Dr: We’re still waiting to see the effects of the Pfizer in terms of side effect profile. There hasn’t been much turning up in the literature so far whereas a lot turned up with the Astra Zeneca with the clots.
FJ: That was interesting how they banned that.
Dr: Interesting isn’t it.
FJ: Why do you think they banned it?
Dr: Because of all the medical reports indicating there was considerable risk.
You want to remember, these vaccines have been put on the market with indemnity for the
FJ: manufacturers
Dr: yes, so they don’t have any liability or responsibility. These products have been rushed to the market without thorough testing. I don’t think the governments make a secret of that. Maybe in the United States they try to cover it over but in Australia here we have more independent reporting. I don’t think it’s any big secret, plus you’ve got the internet
FJ: There is peer pressure to try to make sure that people get vaccinated. It’s very overt. There’s absolutely no room to question.
Dr: There’s plenty of more flexible voices around
FJ: It’s quite a strong wave of pressure, “everyone should get vaccinated.”
There’s this expectation that everyone wants you to get vaccinated and if they ask “have you been vaccinated” they want you to answer, “yes.”
Are you unusual in your profession?
Dr: I haven’t really got around to it to be perfectly honest. And I’m not designated as a high risk group. So should I go actively seeking it out? Mmm
I’m scientifically driven. I want to see evidence. Just like this psychiatrist, I think she’s right to ask for more evidence.
Dr: I think a lot of vaccines out there are very good. Very effective. They do what they say they’ll do, they’ve been carefully tested thoroughly in large populations. And by and large they protect. In this particular case with COVID, an entirely different set of rules have applied. Or rather, no rules. Just government support. Financially and politically. Is that a good thing? Mmm. Yeah. I don’t know? It by-passes the normal social processes. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
FJ: Well they did stop the Queensland Uni one for that reason.
Dr: Yeah, they have had some safeguards but nowhere near enough. I mean the fact that they had to do an about-face with the Astra Zeneca is telling you something. It’s a bit like how governments operate.
FJ: Trial and error.
Dr: Well … It’s not so much the government. The government is advised by its health advisors. It picks and chooses its health advisors, based on who puts up their hand and says, “I’m the best and most qualified” and all of that because the government doesn’t know. They’re not expert so … what you then see is people saying, “I’m an expert and I know what I’m doing and these are the priorities …” Of course you need to look a bit behind the scenes to see why they’re doing that, why they’re saying what they’re saying. Partly it’s ideological and partly they’re very close to the drug companies. And the drug companies have a huuuuugggge influence here in the medical community in Australia. Which is totally unfettered. And so of course they’ll support the drug industry overall. They’ll also look to their peers particularly in the United States. Peer pressure and peer comparison with the American health system is very prevalent. Very prevalent.
It happens big time.
FJ: With Pfizer, that seems to be the one everyone’s very keen on
Dr: yes
FJ: you’d be happy to have it would you?
Dr: Well at a pinch I would, but I don’t really know about its side effect profile.
I mean every day I review the literature, I get it sent to me and every new thing, every new paper about COVID turns up in my email and so far Pfizer hasn’t figured on it.
FJ: Really?
Dr: Which is quite interesting.
FJ: Strange.
Dr: I don’t know why.
FJ: It seems to have rave reviews, right.
Dr: Oh I couldn’t say that.
FJ: Internationally.
Dr: It proves efficacy, in other words it’s protective.
But whether its side effect profile is satisfactory, I couldn’t tell you.
FJ: Surely we would’ve heard about it by now.
Dr: Not necessarily.
FJ: Really?
Dr: It took quite a while for the Astra Zeneca data to start coming out.
It didn’t emerge straight away.
FJ: Right. Part of me wonders if it’s better, if you’re reasonably healthy to have the actual disease and build up natural immunity.
Dr: Oh I can’t agree with that. COVID’s a bad infection and it causes all sorts of problems far and beyond your average benign influenza.
Its lethality rate is relatively low but its pathogenicity can be quite considerable. It can cause damage particularly to the lungs, sometimes other organs too.
So being careful is absolutely essential. Ideally a good vaccine should be very very useful. It should be.
In other countries outside the western ones, places like China in particular, they’ve developed their own vaccine which is not an mRNA virus vaccine. It’s the conventional kind of protein vaccine, not an RNA one and they’ve had very good benefits and a very low side effect profile. You have to ask yourself why it’s …
FJ: But how do you know? You can’t rely on Chinese.
Dr: Coming from the United States has been downgrading of Chinese …
FJ: Information
Dr: but I don’t see a justification for it myself.
When I look at the Chinese publications, they’re straight up and down the line.
