According to ons.gov.uk, which is the website for the UK’s Office For National Statistics, the total number of deaths resulting from COVID-19 with no other underlying causes is 17, 371 in England and Wales combined for the period 2020 to the end of the third quarter in 2021. However, a quick check of the UK’s www.gov.uk website shows a listing of 72,178 deaths in England alone for the period January 30 to December 31, 2020. The former is a more genuine report of deaths, while the latter is a compilation of all COVID-19-positive-tested deceased, even if the person tested was dying of either prostate cancer, a gunshot wound, or a heroin overdose.

With the death toll being tallied in that manner, the numbers would obviously be inflated. And since the declaration of pandemic status was predicated on these numbers worldwide, the so-called conspiracy theorists are quite credible in their claims that this pandemic is some kind of a farce.

Now let me hasten to make this clear for those who love to argue a point which was never made. I am not debating whether COVID-19 itself is real, neither am I saying no one died from it. And, of course, I empathise with everybody who lost a loved one — whether it was to COVID-19 or a stroke. I am not apathetic.

But I am, in fact, saying I, like the majority of Jamaicans who are being disrespectfully dismissed as insignificant, am not completely convinced that this progressed naturally to pandemic ranking.

Right now we are being made painfully aware of every positive COVID-19 test around us, regardless of the intensity of the symptoms. Of course, it can seem like a pandemic if every headline and news transmission screams that it is.

I want to take the liberty of challenging every intellectually capable Jamaican pushing a vaccine-only narrative to audit the source of their convictions. Did you arrive at the conclusion that we all need to take these one-size fits all shots by your own observation? I’m not suggesting you have to arrive via that singular route, but did you? If you didn’t examine the authenticity of any of the information you were given, if you simply “followed the science”, which, in a case such as this one, actually means following your preferred scientist because they have divergent views, on what footing do you stand when you demand complete participation in your gamble? Gamble, because the reasonable questions which were being asked at the roll-out could not possibly have been answered at that time, and now that we have some amount of data coming back, it turns out that the hesitation was not unfounded.

Certainly, those who are eager to relieve us of our human and civil franchise will rush to declare that all vaccines have some amount of negative effects. You have to hand it to them, though, these people are most impressively gigantic in the testicular realm. Their willingness to stand in front of someone and tell them to their face that they are forcefully volunteering them to play Russian roulette with potentially fatal blood clotting must make you the envy of the most blessed of the North Atlantic right whales. Google them, and bask in my awe of you.

I ask the same questions every single day from the moment I wake up until the moment I go back to sleep: Do you know which people will suffer adverse effects? Can you guarantee that the person you are forcing or coercing to take the vaccine won’t win that gruesome lottery? If you knew who would be adversely affected would you still give it to them? And since you don’t know, doesn’t your ignorance of that eventuality increase the scope of the potential for the harm you prescribe?

Lastly, if the people you push to take the vaccine report experiencing harmful side effects, are you prepared to accept the responsibility? If you are not willing to support the family of the man who unfortunately suffers the ‘rare’ side effect and is no longer able to work, should you be so vocal about your preference? Can you genuinely tell me that, at this point, you still do not understand why people are decidedly against going down that path?

I am available haphazardly on my instagram account @iamtanyastephens, and I welcome anyone who isn’t rude and combative. I have no aversion to expletives and my skin is thick; feel free to educate me there. You don’t need to follow, I’m not trying to grow my numbers. I’m just having trouble understanding why so many of you are having trouble understanding that no means no.

Tanya Stephens is an international singer/songwriter and citizen of Jamaica.