Views expressed in this interview are not those of the Daily Mirror or the writer.
Inside Story is a series that’s most appropriate for these pandemic times. Apart from all of us having to spend a good deal of our time inside / indoors, we have had to deal with so many problems and diverse situations as a result of being confined to limited space, restricted environment, with little or sometimes no human contact. In some cases, the pandemic has opened new doors and opportunities, for some, despair and hardship.
INSIDE STORY will deal with every aspect of ‘INSIDE’, whether it be your garden, your home, your head, your thoughts, your handbag, your library, your study, your kitchen, your workplace, your briefcase, your diet, your fitness regime...
Today we feature Visakha Tillekeratne, a Development worker and activist for over 30 years. A Chemist and Food Technologist by profession, she has over 28 years of experience working in the government, private sector, NGOs, and the United Nations - WFP and WHO as a full-time staffer. She now works as an Independent Consultant on food and nutrition security with a number of Agencies. Her major area of expertise is in nutrition, sustainable diets, and community development. Visakha has extensive hands-on experience in regional development and poverty alleviation programmes with a strong concentration on livelihood improvement. Well-versed in policy development and analysis, research, donor relations, partnership building, behavioural change communication, capacity building, and managing programmes from design to post-evaluation, she has been part of many regional development teams working throughout Asia. She was also the Chief Commissioner of the Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association 2017 to 2020, Past President of the Nutrition Society of Sri Lanka, and Secretary Animal Welfare Trust. She is an independent Activist pursuing a number of issues such as animal welfare, environmental protection, protection of women and children, and good governance.
q Why do you resist the Covid 19 vaccine?
Vaccines are not silver bullets in the first place. But vaccine companies have made them out to be platinum strategies. The Covid vaccine does not provide protection against transmission, death, or disease. Nor do we know enough about the long-term consequences and damage to the body. Post-vaccination incidents are either not taken into account or hidden. Actually, these are ignored by the medical fraternity or brushed aside as nothing. This disease has been blown out of proportion to make a lot of money. Each year the common flu kills as many people or more. These vaccines are efficacious sometimes, it almost feels like when it wants to be good randomly, it does not have after-effects. However the human genome is absolutely unique and one does not know how a badly developed vaccine, without enough time given to see its real effects, reacts with the human body.
- It has only had Emergency Use Authorisation,
- The so-called ‘vaccine’ is a brand new technology - messenger RNA which has never been properly trialled on human populations.
- It was developed at warp speed - in only a few months when a vaccine usually takes approximately 10 to 12 years to be developed and trialled
Most people diagnosed with Covid did not die but after the vaccine there are thousands of people around the world including young children and teens who are dying, being permanently disabled, developing severe heart conditions like myocarditis, suffering strokes, going blind, experiencing serious blood clots, to loss of mobilisation either immediately after the vaccine or within two weeks - and confirmed by VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System - USA). There are far better, safer “therapeutics” which are genuinely worth it without vaccinating.
q Don’t you think that the fact that it mitigates the effects of it even if you do get it, makes it worthwhile?
The major spreaders of Covid are now those who have been double vaccinated - backed by irrefutable data, especially from the UK and USA.
There is no clear, pristine evidence presented simply that it does mitigate effects. This is the first time in history where assurances of vaccine cover against a disease keep getting reduced – one type of Covid vaccine went from 98% cover to 65%. Besides that, this is the first time that boosters are needed at very short intervals. Not only have a less than acceptable number died or become debilitated after the first and second vaccine, many have become really ill or died after the third shot.
q Don’t you think it's irresponsible of you not to get the vaccine, but yet go out and mingle with people?
There is no protection from the vaccine and as said before the worldwide experience is that the double-vaxxed are the ones spreading Covid.
Israel is one of the most vaxxed countries on the planet. They are up to the fourth vaccine yet they are experiencing high rates of Covid infection, deaths, and transferability of Covid. Recently a number of cruise ships with 100% doubled vaxxed passengers have had to abort their trips because of Covid infection. Even the CEO of Pfizer has not taken his own vaccines. He publicly said it is not necessary to take it as he doesn’t mix much with people.
Since it’s clear it doesn’t stop spread there is no question of being irresponsible. Everyone concedes that. Israel, Denmark, NYC all prove that despite high percentages of the vaccinated, many continue to get very ill. This vaccine is an “experimental gene therapy”. What is irresponsible in mingling without having this experimental gene therapy that does not give much protection? In fact, it is far more dangerous to mingle after the vaccine as one is deceived into thinking that one is safe, also everyone around is deceived into thinking it is safe.
q What will you do when it becomes mandatory to carry your vaccine card in order to enter public places?
