We were two in the room of an independent cinema during the screening of the documentary by Perrine Bertrand and Yan Grill, "Being with the bees". We were two to feel, like these millions of bees, trapped in a world of which we no longer know how to belong as it is and seeking our own resources in order to survive in spite of everything.

Bees live and work in community, with solidarity, autonomy and awareness of future generations. In order to pollinate our ailing ecosystems, a few atypical beekeepers try to protect them from the activity of other greedy or yield-driven humans: offer bee colonies a traditional habitat in trees and near diversified organic crops; let them coexist with their various viral or bacterial microorganisms; stop treating their illnesses with drugs that contribute to weakening and decimating them; support their natural immunity, their propolis being the best medicine; offer them a healthy diet, their honey free of added sugar.

This beekeeping comparison should allow us to imagine a similar benevolent and intelligent treatment in the current health crisis, which seems to be becoming chronic. The scandals linked to Montsanto or Bayer and the control of agriculture by the giants of agribusiness no longer being a state secret, it would seem that we have more difficulty in admitting those associated with the pharmaceutical industries. whom we place almost blind trust in.

Pfizer has been fined a total of more than $6 billion for: bribing doctors and government officials, false advertising omitting serious side effects, false studies, creating a synthetic virus that infected three of its employees , etc. “This aspect was raised by the European Parliament when choosing manufacturers of vaccines against Covid-19, but was not retained as a selection criterion.” The parallel could also be made between cattle and the mass of humans. Treating a few sick individuals is less profitable than selling preventive treatments to everyone over the long term. An effective business strategy allowing juicy profits.

What ecological assessment of the single vaccine solution?

Impregnated by the ideology of technological solutionism, the current “science” – massively financed by the big pharmaceutical companies and escorted by stripped politicians – has lost the way of the medical art and opted for an all vaccine policy. Far removed from medicine, it shows us its limits, both in terms of health and ecology, as for bees.

Since the pharmaceutical industries are among the most polluting on our planet, more so than the automotive sector, would it not be time to carry out an ecological assessment of the production of billions of vaccines, the energy cost of transporting them by refrigerated trucks, their conservation between -60° to -80° and the management of their waste? Hasn't the time come to do the same with the billions of disposable and therefore discarded masks, the tons of hydroalcoholic gel that end up in our drinking waterways?

“Local, organic and seasonal” anti-covid injections?

Local? In the first quarter of 2021, the Confederation “loans” Lonza specialized personnel to enable it to increase the production of the Moderna vaccine in Visp. It is therefore a production, in part, local.

Organic? In 2018, the Lonza site generated 1% of the greenhouse gas emissions of all of Switzerland. Its mercury pollution – several tens of tons dumped in the Rhône – continues to reappear here and there. For years, Lonza would also have polluted the waters with a carcinogenic solvent, 1,4-dioxane, and with another toxic and carcinogenic product, benzidine. Neither the public nor health professionals have access to all of Moderna's vaccine components. In view of the many environmental scandals linked to Lonza, we can doubt that they obtain the organic label.

Of the season? The Confederation has concluded contracts, the amounts of which are kept secret, with five manufacturers for nearly 52 million doses of vaccines until 2023. It announces, after praising their very high efficiency, a third dose. Like soilless tomatoes, vaccines already seem to be available for years to come in all seasons.

The only vaccine solution, adopted locally and on a planetary scale, contributes to digging our own grave by increasing our energy dependence and by persevering in destroying the living.

Political omerta on ecological issues?

Why is this issue of big pharma productions, although fundamentally linked to biological issues, absent from the official positions of environmental parties? We have vaguely heard here and there that the destruction of living things would have favored the emergence of this coronavirus, or its variants, and would thus contribute to exposing us to the advent of new viruses in the future. The Swiss Greens in their voting guidelines on the Covid law seem more concerned with preserving their freedom to be able to continue to travel abroad, even though we know, in addition to the problem of the pollution generated, that travel has largely contributed to the spread of the coronavirus throughout the planet.

These questions in no way prevent a large number of our politicians from singing the glory of anti-covid vaccination in the general population. When we talk about health, would we agree to be satisfied with our good conscience of “ecolo-bobo who eats organic, sorts his waste and gets around by bike”? All means, even the most polluting and energy-intensive, would they be good since it is a question of health? Should our eyes close to the dramatic ecological consequences of certain political choices? Can health and safety solutionism do without an examination of ecological conscience?

Some minority Greens express their disagreement with this irresponsible blindness, on condition of anonymity, perhaps fearing a media lynching or possible reprisals from party members. “Before being formalized by a decree of censorship or embodied in the guise of a Party functionary, the withering of freedom of expression is experienced as an atmosphere, a feeling of intimidation, an embarrassment almost mundane that evaporates” (Célia Izoard). We believe that this law of silence deserves to be placed on the table of democratic debate.

What alternatives to the single vaccine solution?

Like that of beekeepers aware of the issues favoring bees' own resources, could we draw inspiration from a bioethics of life in the political management of the "pandemic", in the face of what we should rather call "syndemic"? Despite the promises, the eradication of this coronavirus parasite with the help of the imposition of the single vaccine solution although still in experimental phases, social exclusions and general surveillance of individuals, unfortunately does not work so well. Just like for bees, wouldn't it be better to become familiar with the idea that viruses and bacteria are entities with which we will not have to fight, but coexist?

However, there are alternatives: offer a prevention policy by strengthening our natural immune defenses using complementary medicines which are an integral part of our Swiss Constitution (art. 118a); develop health promotion for people suffering from these diseases of civilization, in particular the diabetes pandemic, while confinements have exacerbated their risks vis-à-vis the virus; offer targeted vaccination to populations at risk (which is done) and let others live by allowing them to develop their immunity; care at home, early, for people who have contracted the virus rather than locking them alone at home without supervision or medical care; strengthen our failing hospital system — the cause of successive semi-lockdowns — following the austerity policies deployed for more than twenty years; finally improve the working conditions of caregivers; develop ecology by protecting the habitats of wild animals and avoiding the dangers of factory farming.

Anne Voeffray's personal website.