Their vaccine has performed very well with low side effect profile. I don’t think they’re lying. What’s in it for them?
FJ: oh good.
The Chinese government is reknowned for lying on other things
Dr: Well over political matters, yes.
If you look at their track record in managing COVID, it’s pretty good and that extends across a range of medical disciplines.
It’s true for their vaccine. Their vaccine has performed very well.
I can’t comment about the Russian one because they’ve hardly published at all.
I know there are other vaccines that have been developed in the United States for example.
But again I haven’t seen the paperwork simply because there’s not much uptake.
Pfizer and Astra Zeneca seem to have had the lion’s share. That’s the way it’s worked.
FJ: Also does Pfizer protect against the different variants?
Dr: Well that’s very apparent. Neither of them do.
FJ: So if you’ve had Pfizer, are you protected from the Delta variant?
Dr: Well so far preliminary data that’s been released says no.
FJ: So that’s another vaccine down the track for the Delta.
Dr: Well yeah. How are you going to deal with all of that? I think that’s going to be very difficult with an RNA technology.
It’s a lot easier to deal with a protein technology. But the protein technology has been pushed aside.
FJ: So you’d actually prefer the Chinese vaccine?
Dr: At this point in time. Whether it’s protective for the Delta variant I don’t know.
FJ: Neither are it seems. No research at all?
Dr: These changes to the virus happen very quickly. Production of a vaccine and modifying it appropriately to keep up is like a cat chasing its tail. This goes on all the time with influenza. So for example at the beginning of the influenza season CSL releases a batch of influenza vaccines. By the end of the season variants have cropped up and you can’t keep up with it.
Unfortunately the Corona virus has a similar behaviour.
There are many microbial factors out there that don’t change much and that’s why we have effective vaccines against them.
It begs the question, “How good is the vaccine irrespective of which one it is.”
FJ: This is just going to keep going on forever if people come in through the main cities and it’s just going to be on-going.
Dr: Well, now we’re getting to public health policy. Is there anything that can be done to completely and utterly contain COVID?
FJ: Put them on an island or in the outback or something when they come in.
Dr: Well. The containment and quarantining measures here in Australia have been woeful.
They’ve had since February last year to get it right. And they still haven’t got it right. If anything things are worse. How can that be?
Well I’ve worked within the health department, I know the bureaucracies in the teaching hospitals. I’m not surprised. You’ve got big personalities, fiefdoms, empires.
Accountability? (laughs) Hoh! It’s got holes in it.
Can I blame Berejiklian or Andrews? No. They’re reliant on these people. They don’t put their finger down and say, “You get it right or you’re out.”
I mean, take the flare-up now here in Sydney.
Kerry Chant who they gave awards to and prizes to and all of this, said, “We don’t need a lockdown.” She kept going on about it, “We don’t need a lockdown.”
FJ: Last week?
Dr: yeah. Things were out of control and she was saying that.
FJ: The private schools were on holidays. You don’t want to lock down your electorate.
Once the public schools were on holidays, well we will lock them all down, they’re the plebs.
Dr: That’s certainly one possible interpretation but I think it goes back much further back into the health bureaucracy and politics that go on.
FJ: Also, Gladys didn’t want to announce a lock-down because she had to announce the budget and she wanted clear air to announce the budget. She said that.
Dr: She wasn’t making the decisions, she was announcing those decisions. The people making the decisions were the people making the decisions were the health bureaucrats and some of them disagree. The reason we’ve got the lockdown now is because an epidemiologist over at Uni of NSW, McLaws, she went on ABC television and said, “We should have a lockdown and I disagree with what’s going on.” Then the case numbers rose and that’s where the pressure came from.
UNSW Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology at UNSW, advisor to WHO Health Emergencies IPC Preparedness, Readiness and Response to COVID-19
Dr: the health bureaucracy is a powerful and somewhat wayward set of people and I don’t think they’re doing a great job
FJ: I suspect that part of it is mates and old school ties
Dr: Exactly, that’s exactly what goes on.
FJ: Liberal Party people
Dr: well so much Liberal Party, it’s the mates with old school ties side of things. That plays a big
FJ: Which schools did the leaders of the health department go to?
Dr: They don’t go to public schools, but more importantly, once they get into academic medicine there’s a whole new school operating
FJ: John Howard’s mates in the past, Gustav Nossal and all that
Dr: Yes, he’s a biiiiig pooh bah. People who get into senior positions in academia here on the east coast, they have to get his nod. And he nods to people who’ll do what he wants. That doesn’t necessarily make people competent.
FJ: Who’s in charge at the moment? There’s Kerry Chant.
