OPINION: IS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC GOING TO CREATE A POLICE STATE IN THE UK?

By • On Education , ,

Rumours quickly cir­cu­lated about the UK gov­ern­ment plan­ning to deploy the armed forces onto the streets of Lon­don to enforce quar­ant­ine over the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic. A shiver ran down my spine as I had a flash­back to walk­ing the streets of occu­pied Palestine whilst being watched by Israeli snipers. I could not help but make a men­tal con­nec­tion. It raises the ques­tion to wheth­er these are hints of the UK mov­ing towards becom­ing a police state and where to draw the line between the free­dom of choice and the infringe­ment of human rights, mak­ing informed decisions and the spread of fake news?

As Palestini­ans went into quar­ant­ine, life was not too dif­fer­ent from liv­ing under the Israeli occu­pa­tion, the con­stant sur­veil­lance, and restric­tion on their free­dom of move­ment. For us here in the West it was an ali­en concept, caus­ing mass hys­teria. Scared hoarders accu­mu­lated in large groups to stock up on toi­let paper, prob­ably doub­ling the infec­tion rate in the pro­cess. The media played its part in scare­mon­ger­ing by shar­ing false inform­a­tion and by using inflam­mat­ory head­lines. Everything became polar­ized to draw atten­tion and make sales. A prime example was a story around a sci­entif­ic paper pub­lished in the Lan­cet where sci­ent­ists had just begun to study the nov­el vir­us, ‘Are patients with hyper­ten­sion and dia­betes mel­litus at increased risk for COV­ID-19 infec­tion? Lei Fang, George Karaki­ula­kis & Michael Roth. It hypo­thes­izes that dia­betes and hyper­ten­sion treat­ment with ACE2-stim­u­lat­ing drugs (ibupro­fen) increases the risk of devel­op­ing severe and fatal COV­ID-19. Whilst this obser­va­tion was true in the study it was irre­spons­ible of the media to share as one study in one pop­u­la­tion type is not con­clus­ive evid­ence for it to become a pub­lic health recom­mend­a­tion. With­in hours every­one was refus­ing to take ibupro­fen, frus­trat­ing doc­tors and phar­macists who were left with massive stock­pile and no real evid­ence to sup­port it was dan­ger­ous to pre­scribe. The same thing is cur­rently going on with the recom­mend­a­tion to use Mal­aria med­ic­a­tion as a treat­ment for COV­ID-19, it has shown prom­ise, but clin­ic­al tri­als need to hap­pen before this can be proven.

That is treat­ment but sci­ent­ists agree bat­tling COV­ID-19 should begin with con­trolling the rate of infec­tion, to put few­er lives at risk. Pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure, why then has our gov­ern­ment taken such slow action? Is the eco­nomy more import­ant than human lives? Fol­low­ing on from watch­ing events unfold in China, Iran and Italy, the UK gov­ern­ment has still not offi­cially called for a lock­down, many res­taur­ants and gyms (per­fect grounds for the spread of infec­tion) remain open stat­ing they will only fol­low advice from Bor­is. Giv­en that we can­not all stay in quar­ant­ine for two years wait­ing for a vac­cine to be developed, the government’s form of dam­age con­trol was to go for a dif­fer­ent approach of, ‘herd immunity’ which has been deemed irre­spons­ible by some sci­ent­ists. The aim was for a 60% infec­tion rate in the hope the pop­u­la­tion will become immun­ised to a level which will mean they will not become re-infec­ted at anoth­er time and thus infect oth­ers. Whilst in the­ory this has its bene­fits, it is a highly risky strategy to apply to a nov­el deadly vir­us, which is guar­an­teed to res­ult in many deaths before mass immun­isa­tion is achieved. This has been inter­preted by some as a form of eugen­ics, the government’s attempt to remove the eld­erly and immun­o­com­prom­ised from soci­ety which will then cost the gov­ern­ment less in med­ic­al bills and pen­sions. The evid­ence sug­gests herd immunity only works if 90% or above of the pop­u­la­tion are immun­ized, which is much high­er than the government’s sug­ges­ted 60%. Com­monly herd immunity is induced by the pro­cess of mass vac­cin­a­tions. The case study of measles shows it is only effect­ive if almost every­one is vac­cin­ated. If a few people refuse the vac­cin­a­tion right­fully out of their free­dom of choice fur­ther out­breaks are likely to still occur. These may then put the rest of the pop­u­la­tion in danger includ­ing the immun­o­com­prom­ised. Even those who have been pre­vi­ously vac­cin­ated are at risk of rein­fec­tion as no vac­cine is 100% guar­an­teed to work (it is based on the individual’s immune response, which also hap­pens with nat­ur­al for­eign bod­ies). If every­one had been vac­cin­ated Measles would have been irra­di­ated from soci­ety. Vac­cine hes­it­ancy is lis­ted in the top ten threat to glob­al health, res­ult­ing in 2–3 mil­lion deaths per year. Anoth­er strong argu­ment to call for the erad­ic­a­tion of all dis­eases in soci­ety for which we have vac­cines is that vir­uses are prone to muta­tions. If the vir­us mutates it will render herd immunity and vac­cines use­less, fur­ther mak­ing unne­ces­sary deaths even more reckless.

This poses an inter­est­ing ques­tion of wheth­er it is eth­ic­al to force vac­cin­a­tions onto a pop­u­la­tion. There is a social respons­ib­il­ity to keep every­one safe and reduce the bur­den on the health­care sys­tem and eco­nomy, but is the price of this too high if it means remov­ing free­dom of choice? Den­mark has already passed a bill to enforce quar­ant­ine and vac­cin­a­tions to the COV­ID-19 once it is finally developed. This has angered anti-vac­cine act­iv­ists who want to want the right to refuse what goes into their bod­ies and believe vac­cines cause more dam­age than good but this is often based on false inform­a­tion or a low num­ber of cases in com­par­is­on to what would be hun­dreds of deaths. Medi­cine has always been about the risk-bene­fit ratio. No vac­cine is cre­ated equal and the vac­cines of yes­ter­day are not the same as the ones avail­able today. As tech­no­logy advances with the likes of cheap­er gen­ome sequen­cing, we are mov­ing towards a more per­son­al­ized health­care which will even­tu­ally be catered towards indi­vidu­als thus redu­cing the risk of side effects, but there is still a very long way to go.

Con­spir­acy the­or­ists are spec­u­lat­ing on the ori­gins of the vir­us and who will bene­fit from the ‘cure’, mak­ing pre­sump­tions about the valid­ity of sci­ence. Now is the time to focus on a solu­tion and sav­ing lives. A time to sep­ar­ate gov­ern­ment polices from sci­entif­ic research, and be mind­ful of the mis­in­form­a­tion which exists in the media that is manip­u­lated by a polit­ic­al agenda.

Let’s not become divided by our suf­fer­ing but work togeth­er as nature inten­ded for the sake of our own sur­viv­al as the human race.

 

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