The Heritage Party opposes the Carbis Bay Declaration

The Heritage Party opposes the Carbis Bay Declaration.

On 12th June, 2021, the Prime Minister with the other G7 leaders signed the Carbis Bay Declaration. The declaration was produced with the hubristic claim that it would help ‘prevent a global pandemic from ever happening again’. With this purported intent, leaders have pledged to ‘reinforce global surveillance networks’ and develop vaccines within 100 days of a novel virus being discovered.

Vaccines take years to develop safely. It is vital that they are subjected to rigorous testing and uncompromised scrutiny before they are made available to the public, to eliminate the risk of serious adverse reactions, including deaths.

For a vaccine to be developed within such a short timeframe, compromises must be made. The vaccine could not be adequately tested and held to an acceptable safety standard. Given the unpredictable aspects of viruses, it is foolish to place an arbitrary timeframe on vaccine development no matter its duration. The precautionary principle goes out the window. Any vaccine which is hurried through development will carry serious risks, and if administered en masse may result in large numbers of deaths and life-changing reactions.

This might be less objectionable if the government is honest about the dangers and the public is allowed freedom of choice, but ‘reinforcing global surveillance networks’ suggests otherwise. Although specific surveillance methods are not named, it is very likely that the declaration refers to ‘vaccine passports’, which would restrict an individual’s capacity to participate in society based on whether they have received the vaccine, hence vaccine uptake would be a matter of force and coercion rather than personal choice.

Besides the already unethical practice of curtailing liberty, pressuring people into taking an unsafe vaccine is likely to cause an untold number of avoidable illnesses and deaths.

More on the Carbis Bay Declaration, and Boris Johnson’s planned ‘animal vaccine innovation centre’ in Surrey, can be read here: G7 leaders to agree landmark global health declaration: 12 June 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)