.
And if the longed for evidence in support of reduced transmissibility does eventually appear, will I really be able to trust it, given all that has gone before?
So how am I to believe you or trust you? What is there to believe in here?
What is there to trust?
If this is the case in relation to an issue where the facts are pretty much known and an independent view can therefore be formed what faith can I have in you where the facts are less openly available?
Where is the basis for trust established there?
Let’s look at another example.
The magnanimity of the drug companies
Profit is a return on risk and product development costs - plus the expense of long-term testing.
In this case, in relation to the Astra Zeneca vaccine you, as a government, have funded the development, taken on the indemnity risks are and there has only been short term testing (prior to approval). Also the approval has been on an emergency basis.
So why all this commendation of the pharmaceutical companies for their magnanimity and ‘moral example’ in not taking any profit?
They are still operating in accordance with the commercial realities and they are still getting their wages paid.
If we cannot trust this narrative what else can we not trust?
And if we are all in this together, then the manufacturers should also be playing their part in it too!
If you as a government want to save money (and this is our money let’s not forget) as well as allow the pharmaceutical companies to start making money again from other products, we need to confine this act of generosity to where it is really needed and carry out our risk assessments on the basis of that. Realistically that must apply to the pros and cons of vaccinating the under 50’s.
The basis for trust - and its opposite
It begins to look increasingly as if the government is determined to proceed with its chosen courses of action regardless of the evidence and will apply pressure and use persuasion to get everyone to comply with this no matter what the facts. Then, however, we have not just an absence of trust but something far worse - the forming of the grounds for suspicion.
This then inevitably brings us to conspiracy theory! If the government is being covert in its aims which do not correspond with the overt facts, then what else is it up to where the justification offered is a veneer rather than a substantial body of facts? What is it up to behind the scenes? What is it planning and why? What is it itself conspiring to achieve?
Having thus lead us into the grounds of conspiracy even though we didn’t want to go there - we wanted to trust - the government then works with the tech giants and social media firms to de-platform any views which are contrary or unhelpful to the it’s own narrative. This is offered to us as a purifying of the waters otherwise muddied (and worse) by toxic and unsubstantiated material. But firstly shouldn’t we be allowed as adults to decide for ourselves, without having the information or ‘disinformation’ withheld from us, and secondly how does this view square with the sincerity of concern, and often educated concern, expressed on these platforms?
Clearly, these are not all rabid anti-vaxxers with a chip on their shoulder and a sensationalist line to pursue. But they are treated as such. Are we to really trust the avuncular figure which wants to protect us all from all this?
But I am mindful of the lack of medical qualification upon which I can base my own evaluation of these things. So I try to confine my own arguments to what I can know - both from the evidence available in the public domain - and that provided by my own experience. What then do I find?
I find inconsistencies and contradictions I am asked to ignore. And I find something that just doesn’t feel right, or join up the dots in the way that is being suggested to me. More than anything, however, I find a view of the illness as something to be militated against rather than worked with, to be tactically defeated rather than comprehended in every sense. And I wonder how much this also reflects an approach to ‘management’ in other areas.
Even in something like climate change!
Intellect and intelligence
Do we really understand the difference between management and metamorphosis or between avoidance and going through a process which is not without risk but which can transform us? And enable is then to be both better equipped to transform the world that is before us? Can a product do this for us, or simply deny us the means towards that end? Or at least the fully embodied means to accomplish it?
This comes across to me not only as a difference between process and product, management and metamorphosis but also between intellect and intelligence. When we are being invited to go through the door marked ‘clever tactical avoidance’ how much are we also being asked more or less explicitly to leave behind our intelligence? And the intelligence won from lived experience rather than, for us, more abstract ideas however much supported by ‘scientific research’?
Watching a very upsetting programme on climate change - rightly meant to leave anyone feeling despondent - I was not only left with a renewed sense of the urgent need to act but also how much we are seeing this from a protectionist point of view. We need to protect the earth from the impact of our own consumerist behaviour, fuelled as this is by choices we cannot wean ourselves off of but which produce greenhouse gases. So we need to find alternatives which produce less damage to the environment.
So many laudable strides have been taken in this direction and are continuing, but what about from the other way round? What about from the perspective of the sword rather than the shield, where the sword has also been converted into the ploughshare? What about what we can generate from within ourselves to meet this environmental challenge, as part of our conversation with nature, our engaged and embodied response to what then confronts us?
Building from within
Isn’t this how the human immune system operates? Doesn’t the earth also have something like this, that we can help to build up and strengthen by developing our own conversation with nature? By meeting her on her own terms and allowing her to speak fully in us as we also endeavour to respond and form something from within that partnership?
But how do chemical interventions help or hinder in this respect? They seem to provide a short term fix at the expense of a long-term solution.
Is that what we have now in both climate change and health; an overly singular pharmaceutical approach?
It’s not only about strengthening our defences.
It’s also about developing our relationships.
Then we can be all the more effective whilst feeling the less need to be defensive.
But we have to also accept the risks attendant on this.
This however allows an expression of self which has less need to be protected because it can look after itself.
It has been strengthened from within by exposure also to its environment.
There comes a point where protection becomes less a facilitator and more an inhibitor of growth.
I wonder where we are in relation to this now.
Richard Shaw - Vaccine? |