Parents: Buy one get one free (part one of two)

Gillick Competence - The language of risk in the context of childhood

If you find this article of interest, please read Part 2, which was authored by a reader with the fortitude to investigate Gillick Competence for themselves and share their work in the comments below this article. It was so good, it needed publishing itself instead of being missed in the comments here.

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Andrew’s become ill now and he feels really poorly. He’s got some sort of little heart issue so fingers crossed he’s OK as he only had his shot a week ago. I had doubts and I didn’t really want him to have it. I didn’t give the school my consent but he begged because he wanted to be protected - he can only play football if he has it, that’s why he’s so desperate - so eventually I let him because he insisted. He’s caught Covid and now I’m panicking about the risk of him having developed myocarditis. Praying he’ll be OK.

Imagine if you were in the above circumstances.

If you boil this down, it is a very harsh and sudden lesson in risk, responsibility and consequence of one’s actions that both a parent and a child can have, but from different perspectives.

The child chose to do something to themself for a reason, namely taking an experimental gene therapy in order to play football. He failed to:

• understand and quantify the risk that Covid-19 presented to him;

• understand and quantify the risk that the gene therapies carried;

• visualise the full possible consequences of either the disease or the gene therapies in relation to each other;

• recognise or understand his own limitations when it came to making his decision.

This is a massive failure in risk quantification and assessment. Understandable, given that he is a child. Further, he has been incapable of weighing the action of taking an experimental gene therapy against his reason for taking it.

“ I want to take a gene therapy for the protection it will give me, so that I can play football.”

This is a loaded statement in which seemingly simple, sequential concepts belie several complex issues that even adults don’t understand.

The parent with misgivings and more knowledge and more capability than their child, has admitted conceding to their child's relative incapability and “begging”. That concession has resulted in possible harm to the child and the family, which could lead to regret or terminal loss for the whole family. In hindsight, both parties given the chance again might change their view of risk and their actions towards themself and each other. But the action of taking a Covid-19 gene therapy is irreversible and neither mother nor child can get off this ride. The ride ends when and how it ends.

That is the tragic, powerful potential of Gillick Competence, which in no way can accurately assess the child's capabilities, partly because it relies upon a method of taking an ignorant child and providing it with limited information that is highly likely to be inadequate, while leaving room for emotional and irrational influences acting on the child’s decision-making. Gillick Competence is designed to potentially remove any parent or guardian from the process and the result.

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The Power of the Qualitative Language of Risk

Now, look very closely at the following quote from the Swedish Coronavirus and Covid-19 Information for Children. There are two direct linguistic techniques employed here:

“The authorities recommend that you be vaccinated against Covid-19, partly because there is a risk that even a young person will become seriously ill or experience long-term problems after having Covid-19.”

“If your region requires approval from your legal guardian and you are unable to receive it, your healthcare professional may instead make a maturity assessment of you. During the maturity assessment, you will talk for a while. Among other things, it will be verified that you understand the information provided and that you understand what the vaccination involves. Some regions only perform a maturity assessment. In this case, you do not need the approval of your legal guardian.”

Information about the coronavirus and Covid-19 for children

Information About The Coronavirus And Covid 19 For Children Krisinformation

1.16MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I have included the source here as a PDF taken at the time of writing in case of online modification (likely).

Risk Quantification

What follows is a look at how language in the Swedish paragraph is used to apparently quantify risk, but in fact is used for something else. I use a numeric source to demonstrate what the language could actually mean. Once the comparison is made between numbers and language, the picture begins to change. But, without numbers (the Swedish publication deliberately contains none) the concept of risk in the reader’s mind becomes something quite different.

“The authorities recommend that you be vaccinated against Covid-19, partly because there is a risk that even a young person will become seriously ill or experience long-term problems after having Covid-19.”.

