KINGSTON, Jamaica – Medical doctor Germaine Spencer believes that the Government’s push towards vaccinated-only events is only for “a show” and makes no sense given the reality of breakthrough cases among fully inoculated persons.

Rather, Spencer – who says he is not an anti-vaxxer and administers non-COVID-19 vaccines daily at his clinics in western Jamaica – is calling on the Andrew Holness-led administration to focus its resources on fixing Jamaica’s health system, which he says, is in urgent need of attention.

“I am totally against mandatory COVID-19 vaccines, the reason being that there is no science to justify it. There’s no medical science to justify mandating a vaccine that does not work forever. It has no long-lasting immunity. It only buffers for a few weeks and, in some, none, until natural immunity sets in,” Spencer told OBSERVER ONLINE.

“What we as citizens should be mandating is that the government optimise and improve all health infrastructure in Jamaica; not only Type A, Type B or Type C hospitals but also the local health clinic network throughout the island,” he contends.

The medical practitioner was speaking against the background of recent remarks by Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton when he revealed the government’s plan to favour those citizens who opted to get inoculated against COVID-19.

Tufton was blasted by several Jamaicans over the plan to discriminate against unvaccinated Jamaicans.

READ: Time to frown upon the unvaccinated, says Tufton

In clarifying that he is not against COVID-19 vaccines, but rather, “universal inoculation of the population”, Spencer reiterated that vaccine-only events are not realistic based on the present science that suggests that vaccinated persons can still contract and also spread coronavirus. 

“The vaccine-only events are just a show because the vaxxed can still get sick. The vaxxed can still pressure the health service. Once they are vulnerable – vaxxed or unvaxxed – they will still be vulnerable,” Spencer, who is also a businessman, said.

An alternative to vaccine-only events, Spencer suggested, is to stratify events based on risks.

“These events you stratify them. You say, alright, those who are high risk, those who are over a certain age, you are not allowed to go in public gatherings if you have not gotten the vaccines in a certain timeframe or natural immunity. 

“If you want to go further and say if you are vaxxed or unvaxxed, can you provide us with a negative COVID test? If you want to push it further, which I am not 100 per cent sure that is the way to go either, you can then stratify it based on symptoms, because even the tests have certain levels of sensitivity and specificity and you gonna miss [positive] people,” he proposed.

“Stratify events based on risks. You can say to certain subsets of the population ‘we’re not allowing you to come to events because if you get sick, quite likely, based on statistics available to us, you may end up in our health service’. That I can understand,” he added.

The doctor underscored that the government has done enough regarding the vaccines.

“They have made it available to the population. What [next] are you going to do? Why are you continuing pressing [for] these events, especially when there is a lot of failures of the vaccines, or what they call breakthrough cases? That’s the reality because we know and it’s very obvious,” he argued.

“Look at the situation in certain populations across the world – in Israel, in Canada. With a high vaccinated population, you’re gonna have the vaxxed going into the health services,” he stated.

Another reason for Spencer’s opposition to vaccinated-only events and mandatory vaccines is natural immunity, which he said was brought on by the highly contagious omicron variant.

He refers to that variant as “God’s vaccine”.

Based on this, he again batted for a restratification of society based on the natural immunity element, arguing that such restratification of every individual is “the basis of every teaching in medical school”. 

He elaborated, “Every patient is different. Every patient before us, we must take a proper history, we must examine the patient, and we must come up with an assessment. Within that assessment is a restratification system, which determines whether a patient is at risk for a particular disease or not. 

“We have the data. Coronavirus is not novel anymore. We have enough data to stratify people based on risk factors and, in reality, people who are stratified based on risks, only a small percentage of that will be at risk. Why? Because in reality, I can tell you, up to 90 per cent of Jamaicans have been inoculated by ‘God’s vaccine’ which is Omicron or the other variants. 

“And in reality, majority of patients already have natural immunity, which all governments of this world, including Jamaica, have failed to acknowledge, despite all scientific evidence suggesting that it is far superior to two doses of the vaccine,” Spencer outlined.

Spencer’s assertion is supported by a study released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showing that unvaccinated people with past COVID-19 infection were better protected against the Delta variant than people who were only fully vaccinated. 

Another local doctor, Dr Michael Abrahams, had voiced similar sentiments about natural immunity to Spencer’s while citing the CDC study as part of his own arguments against the vaccine mandate in an interview with OBSERVER ONLINE last week.

READ: ‘COVID vaccine mandate a slippery slope’

Noting that the majority of people infected during the Omicron surge were unvaccinated, Abrahams said “It makes no sense to cast a broad net and say that you are going to discriminate against the unvaccinated because they are not a homogenous group… there are many unvaccinated people right now who are better immune protected than many vaccinated people.”

In the meantime, Spencer is also against mandatory mask-wearing, based on a study from Bangladesh. 

“The reality is cloth masks don’t work. Surgical masks don’t work. What works is properly fitted N-95 masks…, and even with that, you going to have breakthrough infections,” he revealed.

Spencer, meanwhile, stressed that the Government must focus its attention on fixing the island’s health service and health networks, whether through public-private partnerships, rather than on vaccine mandates.

“That should be the focus of the government because in the last two years, have you improved any of our health services other than creating vaccines? And the answer to that is, no. They have not!” he alleged.

“… And, with such a crisis, they should have used this opportunity to improve all of our health networks, because they have all the financial resources available to them under the funds and grants… they gained to fight COVID.

“Our fight should be focused on fixing our health services. Our fight should be focused on providing first-line medication, first-line doctors and nurses available to the sick and needy,” he said. 

According to Spencer, as of February 13, the island’s health system was not being suppressed or being overwhelmed by COVID cases. 

“It is being overwhelmed by issues relating to motor vehicle crashes, gun violence or crime, domestic violence. That is what is overwhelming our health services now and creating a lack of resources and supplies to people who really need it,” he opined. 

He argued, too, that the reason behind COVID-19 affecting the island’s health facilities, especially during the third wave, was “improper planning or poor planning from successive governments, not only this present government, but the governments before that have neglected our health system”.

“If we had a proper health network,… COVID wouldn’t create no problem for us. Yes, there would be a wave, but, in reality, all waves crash, and that is what they have neglected,” he reasoned.

Pointing out that his overall comments could be viewed by some individuals as being “anti-vaxx”, Spencer said such a position is “unfortunate”.

“It is very unfortunate that you are considered to be anti-vaxx by having a clear opinion based on medical facts. I can never be considered to be anti-vaxx. Every single day in my office and hospital, we administer vaccines,” he said. 

“I myself administer vaccines. In my field of gynaecology, I administer Gardasil 9 vaccine, which is for the human papillomavirus. That is known to work. That is known to boost immune systems and has shown to prevent cervical cancer,” Spencer cited.

“I am not against COVID-19 vaccines at all. I am against universal inoculation of the population, when the majority is not at risk for COVID-19, especially now with the omicron, which is the dominant variant,” said Dr Spencer. 

“If you don’t boost, you gone back to zero, unless you get natural immunity. The vaccines are only buffers to natural immunity and that’s the reality that we fail to recognise,” asserted the medical practitioner.

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