Dear Editor, I wish to respond to Associate Prof. John Dunn’s letter in Tuesday’s newspaper (‘Unvaccinated are a risk to others’, December 14).

I wish to respond to Associate Prof. John Dunn’s letter that my ‘views’ cannot go unchallenged, that I demonstrate favoured thought process of the anti vax group of cognitive bias, and that I cherry pick statements and statistics to support my prejudice.

Firstly, I am not anti vax. I am however anti mandate, anti-coercion, and that I have a right to bodily autonomy, a right to make free and informed choice and consent of what is injected into my body, especially with an experimental vaccine for which there is the possibility of injury or death. Where there is risk, and there is risk with these vaccines, for starters they carry a warning label of myocarditis, there should also be choice. 

Prof Dunn says scientific method is different. “It involves critically examining reliable data and then forming a conclusion.”  I’m presuming he’s referring to sources such as the ‘respected’ Lancet journal to which I’ve been told I should refer instead of ‘google doctors’. 

Let me refer then to recent Lancet articles. One recent article published 19 November, by prolific researcher Dr Gunter Kampf of the University of Medicine Greifswald, Germany, disputes Prof Dunn’s claim that the vaccinated are less likely to transmit to others. In a UK study of household contacts, it was discovered that peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type. It further stated that the rate of cases in Germany from 21 July to 27 October showed clear evidence of the increasing relevance of the fully vaccinated as a possible source of transmission. It reported a similar situation in the UK where Covid case rate was higher among the subgroup of vaccinated than the unvaccinated subgroup. In Israel an outbreak involving 16 healthcare workers, 23 exposed patients and 2 family members, the source a fully vaccinated patient, vaccination rate 96.2 per cent among all exposed individuals (151 healthcare workers and 97 patients) saw fourteen fully vaccinated patients become severely ill or died, and the two unvaccinated patients developed mild disease.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified 4 of top 5 US counties with high vaccination rates (over 90%) as high transmission counties. The article concludes (I’m guessing as a result of critically examining reliable data) that it appears to be grossly negligent to ignore the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission when deciding about public health control measures.

In another Lancet article, Dr Kampf stated it is wrong and dangerous to speak of a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and called on high level officials and scientists to stop the inappropriate stigmitisation of unvaccinated people and to put extra effort into bringing society together.

A study in the European Journal of Epidemiology dated 17 August (which I’m presuming is another respected journal) stated that the sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate Covid needs to be re-examined especially considering the variants, and that other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions may need to be put in place alongside increasing vaccination rates. It did state that even though vaccination offers protection to individuals against severe hospitalisation and death, the CDC reported an increase from .01% to 9% and 0 to 15.1% between Jan to May 21 in rates of hospitalisations and deaths respectfully amongst fully vaccinated.  

Headlines in last week’s NZ news stated the Omicron wave driven by “young, healthy, vaccinated’ population according to mounting data from countries as diverse as the UK, Denmark and South Africa.   

How can it be a pandemic of the unvaccinated when studies and reports are showing this is not so?

 The Cook Islands remains the safest place in the world, not because as Prof Dunn said, “simply because the unvaccinated are so few in number”. But because we’ve shut our borders for the best part of two years. We know we have to get real and live with the virus like the rest of the world, but we also have to get real and realise it is not the unvaccinated who are going to bring the virus in, and that the vaccinated are just as like to catch and spread it. I pray that the confidence that the vaccinated, especially our vulnerable population, will not get as sick and require hospitalisation and recover faster holds true, especially given there are doctors in other countries reducing hospitilsation and death with the use of prophylactic and early treatment of the virus.

Serena Hunter

Muri