[hihihihi1234]

Have people already forgotten how much pressure the government was under in December to lock us down again? SAGE were predicting 6000 deaths a day, as if their modelling hadn't already been discredited ten times over, and all the usual suspects in the media and the Labour Party were screaming for more restrictions. If it hadn't been for partygate, the backbench Tory rebellion, and massive public resistance in the form of protests and more, Boris would have caved to SAGE and we'd have had another two months of our lives stolen, another Christmas ruined, another term of school missed, another million livelihoods destroyed and another ten billion added to the public debt - and it would have all been completely unnecessary, because Omicron was a fat load of nothing and SAGE's modelling turned out to be wrong yet again. But people would have pointed to the low death rate and said "I told you lockdown was necessary! If we hadn't locked down we would be seeing 6000 deaths a day!"

Also, these protests werent just against lockdown. There were enormous protests against vaccine passports, and they were successful - the govt had vaxpasses ready to go in the summer and pushed them back repeatedly before cancelling them in the face of public pressure and tireless campaigning from civil liberties groups like Big Brother Watch. If it hadn't been for the protests then you wouldnt have been able to go to Sainsbury's in the last six months without scanning your QR code.

Finally, there were also protests against vaccine mandates, and in particular the vaccine mandate for NHS staff. Personally I found those protests silly - I would have thought that NHS workers of all people would understand the importance of getting vaccinated, but the facts are that the government initially announced that NHS workers would be fired if they didn't get the jab then walked this back when it became clear that enforcing this rule would mean firing tens of thousands of intransigent NHS staff and they couldn't afford the shortages. There was a gigantic protest in London in January against the NHS vax mandate (not that you'd have heard about it on the news) - a protest which unequivocally achieved its goal.

If you don't think people were protesting against anything real or that the protests didn't achieve anything then you haven't been paying attention.

[thinkingemote]

About the NHS. I also thought that healthcare workers would most understand be behind vaccines. However an employment expert told me that healthcare workers are basically low paid workers, often from minority backgrounds, the exact same demographic that are vaccine hesitant. The vast majority of NHS staff are not doctors.

It was, therefore a class / social / demographic issue, but there is indeed crossover with the foreign healthcare worker but its on that class rather than where they come from.

I think (but I didnt discuss it with the expert) that the doctors themselves were on the whole opposed to compulsory mandates for ethical reasons. E.g. first do no harm extends to respecting a persons conscience.

[hihihihi1234]

Yeah I've wondered the same thing. I don't have the statistics in front of me but I'm pretty sure that the unvaccinated are on average poorer, browner and more working class than the vaccinated. Which is to say that the same people who don't trust the jabs are generally the same people who have longstanding reasons to distrust a wider society that's weighted against them.

It's easy for me, as an affluent middle-class white guy, to say "shut up and do what you're told because the experts know best" - but on some level I really can't blame people from less advantaged demographics for being so distrustful of the "experts". After all, it's not like the governments and corporations pushing these vaccines have always worked in the working class's favour in the past.

To be clear, I believe that the vaccines are safe and effective and that everyone should get jabbed. But I can't help but feel like all this demonisation of the unvaccinated is driven at least partly by good old fashioned snobbery and class hatred. "How dare these lower class inferiors not do as we say? Why can't they be smart and sensible like us, the wealthy enlightened?"

[mbg721]

Another possibility is that healthcare workers see how the sausage is made and have less faith in medical advice in general than the average citizen does.

[hihihihi1234]

Well as a programmer I've seen how the sausage is made in the tech industry, and thus have less faith in the security and reliability of software than the average citizen does. So what you say could make sense.

[brigandish]

That would ignore the many experts who were among them who also took issue. For example, NHS infectious diseases consultant, Simon Fox[1]:

> I can't support the mandating of vaccines in this scenario

He goes on:

> If you want to mandate people to have vaccines you have a moral duty to provide evidence that it's necessary, and now the evidence isn't just lacking that it's necessary, but the evidence that is now coming out is demonstrating that it doesn't help reduce transmission from healthcare workers.

Intensive care consultant Milena Chee[2]:

> What I’m against is the vaccination status to be tied to employment rights. I’m against the language of hatred, which is rampant. We are supposed to be such a tolerant society, but all of a sudden have become the complete opposite.

Professor of oncology at St George's and infectious diseases expert (notably, HIV, which has similarities to COVID-19), Angus Dalgleish:

> I think it is absolute madness to have a mandate for everyone to be vaccinated at this stage… The people who are not vaccinated have all given very good reasons.

> Just do an antibody and a T-cell test. If you did that in large numbers it would be cheaper than giving everybody a booster

He goes into more detail[3] which you may enjoy if you're interested in the immune system.

Dr Tony Hinton, retired consultant surgeon on the mandate[4]:

> It makes no logical or scientific sense whatsoever

> Many of the people I speak to have had their 2 jabs but do not want to take a booster.

From NHS100k's open letter to the government[5]:

> We as a collection of professionals pride ourselves on our ability to critically analyse fact based, evidence-based, and science-based information to apply in our practice.

> 1. Emerging scientific evidence that is contrary to the narrative of mandatory vaccinations:

> We point to the work of Dr. Gunter Kampf of the University of Greifswald published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe on 19 November 2021. In this published article Dr. Kampf pointed out: ‘It appears to be grossly negligent to ignore the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission’.

> Weekly reports from the UK Health Security Agency3 consistently show that among adults, the number of cases of Covid 19 in vaccinated population greatly outnumbers that of the unvaccinated population since the rollout of the vaccine programme. We point to the work of Singanayagam et al published on 29 October 2021 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases which showed that people with breakthrough infections have the same viral load regardless of vaccination status. It further adds that regardless of vaccination status the rate of spread from an infected person is the same among household contacts.

> This is not an exhaustive list however we are highlighting these articles as examples to cast reasonable doubt on the assertions made by the Secretary of State, Sajid Javid. Mr Javid declared that our ‘Duty of Care’ towards our patients could only be discharged through the act of inoculating our bodies with a product, that there is now growing evidence of it being inadequate in preventing the transmission of this virus.

The letter is actually damning of the kind of narrative the mainstream media, along with the government, has fed the public. The letter to Chris Witty is similarly damning[6].

Lilith, a paramedic and founder of NHS100k[7]:

> What we're concerned about is the precedent it will set. If you can mandate these vaccines for the NHS, when will it start occurring to the public. When does our health become our choice or when does it become the government's choice? We're very much ralliers for the right to choose. It's such a core issue for healthcare professionals where we must respect patients' decisions

Mr Ahmad Malik, consultant orthopaedic surgeon[7]:

> On one hand we've got mandates and on the other hand we've got freedom, personal freedom, bodily autonomy, informed consent. If you think you can have both, you're gravely mistaken, because they're the exact opposite.

> [Consent] is the cornerstone of medical ethics. Having the ability to choose what's done to your body or what's not done to your body is something we've taken for granted for centuries.

> If we have this mandatary vaccination coming through, that's earthshattering, that demolishes that whole concept of personal bodily autonomy and we're opening a Pandora's box.

They underline your last paragraph, but I think your employment expert needs to familiarise himself with the actual people opposing this instead of making hasty generalisations that act as easy dismissals of a view that may by sincerely held by well educated people.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRApq2IRqn4

[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/nhs-medics-p...

[3] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1367946743636118

[4] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=274024381492297

[5] https://nhs100k.com/Resources/Static/NHS100k%20CEO%20Letter....

[6] https://nhs100k.com/Resources/Static/Letter%20to%20Chris%20W...

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XGY7s8avhw