No Jabs Please, We’re a Control Group
More than a hundred residents of Hastings who have not been vaccinated in the Covid-19 mass vaccination roll-out have signed up to a digital study programme which will treat them as a control group for comparative evaluation of medium and long term health benefits.
According to initiators of the study – a group in Eastbourne styling itself the Vaccine Control Group (VCG) – they are among 21,000 participants spread across the world who have not been vaccinated and have undertaken to provide personal data at monthly intervals over future months and years concerning the health of themselves and their dependants. That number has been gathered in barely more than a month since the VCG was formed in June, simply on the basis of word of mouth, social media and a few public meetings, including one held in St Leonards on 31st July. It seems likely to continue to expand rapidly until limited by the capacity of its administrative team to handle the data.
The programme is led by a small community cooperative team including Derren Fielder, who is a data analyst with high level experience of designing software for blue-chip companies. Its purpose is not, Mr Fielder insists, “anti-vaxx”. It is to provide data on comparative outcomes of those who choose not to be vaccinated, and is necessary because neither the pharmaceutical companies who are invested in the worldwide vaccination programmes nor the national and international medical authorities which should be regulating them appear to be collecting or studying such data.
Vaccine trials in 2020
The research and trial of prospective Covid-19 vaccines, carried out last year with the participation of thousands of volunteers across several countries, started – as is standard procedure in most clinical trials – with binary control groups: one group that was jabbed with the vaccine, the other with a placebo substance. However, at a much earlier stage than normal in many of the trials, the placebo group were offered and in the huge majority of cases opted to accept the vaccine itself, leaving no systematic study of those who did not. The
CREDIT: Control Group Cooperative Limited.
VCG has not set itself up to replicate the earlier trials – the programme is not randomised, and the VCG does not have the financial or medical resources to fulfil the criteria applied in standard health research. Mr Fielder describes it rather as a “citizens’ study”, being undertaken because no-one else is doing it on a global scale. The data that is now being collected will be made available for future scientific analysis. And there are well-qualified scientists supporting the enterprise, though at this stage he says he is not able – for reasons related to their own professional careers – to identify who they are.
Each participant in the study provides on a securely encrypted system an unidentifiable username, states his/her month and year of birth, biological sex, and residential location (by town and country, rather than any more detailed address), and gives basic health information, including other vaccinations received in the past. They then file monthly health reports for themselves and any dependants they may have, detailing treatments (including a Covid vaccination if administered), allergies and other conditions. Participation in the study is free, but anyone who wants to support it can join as an Associate. The cost for an individual to sign up is a £4 set-up charge (or £14 for a family) plus £6 quarterly subscription.
Discrimination?
In the meantime, among the stated objects of the company through which it is managed, Control Group Cooperative Limited, is this: “to provide support and assistance to community associations in the pursuit of medical choice and maintenance of personal freedoms”. In practice this means that the VCG aim to oppose what they see as legal and social discrimination against the unvaccinated. And this of course puts them in controversial political territory. Many people in government, in business and in society generally believe – often quite strongly – that those who choose not to be vaccinated against Covid-19 should indeed be discriminated against in the community interest of controlling the virus.
The government has come short so far of introducing general health passports in its purpose to maximise vaccination take-up. But it is not just in matters such as quarantining after travel abroad or a test-and-trace ping that it intends to apply differential treatment. Proof of vaccination will be required for all workers in care homes from November. Premier League stadia, nightclubs and other “crowded venues” will, after the end of September, require visitors to demonstrate a record of double jabs or a recent negative test, Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi announced last week. Some hotels, restaurants and other hospitality providers are already operating a bar along these lines.
The VCG aims to counter this division of sheep and goats by providing its Associate participants with a card imprinted with the carrier’s photograph and a QR code that declares exemption status – “Participant ID – MUST NOT BE VACCINATED. This person is a registered participant in the SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Control Group”. Neither the card itself nor the QR link claims any formal legal status. But then it is not at all clear what legality underpins the government’s own guidelines for imposing restrictions on the unvaccinated, nor its declarations of what might constitute “medical” reasons for exemption.
Participants in the VCG progamme are spread across the world, with notable proliferation in Germany, Austria and the USA – but also in Hastings, according to Mr Fielder. It is hoped that by January next year there will be sufficient collection of data for an initial scientific study to be undertaken.
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I would like to join please
Are there any similar groups in North Wales please? This is a group that must get as many people to join as possible.
Hello, the Control Group is international – so please do feel free to join.