Tag Archives: WHO

Vaccination Passports

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Remember when you had to carry a ‘Certificate of Vaccination’ when you travelled overseas?  These certificates were issued by the WHO as little yellow booklets that had to be stamped and signed by doctors who gave vaccinations against smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, typhoid, polio, hepatitis and perhaps other diseases that I’ve forgotten about.

And every vaccination had to be up-to-date. In the certificate that I was using in the 1970s and 80s I found a post-it note reminding me to have another typhoid jab before 25/06/87. Here’s a photo of that certificate, together with its replacement, open at the page showing the lastest entry:
29/07/93 … Gammaglobulin for Hep A … 2ml

Nobody kicked up a fuss. Everybody recognised that these potentially fatal diseases had to be controlled and that meant ensuring that people travelling across inter­national borders were not carrying them in their bodies. So I really don’t understand why some people are up-in-arms at the suggestion of a SARS-Cov-2 vaccination certificate as a necessary travel document.

Mind you, I do remember a doctor saying, in a country that I will not name, “Do you want the shot, or just the stamp saying you’ve had the shot? The fee is the same.”

Suicide

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People in rich and peaceful countries don’t have enough to worry about, so they look around for irritations and talk them up into Big Issues. This is happening now in Australia with male suicides.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I know there are people who kill themselves during fits if depression or in response to tragic events, from which they could have recovered to lead happy lives, and I wish they’d had second thoughts. But there are also people who rationally consider their prospects and their options and decide that they’d rather be somewhere else. They’re not enjoying the party so they want to leave. For those people, suicide is rational and even admirable. Their leaving the party means that the net sum of happiness in the world is increased.

But what makes me stroppy is that the people who are promoting this as a Big Issue in Australia speak as though suicide among Australian men has suddenly become a crisis that has to be moved up the political agenda. Notice my italics. The implication is that Australia is the suicide capital of the world and men are disproportionately affected.

Now consider the following facts, drawn from Wikipedia with a WHO citation and with age standardisation:

  • In a ranking of 171 countries, Guyana is ranked No.1 with 44.2 suicides per 100,000 people in 2012. Australia is at No.63 with 10.6.
  • In every country except two (Pakistan and Iraq) the male suicide rate exceeds the female, typically by a factor of about 3.
  • If we compare Australia with the other countries of the developed Anglosphere (our usual benchmark) it falls pretty much in the middle – see the extracted table below, which includes countries that are tied with those of the Anglosphere for a bit of extra colour.
  • The 17 countries at the bottom of the ranking – ie with the lowest suicide rates – are all located in or around the Caribbean Sea or have predominantly Muslim populations. This has nothing to do with the main theme of my post, but I think it’s a fascinating fact and someone should be doing a PhD thesis on it.

suicidestats

Where it says ‘more info’ you can click and see more if you go to the referenced Wikipedia page.

So how the hell did the UK manage to tie with Swaziland at No.105?! Perhaps most of the unhappy Poms have emigrated.

 

Danger!

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The WHO has just fired a shot across the bows of the processed meat industry, with a whiff of grapeshot for the red meat industry too. Links to cancer.  Carcinogenic chemicals.  If you want some scientific details try this link to the Sydney Morning Herald.

It’s not news that large-scale consumption of red meat and processed meat products is unhealthy. So anyone who’s been paying attention during the last 20 years would have avoided both or at least limited their intake.  Same with alcohol and tobacco, especially if one is female and pregnant.  Right?

Last night I saw a news item about a little girl whose brain function is permanently impaired because her mother drank heavily during pregnancy. The mother was interviewed and claimed that she didn’t know this might happen.

I don’t want to appear heartless but how can anyone, however dim and ill-informed, not realise that putting poison into one’s bloodstream at a time when that blood is being pumped through a foetus is a very bad idea? Mrs SG worked that out for herself more than 40 years ago.

Last year there was talk in Australia about making it illegal to drink alcohol during pregnancy. Some people objected that this would unfairly target Aboriginal people.  Others, more reasonably, asked how such a law could ever be enforced.  I think the idea has been quietly dropped.