The obvious question here is, “what does ‘a risk’ mean?”. Here, it actually means “miniscule risk of minimal consequence.”. Put another way, it means “a risk less than most risks you actually take every day but still don't do anything about with regard to your child's safety.”. It is a broadly accepted fact that SARS-CoV-2 is simply of minute risk to children. This is borne out in hospitalisation and death data, and ongoing research into the risks SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 presents to children globally.

“Even” in this context extends the reach of an unquantified risk to include the child in a somewhat threatening and vague way: “Even you are at a risk”.

What if the child reading this sentence was then also told that their chance of dying was 1 in a million? Would that change anything for the child?

Let’s try to get an indication of what “a risk” actually means for this 13 year old boy from the University of Oxford’s QCovid Risk Assessment tool.

QCovid® has been developed using the University of Oxford hosted QResearch database which has anonymised data from primary care, hospitals, COVID-19 test results and death registries. This was used to determine which factors were associated with poor outcomes during the first wave of COVID-19 and create a risk prediction model - QCovid® - that provides a weighted, cumulative calculation of absolute risk using the variables associated with poor COVID-19 outcomes. The factors incorporated in the model include age, ethnicity, level of deprivation, obesity, whether someone lived in residential care or was homeless, and a range of existing medical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory disease and cancer.

This model was then tested in two independent sets of data, one from January to April 2020 and one from May 2020 to June 2020… The research, published in the BMJ, showed that the model performed well in predicting severe outcomes due to COVID-19 (death and hospitalisation).

Source: QCovid Risk Assessment FAQ

Note: QCovid is limited by data from what some may refer to as “UK first wave” data. The tool only scores for people of ages as young as 19 years of age. Covid-19 has been clearly shown to have a strong age-based skew, with vulnerability increasing for the over 65s and those with comorbidity, of which it would appear that obesity is possibly the top contributing comorbidity in Covid-19 related deaths.

Here are its results for a healthy 19 year old male, 140cm in height, 55KG in weight:

Risk Calculator Results Qcovid™ Risk Calculator

84.3KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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The young male’s absolute risk of:

• Death is 1 in a million (0.0001%)

• Hospital admission is 1 in 43,478 (0.0026%).

A 13 year old boy is at less risk than a 19 year old young male. There is no research evidence that shows that the 13 year old boy is at greater risk than a 19 year old young male.

I don't know what a 0.0001% chance of something is until the timeline of me taking that risk is long enough for it to occur. Even then it could still happen on my first go. I just know 0.0001% or 1 in 1,000,000 is "pretty fucking low".

The second source of evidence is the Swedish Information about the coronavirus and Covid-19 for children:

Do children get infected and become ill with the coronavirus?

Children can be infected with the coronavirus and get the disease known as Covid-19. But they will often only have a slight cold and need to rest. The disease is most dangerous for those over the age of 65, and for those who are particularly susceptible to falling ill, because they have other diseases.

Some children may also feel ill for a long time, long after they have had Covid-19.

Few children become seriously ill. Some, however, may suffer from MIS-C, which is a rare and severe form of hyperinflammation.

Can children infect other children and adults?

Children are not contagious as adults are. But the older you are, the more cantogious [sic] you are. Those aged 16-17 are about as contagious as adults.

The Swedes are presenting unquantified terms to their children about the risk that Covid-19 presents to them. Let’s look at the specific use of language:

Children can be infected with the coronavirus and get the disease known as Covid-19.

“Can” simply means that something is possible. It doesn’t quantify or provide any scalar context to the possibility. I can get killed jumping out of a plane, but there are other dependent factors that affect or determine the likelihood and probability of death, such as: being in a plane high up enough off the ground as to present fatal injury risk; actually jumping out; not using a parachute.

But they will often only have a slight cold and need to rest.

