Much will be made of the truly terrible death of Jorja Halliday which was announced over the weekend. This apparently healthy and very fit teenager tested positive for COVID-19, was admitted to hospital feeling unwell and died from what appears to have been inflammation of the heart caused by the virus. When I say ‘much will be made’ I do not wish to detract from the distress and loss that her poor family have suffered but of the way the death has been presented. The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Evening Standard, Sky News, the BBC, ITV, the Mirror, the Daily Record, the Daily Mail and The Sun all used virtually identical headlines indicating that she died on the day she was due to receive her first dose of the COVID vaccine. Irony makes for good headlines. If evidence was required that the mainstream media all think one way and act in concert, then look no further.
I reiterate, the death—from whatever cause—is truly tragic and, of course, is the case that that breaks the rule: the assumption that young healthy people do not die of COVID. But the death of Jorja is, by any definition, an outlier and does not represent the norm. It is the very fact that it is an unusual event that makes it newsworthy. The more so if a pro-vaccine message can be hung on it. I do not wish to cast aspersions on the diagnostic abilities of doctors at the hospital in Portsmouth where Jorja died but it is very unlikely a post-mortem has been or will be held. We were long ago warned that the postponement of post-mortems in the UK was hampering the ‘fight against Covid-19’ and the fact that post-mortems are not required for COVID-19 deaths probably means that in Jorja’s case—and in thousands of others—we may never know the actual cause of death and if there was some other contributing factor.
The pro-vaccine message that poor Jorja’s death is being used to promote is implicit in the titles of all the article referred to above. In The Sunday Times article it is revealed that Jorja’s mother was ‘double-vaccinated’, and she issued the plea to: ‘Please vaccinate your children. It may save their life.’ There is an implication in the titles to all the articles that if only Jorja had been vaccinated then she would not have died. This is something we will never know. But we all know how journalism (ie journalists) work. I can well imagine that Jorja’s distressed mother was not intending her daughter’s death to be used to promote pro-vaccine propaganda. Reserving the right to be wrong I can hear the journalists, on the hunt for an anti-vaxxer headline, asking he if she herself was vaccinated and if she would like to issue a plea to other parents to get their children vaccinated. What mother, having just lost their child under these circumstances could refuse? If she had refused to divulge her own vaccination status and to endorse a pro-vaccination message, I can envisage a headline about a ‘defiant mother’. There is simply no winning with the mainstream media; they’ll have a headline one way or another.
Unusual and sudden deaths amongst younger people are both horrifying and sobering. I well recall in my undergraduate days the occasional—but extremely rare—empty space in a lecture theatre never to be filled again. Then the news that someone had died of meningitis. These deaths dwelled in our minds for weeks and we usually did not even know the person. Rare events are memorable and COVID related deaths in young, fit and healthy people are very rare. When we consider that the risk both of catching and especially of dying of COVID-19 in this group are, respectively, small and virtually negligible against the known risk that suffering a vaccine induced blood clot increases in younger people then using a single death to promote the vaccination of younger people may be more than propaganda; it may be irresponsible.
Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
