Covid19: What does the 'data' say?

Hello Neto,

your argument that Covid-vaccines could be seen as a convivial technology, as a “bicycle” and not a car, is quite provoking. I am happy to start a conversation with you by replying to your ideas.

If we talk about current Corona-vaccines, we should not confuse them with classical vaccines. Classical vaccines simulated an infection; a weakened pathogen was injected into your body. In most cases, your body responded with long-lasting immunity. Yet, even these classical vaccinations are no “bicycles”, but “cars”:
1. vaccines inevitably have to be produced in high tech labs
2. they have many complicated ingrediencies which are only known to experts - you never know what enters your body
3. they have to be applied by experts according to their rules (how, when, how much etc.)
4. you cannot use a vaccine – like a bicycle – for your own purposes, or in your own ways, or rearrange it, muddle around with it, or …. - concerning vaccinations, you are only a passive consumer.

This doesn’t mean that vaccines aren’t helpful, no doubt many of them are – but, as with cars, their use should be limited (see my point on “vaccinism” below).
Homeopathy, in contrast, you can use by yourself. Principally, it is low tech, you could even produce dilutions at home.

Now, the so-called Covid-vaccines: The mRNA shots inject a command into your body. Your body becomes the production site of an antigen against which it then reacts. This reaction does not produce long lasting immunity. Rather, this injection is a prophylactic therapy. The head of Bayer, a big German pharmaceutical company called it a “gene therapy”.

mRNA injections are unavoidably high tech and sense-less. All four points above are true for them, too. But even more: You do not know and cannot know what you get injected. The “gene therapies” have no similarity with anything you know of (they are no weakened pathogens). And, in contrast to classical vaccines, they do not generate reliable immunity. Around me, everyone falls sick with Corona these days, no matter if and how often they got the jab. Thus, your immunity is now matter of expert’s definitions and redefinitions: Your immune status - now the basis for civil rights and duties in many countries - changes constantly, from "basic immunity" to "full immunity" back to "no immunity" - all according experts and their scientific test results.

Vaccinations have become a new “technological fix”, rituals enforcing the belief in the technical feasibility of health. We face “vaccinism”, the belief that you can update your immune system just like Microsoft windows against viruses. The vaccine monopolizes immunity against infections, it does away with natural immunity and your bodily healing powers. Becoming sick is seen as “dirty” and vaccines as “clean”. In Germany, having recovered from Corona grants you full civil rights only for 90 days, and a double shot at least for 9 months. Another example for the destruction of the vernacular – the culturally and socially embedded ability to fall sick, mend and heal – by industrial production.

I see nothing convivial in all this.

Best Silja

Dear Neto,

Hi Silja,

Thanks a lot for your reply, I was hoping to engage in conversation so ideas and arguments can be clarified through thinking together. I read your text with excitement and, after considering your arguments, I would like to insist with some of my previous ideas.

There are a few Covid-vaccines that are made by the classical way of making vaccines. I took two shots of Coronavac, a Brazilian Covid-vaccine that was made in a public lab of the State of São Paulo, named Instituto Butantã, in which the research and development of the vaccine was conducted by colleagues from the University of São Paulo, who are post-doctoral researchers that live under scholarships. Coronavac and Butanvac, both vaccines from such Institute, are made of weakened pathogen. Interestingly enough, EU does not recognise any of these vaccines. If I travel to Italy, for instance, I fall into the list of unvaccinated people. Now, I know you argued that even classical vaccines are “cars” but I would like to think through the four reasons that made your case. 

1. Bikes are made by an extremely high tech industry. Robotic arms are the main machine used for making bikes today. A bike factory is not a convivial tool and yet it produces a convivial tool. Cannondale, the famous bike brand, made approximately US$ 2 billion of annual revenue in 2020. Such revenue is 4 times bigger than Instituto Butantã’s. I must say though that one could still make his own bike, but besides Karl Davidson, who is perhaps the only person I know who is trying to make his own bike in his garage, 99% of bike users get their bikes from industrial production. Thus, I am not sure we could consider vaccines like “cars” simply because they are produced by high tech labs. 
2. The Brazilian Covid-vaccine Butanvac, made by Instituto Butantã, is an open source vaccine. There is no industrial secret involved in the production of such vaccine, on the contrary, it is a production that is 50 times cheaper than mRNA vaccines. One can literally read everything that goes into this vaccine, above all because it is one of the few initiatives that focus on Covid-vaccines production for poor countries. But let us take the case of mRNA vaccines, which are the only ones available in Europe. I agree with you that we do not know the ingredients which are only known to experts. This is obviously something to consider. I ask myself if it is not the case for a political struggle and public pressure for making it more transparent.
3. In Arealva, the 7000 people village where I took the vaccine, the local public health center was not prepared for this scale of mass vaccination. They gave a four week training that prepared people to correctly apply the vaccine. I was given a shot by the woman that works in the local bakery. She told me that the hardest part of the training was the number of papers and bureaucratic assessments she has to do in a daily bases. Giving people the jab is literally the easiest part. This simple and quite intuitive application was hijacked by experts. It does not mean, however, this is the only way. I agree with you that the rules of how, of when and of how much, are according to a dose given by an expert. But vaccines could also follow the example of insulin, which is one of Illich’s examples of the first watershed of tools, when a modern yet limited tool is efficacious. The second watershed is the scale of overefficient tools becoming counterproductive and ultimately resulting in radical monopoly. It seems to me that vaccines can fit both watersheds. As Illich said in that chapter: “the simpler the tools became, the more the medical profession insisted on a monopoly of their application”. This is happening with bikes, transport experts are trying to have monopoly over the use of bicycles. But in principle, I still see both bikes and vaccines as convivial tools.
4. Here is where I mostly agree with you. Vaccines cannot be used for my own purposes or in my own ways, and of course, I cannot rearrange them. I believe, like you, that these are kernel principles for convivial tools. However, I remember Illich considering post services as examples of modern yet convivial tools. I cannot rearrange the post or use it in my own ways. Could we have a nuance here in which tools are convivial yet not necessarily fitting such criteria? Vaccines may not fit every aspect of bikes, but does that mean they are necessarily non-convivial? I might sound stubborn here, but my main argument for the conviviality of vaccines is that the body is not a passive consumer of a substance, like antibiotics. It is metabolic energy that generates antibodies to fight an intruder. Often times I cannot feel that my body is responding and actively taking the lead on creating immunity. Should we take vaccination as a condition in which one is a mere passive consumer when is actually my body that creates immunity? Vaccines cannot create such immunity, only an active body can!

