#AskingAdrian 1: The Canadian contradiction

Are you making people sick?

I’m #AskingAdrian Gore: Are you making people sick?

The founder and CEO of Discovery Health has issued a vaccine mandate on all of his employees. Several thousand people, many of whom he has never met and never will. Most, if not all, of whom have a medical history and risk preferences wholly unknown to their billionaire boss.

New data out of Canada show Covid vaccines correlated with higher rates of infection. [And there’s plenty more to boot.]

Specifically, up to 239 days after the second dose, people who had these shots were MORE LIKELY to get Omicron.

In the words of the study, “receipt of 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines was not protective against Omicron infection at any point in time, and VE [vaccine effectiveness] was –38% (95%CI, –61%, –18%) 120-179 days and –42% (95%CI, –69%, –19%) 180-239 days after the second dose.”

For clarity, this can’t be explained by vaccinated people getting these cases primarily from unvaccinated people. The evidence is that people with Covid, whether vaccinated or not, are equally infectious, carrying the same viral load in the nasopharynx.

Strictly, we need to call this correlation rather than causation. But with this sample size and confidence interval, causation strikes me as the irresistible conclusion.

Of course, Omicron is just a cold. So getting sick because the double vax knocked your immune system out of the park isn’t a major imposition. And given that we all either have had Covid or will do at some stage, it is neither here nor there on this count.

But everything has a cost. Often multiple costs. Gore’s mandate is also exacting the following unexhaustive list of costs:

1. For some, it is forcing them to choose between a medical procedure they don’t want and their jobs;

2. As with every medicine, Covid vaccines have risks of side effects. Anything from a day or two feeling fluey all the way to death by myocarditis in very rare circumstances. The risk-return calculation is even worse where people have had Covid and now have natural immunity;

3. It drops a hammer on the sacrosanct principle in public health that we trust the individual;

4. It dirties the foundational and hard-earned principle of the sacred and regulated doctor-patient relationship. The standard and duty of care that a doctor has when treating a patient are wholly lacking in the case of boss and employee;

5. Gore is thumbing his nose at privacy of medical status;

6. Vaccines cost money - every cent of which could be put towards any number of other positive uses, from treating other illnesses (where we know precisely the benefit of a medicine) to shareholder pockets;

7. And… I’ll stop there. The list goes on.

All of this is enough to make you sick.

For final context:

• That vaccines have protective effectiveness (albeit brief) against symptoms is of interest only to the individual. It is my risk-reward decision - same as eating badly, not exercising and, say, doing the occasional skydive. [Hospitals are not overrun.]

• Omicron is not killing people in anything more than infinitesimal numbers.

Now, my questions, Adrian:

1. Now that we know vaccines have varying, vaguely predictable and sometimes NEGATIVE correlation (perhaps causation) with infection rates, what is the purpose of your vaccine mandate?

2. What is your long-term plan?

3. Are you making people sick?

I’d welcome your response and a chance to argue this out.

Read the fully study here.