My tastes in music are more Beethoven than Roll Over, Beethoven, but I believe that at the very pinnacle of any genre there is usually fine musicianship to be found, and for my money Eric Clapton is a good exemplar of this principle. So my interest was piqued when my Youtube feed turned up a video entitled ‘GOD on COVID: Eric Clapton’s “Disastrous” Vaccine Experience’.

For the record, I’m double-jabbed with the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, and had no adverse reaction. I’m generally fairly positive about vaccines, and don’t have a lot of time for parents who decline to inoculate their kids with vaccines that have been around for a long time, were developed under the protocols that applied before the Covid panic swept them aside, and have a long record of safety and effectiveness.

That said, when I had polio in 1977, and the doctors were casting around for theories to explain my getting infected with a virus believed to have been eliminated from NSW two decades earlier, one possibility seriously considered was that I had suffered a recrudescence of one of the two vaccines I had received as a child. Although exceedingly rare, I was assured that it did happen.

So I have been slow to pour scorn on those who, in the present panic, are reluctant to receive a vaccine developed on the ‘emergency’ timetable supposedly justified by the ‘pandemic’. Furthermore, the hand-waving with which has greeted claims that these hastily-developed vaccines were producing dangerous adverse reactions smacks of so much of the official disingenuousness that has characterised this whole sorry episode, and excites my bullshit meter.

You can see Clapton’s account of his ordeal here, and I urge you to do so. He gives chapter and verse on his experience of having the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, and it’s not pretty. To say he had an ‘adverse’ reaction is a gross understatement – it clearly made him very ill indeed.

Luke Massey, in the Australian Spectator, has reviewed the Australian Government’s Department of Health website, and its statistics make sobering reading for vaccine-happy Australians. He writes:

“In Australia eight people are confirmed to have died due to adverse reactions from the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. As at 20 August 2021 there had also been 272 other reported deaths  following receipt of AstraZeneca.  

As of 2 September 2021, there had been 36 people treated in ICU for confirmed thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome following receipt of the AstraZeneca vaccine. 

There have been 125 confirmed and probable cases of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TTS) as a result of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 99 reports of Guillain-Barre Syndrome following the AstraZeneca vaccine. To 29 August 2021, the TGA has received 61 reports of suspected Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP) following vaccination with the Astrazeneca vaccine that could be linked to vaccination and no other obvious cause was identified. 

As at 20 August 2021, there had been 176 reported deaths following receipt of the Pfizer vaccine. 

To 29 August 2021, 293 cases of suspected myocarditis and/or pericarditis following the Pfizer vaccination have been reported to the TGA.”

To think that receiving these vaccines may soon become a precondition for the restoration of our liberties is to contemplate an Orwellian dystopia. We must not let it happen – even those of us, like me, who have had the jabs, and have, on the face of it, nothing to fear. And those tempted to sneer at the vaccine-hesitant should knock it off.

Tom Forrester-Paton