By Gavin St Pier
“Does Deputy St Pier feel guilty for his role in the Covid pandemic?”
It was a question that I probably should have anticipated from the audience at an event of the Channel Islands and UK Alliance.
This is probably a group of whom few have heard. A bit like the Brexit powerhouse known innocuously as the ERG, the European Research Group, its name doesn’t really describe on the tin what it does. It’s certainly not to be confused with the Channel Island Alliance for Health and Social Care, recently announced between the Jersey and Guernsey governments. Rather, it’s a group of passionate Channel Islanders who are generally critical of the management of the Covid pandemic and in particular are concerned about the short- and longer-term impacts of Covid vaccines. Some present may only have been concerned about those issues. Others may have been anti-vaxxers because they are opposed to all vaccines; or because they earnestly believe Bill Gates was micro-chipping the world’s population using nanoparticles. Yet others may believe the whole pandemic was a politically led ploy by globalists to give more money and power to the global elite.
The Channel Islands and UK Alliance doesn’t have a website or social media presence, other than some videos shared on Rumble. Rumble may, in turn, not be widely recognised. It’s a YouTube-like platform that hosts Donald Trump’s Truth Social. That reference alone may be enough for some to discredit Rumble’s other content. The fact that it hosts those who are banned by other parts of the internet, such as the Russian state media outlets, Andrew Tate or Lawrence Fox, may also strengthen or weaken its credibility, depending on your point of view. Suffice to say that much of the content will be regarded as gospel for some and conspiracy theories by the mainstream.
With that background, I attended my first meeting of the Channel Islands and UK Alliance last Friday evening in a hotel on Guernsey’s west coast, accompanied by five colleagues from Guernsey’s States of Deliberation – the legislature and government of the island. The event was an online webinar introduced by the MP Andrew Bridgen, chaired by US Senator Ron Johnson, with five American and two Guernsey-based medics. I understand that all Jersey and Guernsey States Members had been invited, together with the islands’ public health and medical establishments. I’ve no idea how many, if any, attended online.
Mr Bridgen’s reputation precedes him. He was thrown out of the Tory party and lost the Whip as a Tory MP in 2023 because of his criticism of Covid vaccines. He had previously been suspended from the House of Commons for breaches of rules on lobbying and declaration of interests. All of this followed a rather public and messy family legal dispute in which a High Court Judge stated that Mr Bridgen had lied under oath. Consequently, he’s hardly a poster child for credibility, but, no doubt, it will be claimed that this is because he’s the victim of a campaign to trash his reputation in light of his views on Covid.
Ignoring the politicians and public in the room, the only experts were the medics present – albeit keeping in mind that just because someone is a doctor, it does not mean that they are either right or infallible. The seven ran through in rapid fire their observations about their patients’ clinical experiences which, frankly, were concerning – assuming honest presentation and taking what was said at face value. With much medical and scientific jargon, and some decent slides, it is easy to conclude that they seem to have a point; but, of course, correlation is not causation and it would undoubtedly be possible to find another seven (or even 70) medics who could present an equally compelling case why the first seven are wrong, given the same time, but with different slides and alternate medical/scientific jargon.
I’ve not researched the credentials or reputations of Senator Johnson or the five US medics, but I have little doubt that, given their views on Covid, there will be some controversy around each of them. The two Guernsey medics presenting were Drs Patterson and Mitchell. The former is a well-established cardiology consultant and the latter previously specialised in emergency medicine, but, to all intents and purposes, lost that role because he questioned the mainstream view on Covid during the pandemic. Neither can be pigeon-holed as conspiracy theorists and both have put their reputations on the line. It takes enormous courage to speak out against the orthodoxy of the majority. All the more so from within a conservative, hierarchical profession whose instinctive response is to defend a stated opinion, not least because it’s a learned behaviour with an often understandable fear of litigation. Consequently, they – and those in our communities with concerns – should not be dismissed out of hand but rather should be listened to with respect.
The rest of us, but particularly elected representatives, should have sufficient curiosity to seek out the evidence to allay or confirm those genuinely held concerns. For that reason, I was disappointed that Guernsey’s government, lacking such curiosity, refused to undertake a proper inquiry of its Covid response, preferring, instead, to close the chapter with a complacent thud that everything was done pretty near perfectly.
Those with responsibility should not fear challenge, scrutiny and accountability, even if sometimes it comes unexpectedly and uncomfortably, as it did for me last Friday evening.
So how did I respond to that question from the audience? I said I did not feel guilt for my role during the Covid pandemic; I participated in decisions made in good faith on the best, sometimes limited, information available to decision-makers at the time. That does not mean questions should not be asked, that every decision was right, that mistakes were not made and that lessons cannot be learned.
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Gavin St Pier is a Guernsey politician. He previously served as the president of the island’s Policy and Resources Committee.