So “often” Covid-19 is, for children, a cold. How frequent is “often”? I must literally guess what it means. Is this helpful? Why is there no quantification (a third/half/three quarters/almost all of the time)? I can’t really work out what “often” in this context actually means. How is a child supposed to have any better ability to guess its meaning? What do children or their parents do when faced with the possibility that their child can get a cold? Practically very little. People do not lock up their children who are showing no symptoms of a cold “just in case they catch a cold”, nor do they dose those asymptomatic or well children with pre-emptive forms of medicine, new or existing.

The disease is most dangerous for those over the age of 65, and for those who are particularly susceptible to falling ill, because they have other diseases.

Children are not over 65. Some children may be “particularly susceptible to falling ill, because they have other diseases” so perhaps there’s some value for that niche group of children, but there’s still no meaningful quantification.

Some children may also feel ill for a long time, long after they have had Covid-19.

How many is “some”? How certain is “may”? How long is “long”? Why might they feel ill for a long time after they have been infected? None of these questions are answered anywhere in the entire publication.

Few children become seriously ill. Some, however, may suffer from MIS-C, which is a rare and severe form of hyperinflammation.

More vague and unquantified terms with the addition of two specialist medical terms of “MIS-C” and “hyperinflammation”. Undefined. I have to look them up. “Seriously ill”? Well, my adult understanding of “Severe” in the medical context implies either significant medical attention and/or hopsitalisation, without which there is “some” risk of serious injury or death. Most children will not have had much or any hopsitalisation so how can they imagine what these things really mean? “Rare” is medically defined. Do children understand medical definitions? According to both the WHO and UK’s NICE:

Note: these ratios are ordered largest first for each category. So “rare” is as common as 1 in 1000 and as uncommon as 1 in 10,000 but it is presented in order of least common to most common. Why? Bear this in mind, because it is very important when you consider the risk of gene therapy-induced injury risk when it’s described only in linguistic terms of “rare” in place of numeric risk.

Children are not contagious as adults are.

Likely translation error or typo here. Assume it should read “Children are not as contagious as adults are.”. If so, this is again an unquantified and also relative, qualitative expression of risk. I can only understand this to mean “children are less contagious than adults”. By how much? The difference could net out at 50% or 1% or any other number.

So, that’s two forms of evidence. From the first, we get a quantified risk indication from QCovid, which comes with the warning or caveat that it’s not really to be used for clinical decision-making or in relation to any individual. So, we shouldn’t really directly apply it hence why it’s an informative quantitative indication.

From the second, we get loose, out of context qualitative language that tells us little more than “some things are possible to some unknown degree and that Covid-19 in children often manifests as a slight cold.”. How helpful is that to an adult, let alone a child?

I leave it to you to decide.

Now, does it provide any qualitative or quantitative risk information about the Covid-19 gene therapies? No. So you are comparing “a risk” of Covid-19 to “no” risk of a gene therapy. But, in this context, we know that the best that can be said from this publication is that the gene therapy risks are “unknown”, which is totally different. Can a child work this out for themselves?

The total lack of risk quantification and the omission of gene therapy risk is a deliberate technique. Let’s consider this first technique.

First Technique: Fear, Thought and Action - Shock Doctrine & Kubark

"A risk..." triggers an ambiguous fear. Then the space that ambiguous fear opens up is filled instantly with a single solution of a gene therapy with apparently “no risk”, which is the only solution that the publication expressly mentions. Testing is mentioned but is not a solution. No mention of any form of treatment through any stage of infection or disease is mentioned but they exist. Even doing nothing and recovering naturally is not expressly mentioned or discussed. Why not?

Instill fear in the subject or exploit disaster (real or imagined or impending) around the subject to suppress thought then direct the subject to take the action you want them to take by presenting it as the only or best solution. Fear reduces the ability to exercise critical thought. It is preferable to escape from a threat. Critical thought is either absent or under-developed in children and so is fear self-control and threat quanitification and assessment. So too is linguistic and numeric risk assessment. This makes children much more susceptible to fear and threat, and far less able to think when subjected to it.