I hope I was not misunderstood concerning homeopathy. When I said vaccines are the closest thing modern medicine has come to homeopathy, I meant that there are a few correspondences between them. Since a little child I learned to break fever by sweating, taking cold showers and having a wet cloth over my forehead. My body was leading my recovery. Could this be a correspondence with vaccines?   

I totally agree with you on the political task of setting limits to policies based on vaccines. Although far from my reality in Brazil, I am aware that most countries in Europe are tutored by "vaccinism". There is nothing of conviviality when you cannot have full civil rights if you are not vaccinated and if people believe they are updating their immune system like Microsoft. It seems to me that this is much more related to how vaccine as a tool becomes a national security policy than to the tool itself. I can easily forsee a scenario in which you would lose your civil rights if you do not use a bike, considering the emergency of climate change. Bikes could also be turned into a weapon of national security and we could live under “bikism”. Bikes can be turned into “technological fix” and destroy the vernacular. In Campinas, where I lived during my years of university, the creation of a bike lane came together with the destruction a square that was commonly used by the inhabitants of the vicinity. They used to sit and chat, play chess and even cultivate a garden. The municipality not even consulted these people when tractors destroyed their place for the sake of bike lanes. 

In principle, to break with the monopoly of experts over convivial tools is our political task. It is a shame that the debate over the tools is framed by bad or good, clean or dirty. Driving a gasoline car in Norway is “dirty” whereas driving an electric car is “clean”, although both produce the same result. That is why I wish to resuscitate the enabling distinction between convivial and non-convivial tools. That is why I wish to insist provoking the idea that vaccines are convivial. Could we see natural immunity and bodily healing powers as walking while taking vaccines as riding a bike?

Best,

Neto

Dear Nicola,

I realised you had replied me just a few minutes after I had answered Silja's comment. Thank you for taking the time to engage in a conversation. I have been thinking a lot about vaccines, tools, conviviality and the possibilities for responses to the Covid-19 pandemic that are collective yet not engineered. It is a joy to finally share some thoughts and get responses that encourage me to craft clarity.

I believe that much of what I said in my response to Silja can also clarify some of your questions. I must start though by saying that I really appreciated your questioning of the assumption that low quanta energy is a viable creiterion to define a convivial tool. I took this distinction from Illich's Energy and Equity for granted. It is not my criterion, but Illich's. In Energy and Equity he argues that tools which are low quanta energy dependant are convivial while high quanta are not. It is quite a good time to revisit such criteria.

You mentioned social distancing policies as examples of a low quanta energy tool that is non-convivial. However, I cannot see how such example fits low quanta energy consumption. Such policies are developed by experts and burocratas, politicians and courts of law. Many, if not most of these policies cost thousands of dollars, they are made under the assumption that to enforce such laws a whole set of apparatuses of high quanta energy dependance are necessary to implement them. We are not talking about customary law. I am still not convinced that examples of non convivial tools consuming low energy quanta are not difficult to find. Yet, I am thankful to your provocation and would love to hear more about your thoughts on this. 

In addition to that, I think that a policy that generates an impediment for me to travel or to leave my house can be framed under a better concept in Illich than conviviality, I am referring to the concept of commons. In many places and spaces of the planet the only relation between people and their surroundings is mediated by the regime of property, private or public. Every property , private or public, becomes a matter of police. In many places in Brazil, where the commons is predominant, physical distancing was decided among communities, ingenious ideas were created to protect families, communities and tribes. I participated in some of these arrangements. We called physical distance, not social. We would care and check on one another and yet, during the toughest moments of the pandemic, maintain a physical distance to avoid the spreading of the virus. In many circumstances such arrangement was broken for the sake of supporting real needs. Perhaps, even physical distancing arrangements can be convivial!

I am in total agreement with your argument that bikes could also be trapped into conditions of systems, as you can read in my response to Silja. Conviviality, as coined by Illich, is a term used exclusively for tools, it is an analytical concept that helps clarify the distinction between tools and systems, for example. A bike, which is the ideal type of a convivial tool, can become the source of a system. That is why I still believe that the monopoly over tools is the main issue here. Cars are often necessary and suitable. If I am having a heart attack I hope to be taken to the hospital by ambulance and not by bicycle. However, as Illich said, we should not live in such a way in which we would need to be carried by something every time we want to move. That is why Illich came up with the idea of speed limit. Speed limit could make cars subsidiary to bikes. I guess I am cracking my head to think about what would be the speed limit for vaccines!!

All the best,

Neto