Dear Editor,

At the beginning of 2021 a British pulmonologist in the National Health Services (NHS) anonymously revealed in a letter to The Guardian newspaper that he was at his “wits end” with the COVID-19 “unvaccinated”, as data and his experience were showing that nearly all the intensive care unit’s (ICU) COVID-19-related admissions were not vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2, placing “avoidable” strain on him, his colleagues, and the medical services.

Later in the year studies showed similar patterns among COVID-19-infected pregnant women. If that was not enough, mortality of the unborn child was later found to be significantly higher among unvaccinated expectant mothers than their vaccinated counterparts.

There was the recent removal of a potential US heart transplant recipient from the eligibility list because he refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 because of “unspecified beliefs”. It was said that his unvaccinated status reduced his chances of post-transplant survival because of the ongoing pandemic.

In the midst of all this is the commissioning of various task forces and programmes to counter misinformation to mitigate vaccine hesitancy and resistance.

A great prophet once declared that nothing, whether good or bad, shall remain hidden and not revealed. Another prophet, an advocate of the first, suggested that the world will despise the light, which is the truth, because of what it has to hide.

However, the above findings are verifiable, so what is it that is being hidden? International and Irish recording pop artiste Elenor McKevoy prophetically gave us a taste of the answer in her 1996 track Fire Overhead. The song warns of the ignored consequences of not paying attention to what is deliberately made to appear to be the innocuous.

Consider some other ignored and verifiable medical findings.

Research has shown that pregnancies presented to medical practitioners by African-American women were far more likely to have unfavourable outcomes than that of their Caucasian counterparts, with an improvement of such being seen when an African-American doctor is attending.

And recently it has been shown that selected surgeries performed on British women by NHS surgeons were significantly more likely to have post-surgery complications when performed by a male surgeon as opposed to a female surgeon. Imagine the doctors on the sullied end of this stick trying to explain these findings.

It would be sinister to suggest that there is professional prejudice involved in these patterns, whether conscious or unconscious, but the possibility exists. Similarly, the possibility of prejudice exists towards the unvaccinated by those in the medical field, which has infliuenced the nature of the statements made, as well as the emerging difference in the treatment of vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

How about they do a revelatory study on the personal and professional beliefs of these doctors, so we can understand what informs/influences their practices and the resulting treatment of different categories of patients?

Andre O Sheppy

Norwood Meadows, St James

astrangely@outlook.com