Another way of presenting the Swedish description of Covid-19 risk to them is:

“You might get a slight cold and you will recover naturally. Very occassionally, children sometimes get more sick and need to have some form of medicine to help them recover. Very rarely, some children might not fully recover.”

What’s the difference? Is a child less well informed about risk if that’s all they read? It’s certainly less for them to read, ticks the natural recovery, treatment and possible bad outcome box.

If children do not have the knowledge, skill and ability to handle the conversion between qualitative and quantitative risk language, then the Swedish document appears to do nothing but seek to make the child:

• afraid of Covid-19;

• aware of a vague possibility of a threat of being sick;

• take a gene therapy as the only option.

It does not:

• explain anything about the nature or risks of the gene therapy;

• compare the risk of illness or death from the virus to the risk of illness, injury or death from the gene therapy.

The technique is the Shock Doctrine on a very small but hypermeaningful scale. It also bears similarities to the CIA’s Kubark torture techniques that, by subjecting the victim to extremes of stress, pain and fear, can break them down and make them utterly compliant, to the point that they will literally do or say anything to make whatever they are being subjected to stop (even though the techniques partly work because the subject can’t stop anything). Set these linguistic techniques in the context of general societal Covid-19 changes and messaging. People are generally being put under fear, threat and stress in multiple ways.

If you, an adult under no threat, were presented with such language as used by the Swedish document for any of the things you were actively considering doing, then the phrase “there is a risk that you will get injured, fall sick or die” will be applicable and true for probably all of them. Life is risk. It becomes meaningless without seeking to quantify then process risk for each thing you're considering.

Is it appropriate to use such vague and potentially emotive statements with children to get them to take a gene therapy for an infection or disease which presents them with circa a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of death and a 1 in 43,478 chance of hospitalisation? Why? What are their chances of being hurt or dying while crossing a road on their own or freely riding a bike on a pavement or road? Are they locked up or banned from riding bikes “just in case” on those kind of risk ratios?

Is all of this too complex and abstract for the boy to fully process and understand alone? Now instill a sense of vague fear and threat. He also has to have the ability to effectively imagine the possible bad outcomes of the various choices and how bad they could be throughout his remaining life. But he doesn’t know that he hasn’t been shown all the possible choices - natural recovery (from a likely cold) and various drug treatments aren’t in the Swedish information. Therefore he is totally unable to consider those choices because someone else deprived him of that information.

Now, skew the boy’s low level of understanding of risk by telling him he has to take a gene therapy to play football, which is an strong emotional motivator. What might happen?

Second Technique: Linguistic Conditioning

“If your region requires approval from your legal guardian and you are unable to receive it, your healthcare professional may instead make a maturity assessment of you. During the maturity assessment, you will talk for a while. Among other things, it will be verified that you understand the information provided and that you understand what the vaccination involves. Some regions only perform a maturity assessment. In this case, you do not need the approval of your legal guardian.”

With the exception of the last phrase, the phrases highlighted in bold are:

• Commands; or

• Certain outcomes.

They have told the reader that there is a process by which things will certainly happen and definite conclusions will be reached.

No "may/might/could". That paragraph should be highly conditional. It's not. It's certain. There is seemingly no choice and no other possibilities.

The child reader is told that the entire process hinges on “the information provided”. What if the information is grossly inadequate? We already know it is incomplete in several ways. How would the child know it was inadequate? He is otherwise ignorant because he is a child. Further, the process’ entire aim is to declare that the child understands what the vaccination involves but is clearly withholding information about the vaccines, treatments and natural recovery..