Dr: She’s the chief health officer for NSW, so she’s at the top of that particular bureaucracy.
The people who get there are not necessarily competent. They are obedient and conformist and that’s the prime reason they’re there. Competence doesn’t figure very highly so just to give you an example, when we had the northern beaches cluster, the lockdown occurred quite quickly. But with the Bondi cluster now, it didn’t occur at all. What’s the difference?
FJ: I’ve given you part of my reason.
Dr: I’m sure you’re right. Extraneous factors confuse.
FJ: Coogee is a Labor seat. Gabrielle Upton is the state Liberal member for Vaucluse and all that. But it is a marginal area, you saw with David Sharma, that Dr nearly got in instead of him, the former head of the AMA, Kerryn Phelps, she nearly won. It is a marginal electorate and they are very aware of that and they don’t want to piss off all their voters.
Dr: Politics could play a role but the primary decision makers are the academic health people, they call the shots.
FJ: Gustav Nossal, John Howard, Fred Hilmer, Gonski, Turnbull, Lowy, Triguboff, they’re all mates, I’ve lived in the eastern suburbs most of my life, I know a lot about them. Friends of Science and Medicine, they all hang out together.
Dr: In medicine, everything boils down to competence and honesty. That’s what it boils down to, true professionalism. If that’s not operating 100% of the time, mistakes get made. It’s just that simple. And it’s not operating 100% of the time, in fact the question is, is it operating at all?
FJ: mmm
So you were happy obviously when Mary-Louise McLaws from UNSW spoke out.
Dr: She did the right thing. She showed independence of mind.
I should tell you that the Kirby Institute is somewhat distance from the empire.
FJ: Kirby is a completely different kettle of fish because he has a mind of his own and he was always on the outer himself.
Dr: I’m talking about the medical people there.
FJ: He’s a very popular man.
Dr: He is anti-establishment, no doubt about it.
FJ: I’ve been to his talk at the Opera House at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas and I’ve seen the lines of people who wanted him to sign their books because he’s very much a supporter of public schools and all these things.
Dr: Novavax is along the lines of influenza. It’s already undergone extensive testing and its side effect profile is very very low. It will be available here in Australia probably August or September. Now, Astra Zeneca has considerable side effects
FJ: Oh yeah, I won’t go near that one.
Dr: The Pfizer, we’re still waiting to hear about that but it’s virtually the same formulation as Astra Zeneca and so the issue about clots and heart trouble and kidney trouble, we still don’t know exactly what’s going on in relation to Pfizer. I personally would wait until the Novavax is available. It is being fast-tracked, I have to check.
FJ: Where’s that one manufactured?
Dr: in the United States.
FJ: it’s a different formulae, it’s the protein sub-unit formulation, the conventional one that all other vaccines use. The safety profiles are looking very very good.
FJ: you haven’t been vaccinated, so you’re waiting a couple of months, praying that they get this outbreak under control.
Dr: I think they will.
FJ: just
Dr: Oh no I think they will.
FJ: OK (doubtfully).
Dr: That’s my advice.
FJ: Novavax but we never hear of that.
Dr: No I don’t know why, if you go looking you can find it on the government website but you don’t hear about it in the mass media. It’ll become readily available, there’ll be a government announcement, they’ll acquire doses and they’ll be available.
FJ: I’ll take your advice.
Dr: Just be careful, follow the rules to avoid getting the infection.
FJ: yeah of course. There hasn’t been much data about the side effects of Pfizer because it’s very similar to Astra Zeneca you’re going the old protein route.
Dr: oh, absolutely.
FJ: because it’s less harmful.
Dr: That’s the route that should have been taken right at the beginning.
FJ: right. Oh well, I might not get the best advice from the government or NSW Health but I’ll take it from you.
Dr: If you go searching the federal government health website there’s plenty of information about it.
FJ: well I have never heard it mentioned in the news.
You mentioned Sinovac and the other Chinese vaccine, they look like they’re very bad, all these doctors and nurses have died in Indonesia of it.
This is an article about the Chinese vaccines
This is the NYT Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker
Novavax is unknown in Australia, people have only ever talked about Pfizer and AZ. The NSW Premier is pushing AZ hard. Greg Hunt said this but it wasn’t published in the news
There was one mention of Novavax in The Australian but it appears to be inaccurate:
“The company has not conducted studies on the Delta variant.”
Two more vaccines to join the race
With the complete shambles in the failed lockdown in Sydney and the lack of Pfizer, it’s at least possible to get accurate information internationally via Twitter because we can’t rely on our governments or the media to inform us accurately.
Frances Jones 
Posted on June 29, 2021
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