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By Mark Devonish
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery. I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever-chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure. I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
Ethical Principles
For if the Hippocratic oath is the heart beat of our professional lives then the ethical principles must be the lifeblood. And these principles number five.
Patient autonomy: Patient must have a voice in their care and their decisions respected.
Beneficence: Doctors must do no harm, for which the Tuskegee Researchers were 40yrs blinded as they unethical experimented on Afro-American men, intentionally infecting the unsuspecting victims with deadly syphilis. But it was out of this unethical practise that biomedical ethics was birth but the damage lives on with distrust between the medical profession and the black community. And this distrust is very much alive as evident by a mere 20% Afro-American confidence in the Covid vaccine.
Non-maleficence: Never insert your personal views in patients’ decision.
Justice: Fair, equitable and appropriate treatment in light of what is due to a patient.
Law: Appreciate the legal underpinnings in the medical practices.
For as you perused both the Hippocratic Oath and Ethical Principles, nowhere buried within their scholarly penmanship did you unearth the advocacy of intentional life deprivation. Furthermore, nowhere submerged within their deep recesses did you find supportive scaffoldings for herd immunity by deaths or any similarly ghastly methodologies. But their absence speak volumes.Their absence speak to the repudiation of the unethical. Their absence speaks to the renunciation of illegalities.
The genesis of herd immunity
Indeed if you had spent your formative years internalising animal documentary, you might have seen what I saw; a large group of grazing wild cattle designated a herd. And within the herd you must have struggled to lay eyes on the vulnerable since the encircling, concealing and protective herd would have centrally positioned their vulnerable from the sharp eyes of deadly predators. Admittedly, it’s from this animal protective battalion that the concept herd immunity was birth. And unambiguous is it’s route. Ensure the vast majority are immunised and in so doing the immunised protect the vulnerable non-immunised, from deadly infections. But herd immunity predating Covid was via the ethical vaccination route but with Covid it has taken a newly macabre identity. And the route is reprehensible. Give Covid free rein to spread throughout the cities like the Great Fire of London and with the weak millions dead, the living millions would have been immunised eventuating herd immunity. For murder speaks to actus reus and mens rea. Premeditated action to take a life. Therefore herd immunity must be murder.
PPP herd immunity by deaths
For PPP came to power by herd intimidation and immediately pursued their herd immunity. Disregarded life as Guyanese drop dead in the Covid streets. Disregard the APNU-AFC built Covid hospital. Irresponsibly not monitoring quarantining and self-isolating cases. Negligently not enforcing WHO Public Health practices. And the results they hoped for came their way. Exponential increases in deaths and infections. But these rates were painstakingly slow in their eyes. A more aggressive approach prescribed. Re-open all ports to import thousands of Covid from foreign lands. Open non-essential services to ensure the newly imported virus have more stowaway bodies to germinate. Decrease the curfew time to ensure that the unsuspecting masses spend more intimate time on the streets, as they spread deadly Covid. And this they prayed would have accelerated herd immunity by deaths. But their impatience drove them to question the delay in their outcome. And for this, their mouthpiece urgently hit the airways to instruct the unwary masses, “Guyana Covid death rate is acceptable.” For within this, not so coded message, is disinformation that there is human capacity to spread the virus. Optimise the spreading to maximise the death rate deficit and potentiate herd immunity.
Indeed, pause I must to challenge you. A syllogistic challenge, if you may. For if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck then what must it be? For PPP didn’t have to inscribe in the midnight skies that they were after herd immunity. For our cerebral cortices long deciphered their coded death policy. Their actions spoke louder than their whispered words. For they were after herd immunity by death to achieve their aim. And their aim was to get Covid out of their way to facilitate their pre-election quid pro quo with their billionaire business oligarchs.
Dollars over deaths.
In fact, it was Dr. Scott Atlas, Donald Trump’s brainless voice on Covid, who championed herd immunity which Trump blindly pursued until it backfired spectacularly. Too many deaths to explain away. Blamed the doctors he did. Dollars for Covid death diagnoses he accused. But model after model extrapolated that herd immunity would cost at least 2 million American lives. But no such modelling is in PPP anencephalic offices but even if they were, they would have gone unutilised by the unintellectual nitwits who are not cerebrally endowed for such complex computations. But undoubtedly, it’s likely thousands would die. The emotional pain beyond quantifying. Is it worth it PPP? Really, is it worth it? Dollars over deaths.