Aletho News

Student physio told: Take the jab or risk wasting ten years of work

By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | February 15, 2022

A STUDENT who has spent £100,000 on his education and studied for ten years has been told he may not be allowed to finish his course unless he has a Covid vaccination.

David Shepherd, 28, is studying for his third Masters, an MSc in physiotherapy (pre-registration) at York St John University.

Unless he can complete 18 weeks of practical placements, he will be unable to graduate. He has currently finished 12 weeks.

He said: ‘I have been told that I cannot go to placements where I spend time with patients unless I have a Covid jab.

‘The Covid mRNA vaccine is an experimental vaccine which I will consider after the trials have finished in 2023. It is not like the hepatitis B vaccine mandated for health staff. That has years of safety data. There is no long-term safety data for Covid jabs but there is evidence it can cause the inflammatory heart conditions myocarditis and pericarditis in younger men.

‘Everything we do as health professionals hinges on being able to give our patients informed consent so that they know the risks of any procedure.

‘I have a scientific background and I don’t like being a guinea pig for mRNA vaccine technology.’

David is not alone in his concerns about lack of consent. A charity called Consent, set up by parents in 2018 to challenge doctors’ decisions for their teenagers and children, published a full-page advertisement in Metro insisting that the government stop coercing young people into having Covid vaccinations.

David is training to become a musculoskeletal practitioner attached to a GP’s surgery. Back problems account for 30 per cent of visits to the surgery so it is a job with a high demand and he has invested heavily preparing for it.

The money spent on his courses is secondary to his desire to contribute. He said: ‘I have got to the stage where I almost don’t care about the money. It’s the health principles I care about. And I do not want to be coerced into getting the jab.’

David completed a BSc (Hons) undergraduate degree in sports therapy at the University of Bedfordshire between 2012 and 2015. Then he took three Masters degrees receiving a scholarship from Bedfordshire for the first in 2015, which he failed.

He bounced back and between 2019 to 2020 he studied for an MSc at University College London – a Russell Group university – in Physical Therapy in Musculoskeletal Heathcare and Rehabilitation, a highly skilled and unique programme.

Now he is in his second MA year at York St John. Having seen a friend hospitalised after suffering two mini strokes caused by the vaccine, he does not want to take the risk.

He said: ‘Last year was fine, there was no discussion about mandatory vaccination and students got it when they wanted to. Two students in my bubble are from the Republic of Ireland and they got the vaccine just so that they could travel. They are very critical thinking so felt a bit coerced into it.

‘Then the head of our course began sending out emails last November saying how good it is to get vaccinated. She said it shows how much you care about yourself and everybody else. I hate that rhetoric.

‘I continued with the course and did two placements over 12 weeks, both attached to Hull Royal Infirmary. The first was in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD is a group of respiratory diseases including emphysema and bronchitis], going to people’s houses and helping them clear their lungs.

‘I was shadowing two facilitators; one completely understood my position, the second gave me a hard time and was very worried that patients might infect me, despite the fact I would be wearing a mask.

‘I wasn’t allowed to car share with them because I wasn’t vaccinated. It was a bit insulting, and it was “othering”. It made no sense because at that point we did understand that vaccination wasn’t halting the spread.

‘My second placement was predominantly remote, processing post-Covid outcome measures with a team. In one of the multi-disciplinary meetings, they were discussing a patient who had been injured by the vaccine. They were not convinced that she had been injured and thought she was making it out to be worse than it was. It was an interesting conversation to hear.’

In December, all York St John students received an email saying that due to mandatory vaccines being introduced for healthcare workers, students would need to have a vaccination and if they did not, it would affect their ability to finish the course.

‘I spoke to my new tutor; he’d been working in the NHS for 40 years, and he told me he understood my position,’ David said. ‘All changed after I came back after Christmas. I received an email from him that said I must give evidence of a vaccination by January 25.

‘Before Christmas, my tutor thought I would be able to continue with my placements; I need 1,000 hours practice to be able to register with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and qualify.

‘I asked if I could finish the academic component and he said probably not, it wasn’t worth carrying on if I couldn’t do the placements.

‘I was trying to be pragmatic, but I was quite upset and very stressed about my future. If I got kicked off the course, I would still have to pay back my maintenance loan, but where would I work and what would I do?’

Since then, the Health Secretary has performed a U-turn on mandatory Covid vaccination for health care workers. Even though Sajid Javid scrapped the mandates, he has pushed back the decision to vaccinate to the regulators. He wants them to send a ‘clear message’ that health care workers should all be vaccinated.

David said: ‘Currently, our regulators, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists and the Health and Care Professions Council, are against mandatory vaccination. So I’m safe for the time being.’

However government concessions can be short-lived, and we know that they want to bring in vaccination by the back door. So David could find that pressure is applied to his regulators behind the scenes, and he will be prevented from working unless he has a Covid jab.

In a letter to nine regulators, including the General Medical Council, Javid made his thoughts clear. He said that abandoning compulsory vaccines ‘in no way diminishes the importance that health and care workers are vaccinated. Indeed, it is the responsibility of all healthcare professionals to take steps to ensure the safety of patients. As the approach to ensuring vaccine uptake among health and care staff changes it is important that this personal professional responsibility is re-emphasised’.

February 15, 2022 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK