We have a government, during a time in which in their own terms they call a national emergency, giving away, not loaning, tens of millions of public money, to two sources separately, either of which would be thought to be prestigious, and which are sources in open rivalry with one another, so as to spend that public money on competing so as to obtain, one before the other, a valid vaccine for curbing, curing, the coronavirus outbreak.

Thus even in a national emergency, the ideology of free competition, if not left to market forces only to decide winners and losers, is felt by government to be worth upholding notwithstanding. So remember we’re all in this together.

The national broadcaster of the UK is playing this rivalry ibn its news bulletins as if it were a sports match, and as being a source for national pride – Britain intends to get a vaccine ahead of the rest of the world and one which, like Gordon Brown before it, will save the world. Is it a wonder that foreign nations look upon us, especially the nations of the EU, and express on the one hand exasperation and on the other a bemused disbelief with accompanying consternated chuckles?

You can have a vaccine, we can be first past the post, we can save the world, but on our own terms – is this the message coming out of parliament and from the governing Conservative party?

The two sources for this funding are Imperial College London and Oxford University. One is well-ahead in trials - it says; the other is to conduct experiments in spring 2021 on young human beings by deliberately infecting them with coronavirus – a set of paid volunteers. This virus is so deadly and such a threat to the world that human experimentation via direct and unameliorated infection is felt to be right and proper. Jenner in the 18th century did the same thing with a small boy and infecting him with smallpox – so there is a major British historical precedent for taking this course of action. We’ve moved forwards in our social development so far since Jenner, we have rights for everyone, and antidiscrimination laws for everything, and freedoms to choose and to be as one wishes oneself to be, but to continue in its tradition of experimentation on live animals in its labs, the academy which is conducting live injections into humans of coronavirus is going ahead.

Moral compass?

The Big Chief of virology there has been sacked by government once already from his role in advising government on social measures to be taken to handle coronavirus in UK society. He had felt that his own rules, for all, applied only to others, and for himself he broke them. But he’s reinstated now, the media furore has died down, and as is usual in these things he is back in favour and reengaged (cf: historically Jeffrey Archer, Peter Mandesam, Andrew Mitchell – yes the tradition extends back decades and is still going strong).

There was another Big Chief there, a visiting professor whose ties were dissolved because he had said that in the classroom women were a problem because ‘you fall in love with them, and they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry” A silly remark,one which is not politically wise to have expressed, nor even generally true perhaps, but no rule breaking of the order of the virology Master involved. Nor even any implied contempt of women, rather an old fashioned almost chivalric view of women and men in their relations? But he was sent packing, at an advanced age near to retirement – no slack cut for him having been born and raised in an age altogether different from our present times. Big Chief virology however is reinstated, as being, to cite one news story about him: “coronavirus mastermind of the UK”.

Yet another Chief at the same institution was pursued for a length of time accused of being ‘under par’ as a teacher at such a prestigious institution. Eventually he was sacked and killed himself, after him having written public justification of his credentials and with criticism of the institutions approach to certain (kinds of) staff working there

Another guy working at a lowly job under the aegis of this institution was by public and independent tribunal, and after he had set himself on fire in a public place from which action he died, was found to have been ‘unfairly dismissed’. The institutional spokesperson commented ‘Yes, unfortunately, we let him down’ !!

I have worked as an internet investigator for some years and I have had considerable experience in tracking down items on the net. It took me ten or fifteen minutes for what should have been an almost instantaneous search result for me to find; and I got just one single news story referring to the dissolution of the association between the visiting professor and this institution. Most search results I raised were clusters of results from the website(s) of the institution itself – barrages of them – many in their own way, and to myself, offensive in their elegant and distasteful elitist outlooks. The story I feel may well have been ‘hidden away’ by someone or by some entity? This can be done on the Internet when you have the technical knowledge and means at your disposal to do it.

And the latest news from this same institution? That tests carried out there have revealed that around one quarter of those people who have been infected by coronavirus but who have recovered are showing no significant antibodies as an immune response to that infection after the passing of a period of around six months. A limited sample but sufficient for the news (and maybe the institution I don’t recall) to call for booster injections of vaccine after six months from the time of initial inoculation.

So we have a reinstated guru, having previously been discredited in an ethical manner for him having broken his own rules for everyone in the nation. and who is at the heart of the institution making a vaccine, and that institution is now publishing materials which suggest it is likely that more than one dose of vaccine is going to be needed by each person.

It is doing so using public money. Such a vaccine, if it has a modicum of success in preventing infection by coronavirus incalculably, would be a gold mine to exploit economically. Up to how many billions of vaccine shots worldwide? At how much per shot? On public money – and I know of no deal by which the people of the UK via their government have in return for their money any stake in the vaccine financially and commercially speaking? Radio silence on this. Literally.

The prognosis doesn’t look good – conflicts of interest at the least, and a serious flaw in moral probity engaged in the mix also. The haste to obtain a vaccine is not merely an economic race between Oxford and Imperial – the standings of both institutions are at stake in the pecking order – a darling prize to be had, and especially for the elitists at these places.

So every incentive to hurry – economic, prestige, and of course, lest we forget - public health.

This is why setting up live tests on deliberately infected humans is so shocking. The vaccines tested on these live subjects will possibly be more harmful to them than them having been deliberately infected with coronavirus – the haste is so patent and the stakes so high. Tens of persons in Korea I believe, after these persons had received a flu jab last week , had died, and vaccinations protecting against flu there have been halted. And this is flu – no haste, lots of experience with the illness, and its deterrence, far less prestige at stake – and in a nation which we all felt ‘had it, and kept it, together’ regarding coronavirus and its social control.

I have URL links to all the data, which is in the public domain, and on which I base my words in this piece

Moral Compass?