In late 2020, the fake experts in the Isle of Man public health bureaucracy initially tried to keep their vaccine priority list a secret. They subsequently, and belatedly, revealed their priority list: a bad answer based on the fundamentally flawed premise of foreign data.
This failure to review the Manx situation, and failure to consider the issue scientifically given the reality of the Isle of Man meant we were subjected to wrong foreign solution to the Manx problem. As I predicted a month before the Manx Government revealed their bad priority list, and three months before a repeat Manx traveller to/from the UK brought the virus to the Isle of Man ahead of our third lockdown:
For example, someone who travels off the island (such as a Manx-resident, UK key worker) is at a significantly higher risk of contracting the disease currently than someone who is in a relatively safe aged care facility on the Isle of Man. Thus, we need to have a local debate to take into account our local conditions: we can’t just import a British priority list. We need a Manx solution for a Manx problem.
Publish the Manx vaccine priority list
The problem here is that the fake experts in the IOM public health bureaucracy did not study the Manx situation, and did not consider the Manx risks. The situation in late 2020 in the Isle of Man was fundamentally different to the situation in the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, the virus was circulating widely, while it was not circulating at all in the Isle of Man.
Thus, a priority ranking based on the UK situation was not good for the Manx situation. The Manx situation at that time was more akin to the situation in New Zealand: and their scientific review caused them to prioritise border workers. If the Isle of Man had done the same science, there would have been less risk to the people of the Isle of Man, possibly avoiding the hated third lockdown caused by the Cabinet Office, and possibly saving a number of lives.
Copying the answers from the big kid in class is no good if you have different questions.
The Isle of Man Government is again at risk of botching the roll-out of vaccines, this time in the form of the booster roll out. They announced this week that they would be “following the latest interim advice from the UK’s Joint Commission on Vaccination and Immunisation.” This appears to include the bad decision to follow the UK’s decision to use “vaccines… developed from the original SARS-CoV-2 strain.“
This is dumb; this is silly! There have obviously been significant mutations and variants to COVID-19, and new vaccines have been developed which target these mutations!
If the Manx, British or American Governments had public health departments which were not run by fake experts, they would allow use of a vaccine targeted at the current variants – rather than the now out-of-date versions they currently allow people to use. At the very least, they could give patients the choice of which vaccine to use, and to empower Manx people to have more control over their own bodies.
A good question to ask in Tynwald
Currently, members of Tynwald are busy spending the time of our national parliament asking questions such as, “Whether tram track warning signage is being installed on Douglas Promenade,” and for an update on “the availability of bus services for cruise ship passengers.” In between such weighty issues, a proactive MHK could ask about how many full courses of Paxlovid have been delivered to the Isle of Man, and how many have actually been administered to patients.
Paxlovid is an antiviral medicine that works by stopping the virus that causes coronavirus (COVID-19) from growing and spreading in the body.