As a reasonably well-read adult (on Covid-19), I understand more about Covid-19 gene therapies than almost all people I know who have taken one. Very common reasons for taking them are “to go travelling” or “to get back to normal”. Neither are reasons to take experimental gene therapies that are still in Phase 3 trial. It remains possible to travel without one, and no one is going back to “normal”. I have sought direct medical advice and opinions from a spectrum of doctors on the gene therapies and their proponents all knew practically nothing about the gene therapies’ real method of action and risks, including specialist aeromedical doctors. I am endlessly amazed by how little understanding there is of these gene therapies among adults, including medics. The medics who have recommended caution all knew more about the gene therapies than the medics who recommended taking one. The medics who took these treatments cannot claim to know a lot about them. We are still in the short-term learning phase. We’re not even into the medium term yet.

If adults, including medics, don’t know what the gene therapies and their risks are there is simply no way a child will meaningfully know either. The only way to really ensure the child is giving even close to rational, risk-based, fully informed consent is for the sufficiently knowledgeable parent to be present to judge the context and the interaction of an assessment and the information provided.

The Swedish publication is a deliberate attempt to:

• control children through fear;

• undermine and remove the protection of the parent;

using deliberate linguistic techniques.

Gillick Competence is Being Used as a State Weapon

Gillick Competence has never been in open play before at any scale in the UK. All of the above is an illustration - tied back to a real child’s uninformed “decision” and its early consequences for him and his mother - of why it shouldn't be in use now for Covid-19 gene therapies. It is a weapon forged out of tragedy that cuts with regret.

Any child that suffers any injury or dies as a result of Covid-19 gene therapies is a totally avoidable, unnecessary and unjustifiable casualty. As Professor Sucharit Bhakdi and many others have repeatedly explained, if Covid-19 presents less that 0.003% chance of hospitalisation or death to a child, any vaccine that is used must be more than 99.997% totally safe, otherwise the risk of using it on children is unjustified. Covid-19 gene therapies are not 99.997% safe.

You Are On Your Own - Your Child Only Has You

There is no meaningful insurance available for any citizen who suffers a Covid-19 gene therapy injury. The UK Government’s Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme is woeful and the maximum total payout of £120,000 is tied to a 60%+ disablement threshold that must be conclusively causally tied to the gene therapy in question. This scheme is laughable and designed to not pay out. Just read into Pandemrix* and what the UK Government did in those cases. Gene therapy manufacturers are all indemnified. They are not legally liable. You are on your own. Your child only has you, unless the state takes you out of the equation. Would you leave your child alone with strangers who have an agenda?

If 13 year old Andrew is permanently or significantly injured by the gene therapy that he “chose” to have, he is going to have to also deal with the reality that he was his own worst enemy.

Buy one physical injury, get one psychological injury free.

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*I include a Wikipedia link not for accuracy but only for a rapid, broad view on Pandemrix with some quantification of the size of that disease threat versus the size of that vaccine problem. Wikipedia is untrustworthy and you should read wider than it to cross-check its information.

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To end on a musical metaphor I present this song, “Ones Who Love You” by Alvvays.

When I consider the all of the parties and vested interests involved in the above article, in the context of risk and choice, I find this song poigniant, illustrative, thought provoking and relevant. See how it makes you feel and think. Please feel free to tell me in the comments if you wish and maybe we can share our thoughts.

Thanks for making it all the way to the end of this article. I am grateful for your time, interest and attention.

Take, take from the ones who love you
Leave, leave with the ones who don't
Lie, lie to the ones who hide you
Lay, lay with the ones who won't

When lightning strikes
I will be on my back
I will be stuck inside
I will be taking fire

They, they are the ones who love you
We, we are the ones who don't
Hang up on the ones who need you
Watch out for the ones who won't

When lightning strikes
I will be on my back
I will be stuck inside
I will be taking fire
And when the wheels come off
I'll be an astronaut
I will be lost in space
I will be skipping rocks

When you live on an island
Nothing ever falls in place
The winters are violent
And you can't ever feel your face
You can't fucking feel your face

When lightning strikes
I will be on my back
I will be stuck inside
I will be taking fire
And when the wheels come off
I'll be an astronaut
But I won’t be lost in space
I'll be on Lippincott