Ignore this directive. Also, the Supreme Court has ruled in the case filed by Darini Rajasingham and Hiran Fernando that you cannot make the vaccine mandatory. Stop going to public places or else ‘trespass’ in public spaces in defiance of such totalitarian directives. Never in the history of the world have vaccines been mandatory.
Never before have people had their human rights violated in such a fundamental way, crippled by fear. We need to stand against such oppressive and non-science-based pronouncements.
q You have had two bouts of Covid. What was it like?
Covid has never been isolated in a lab and its genomic sequence identified. What the Chinese gave the world was a fragment of a sequence. As it has never been isolated and identified, one cannot develop a test for it nor create a vaccine to counter it.
The first bout of the “flu” as I would call it, was very light and went away after about 5 days of steaming and antibiotics. The second was a bit tough. But I have had similar body aches and fever for other flues as well. I am very grateful to a couple of friends who gave me very good advice. I also self-medicated myself with antibiotics, inhalers, a much argued about drug, a higher dose of another prescribed by a friend’s daughter from NY, and a very practical Sri Lankan specialist. Treatment was western, but all the healing was from Eastern therapies. In fact, my western doctor friend advised me to also take native treatment which was very effective. I also was provided with Classical Chinese acupuncture, which brought my breathing back to normal. It was amazing. My maid provided the best healing - fomenting with herbs, fomenting my body, and also massaging.
q What advice would you give the general public in the event they get Covid?
It is not Covid but flu, fever, pneumonia so do what one would normally do. Take chicken soup, rest, take some inflammatory drug, Vitamin D3, Zinc, and Vitamin C for five days.
Do not panic, get online advice from a doctor, do not enter the hospital if you can avoid it as hospitals in Sri Lanka provide very limited treatment. Check your pulse and oxygen levels. If these change drastically then get to a good hospital. If you are above 70 forget about the main state hospitals as they really do not give much attention to older people. One lady aged 74 died in front of my eyes, as they did not give her ICU treatment despite the ICU being half empty. This is called prioritization. But this should kick into action only if the wards and ICUs are full. In the state sector, even the antihistamines given are very old-fashioned. There is no therapy at all. Only medication that is miniscule and no healing is stimulated. Some of the smaller rural hospitals and the Ayurvedic hospitals do much better.
Also watching oneself on the 8th day after infection is very important. This was researched and made into an 8th day protocol by Dr. Shankara Chetty of South Africa. Dr. Shetty has treated 1000s of patients successfully without oxygen and without hospitalization after watching the 8th day and medicating carefully.
q How did you occupy yourself while you were ill?
Doing some writing, listening to music, thinking and pondering about life, spending time with my pets, providing assistance to other infected people.
q Do you think that in the near future Covid 19 will become like the normal flu?
Of course. These last two years are the beginning of a new flu. In the beginning, any flu would take the lives of the old, the weak, the immune-compromised. Developing natural immunity is the way to develop herd or aggregate immunity. Not through hit and miss vaccine-driven immunity.
q The fact that it is mutating so rapidly ahead of science is frightening. As someone who has worked for
the WHO what are your thoughts?
It is not mutating ahead of science, we are mass vaccinating it into mutations that evade the vaccines which have been outdated since Delta.
The advent of Covid also sees the norms of epidemiology being violated. You do not even vaccinate a puppy against parvo if the virus is in the air, as this would result in the puppy getting double doses of the microbe – from the air around and the vaccine. But mass vaccination is taking place in an immune compromising environment.
Also in an environmentally challenged world, rapid mutations are not surprising as a strategy of survival in a toxic world. Then when these resistant microbes meet a weak respiratory system, it becomes a bad cocktail. If you look around, the disease has had the worst impact in the most polluted and congested areas. This is so in the industrial areas of Italy, China, India, Latin America, and so on. So besides mutations which are a response to mass vaccination, we come a cropper with weak respiration due to pollution. The politicians of the world do not like to expose these patterns and geographies as they would then have to do business differently, without chemical air pollution. This goes beyond the reduction of the carbon footprint.
q What is your opinion of the handling of the pandemic, Both in Sri Lanka and globally?
Both have messed up. It is the wrong strategy to go for lockdowns. While the robust people should have been left to get infected and get over it with early treatment like inhalers and antihistamine, gold-standard protection and treatment should have been given to the vulnerable who are fewer in number. So without spreading scarce resources across the entire population, these resources could have been saved to treat the really vulnerable very well.
Lockdowns cause poverty, malnutrition, mental illness, lethargy etc. They are a long-term cocktail for disaster.
It is the wrong strategy to go for mass vaccination. Of course, the disease is manufactured as evidence shows in court. But yet natural transformation through developing the disease and building resistance should have been the way forward.
By Anusha David
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