mark@chiptape.com
In response to:
18 Reasons I Won't Be Getting a Covid Vaccine
Legend:
| This color text ... | Quotes from 18 Reasons I Won't Be Getting a Covid Vaccine |
| This color text ... | Quotes from the internet |
| This color text ... | My comments |
| Underlined text ... | My emphasis added |
1 ... CENSORSHIP...AND THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF SCIENTIFIC DEBATE
2 ... If you disagree with the WHO or the CDC, you get censored.
3 ... [Insert highly-credentialed expert here] disagrees with the scientific consensus.
4 ... Why is social media censoring stuff?
5 ... Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson have bad track records.
6 ... Why are vaccine makers immune from liability?
7 ... Were the COVID-19 vaccines rushed?
8 ... Does Dr. Fauci have conflict of interest with Moderna?
9 ... Does Dr. Fauci have conflict of interest with gain-of-function research?
10 ... Ethics
11 ... There were 3,410 suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 cases in the Pfizer trials... 1,594 in the vaccine group & 1,816 in the placebo group.
12 ... Long-term safety
13 ... Trials vs vaccinated people
14 ... VAERS underreports adverse events.
15 ... Does the Johnson & Johnson vaccine utilize fetal cells from abortions?
16 ... Do COVID-19 vaccines prevent infection and transmission?
17 ... Do COVID-19 vaccines protect against variant strains?
18 ... Why do they recommend masks, social distancing, etc. post-vaccination?
19 ... Does vaccination increase asymptomatic infection, Bell's palsy, blood clots, cytokine storms and variants?
20 ... Are COVID-19 vaccines riskier than COVID-19?
21 ... How does natural immunity compare to post-vaccination immunity?
(These are not direct quotes.)
Censorship:
...on social media
...if you disagree with WHO or CDC
I want to see all the evidence and make up my own mind.
Censored opinions pique my interest.
Trust:
Vaccine makers:
Moderna & J&J had never made vaccines.
Pfizer & J&J committed crimes while subject to liability.
Now they're immune from liability.
Past failed vaccines:
Past vaccines caused cytokine storms.
Why are mRNA vaccines safe now?
COVID-19 vaccines were rushed.
Fauci conflicts of interest:
Moderna patents
gain-of-function research
Vaccine trials:
Vaccines weren't trialed on:
-18 years old
55+ years old
pregnant
auto-immune
immunocompromised
There's no trial data on:
transmission
preventing death
duration of immunity
long-term safety
There were 3,410 suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 cases in the Pfizer trials.
...1,594 in the vaccine group
...& 1,816 in the placebo group.
COVID-19 infection is less risky than getting vaccinated:
COVID-19 data quality:
Mortality rate = .26%.
CDC overreports deaths by 94%.
CDC includes suspected or probable deaths in case counts.
Post-vaccination data quality:
2,200 deaths reported
60,000 adverse reactions reported
But only 1% of adverse reactions & death are reported.
Probable 110,000 - 220,000 deaths.
Vaccines make the following worse:
asymptomatic spread
resistant variants
cytokine storms
Bell's Palsy
blood clots
Why are they still recommending precautions like masking post-vaccination?
Because vaccines don't prevent infection or transmission.
Post-vaccination infections are occurring.
...Possibly because of variants.
Post-infection immunity is probably lifelong.
Ok, here we go...
It is hard to take seriously allegations of "censorship" from someone whose blog post has been viewed over 2 million times and shared over a hundred thousand times on Facebook.
...from https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/#smg-zone-post-body-4
So going through this process of actually becoming a scientist was a bit of a shock for me, where many of the ideas I would think of would be immediately dismissed by someone more senior than I was.
But I soon came to realize that there were good reasons for these dismissals: they had a more complete set of knowledge than I did that they were drawing from.
...from https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/06/24/what-does-scientific-consensus-mean/
You can find whatever viewpoint you want on the internet.
We're not that restricted.
China quarantined sick people in stadiums.
If someone says "the science is settled" that's how I know I'm dealing with someone who is closed minded.
By definition science (especially biological science) is never settled.
If it was, it would be dogma, not science.
Isn't that evidence of scientific debate?
If lockdowns work, I want to do my part and stay home.
If masks work, I want to wear them.
If social distancing is effective, I want to comply.
But, if there is evidence they don't (masks for example), I want to hear that evidence too.
Jordan & Fauci... Civil liberties
Jordan & Fauci... round 2
Paul & Fauci... Post-vaccination masking
Why did anyone who disagrees with the WHO, or the CDC get censored so heavily?
The Trump administration disagreed with the CDC for a whole year.
If highly-credentialed scientists have different opinions, I want to know what they think.
THE WORLD'S LEADING VACCINOLOGIST IS SOUNDING THE ALARM...
Vanden Bossche is not "the world's leading vaccinologist." As reported by McGill University's Office for Science and Society, "His academic publications essentially stop in 1995, except for one 2017 article about his ... vaccine idea published in a journal belonging to a publishing group, OMICS Group Inc, that has been called "predatory" and was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive practices."
...from https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/#smg-zone-post-body-4
Earlier in his post, Elliot said he didn't trust Fauci because "he hasn't treated one covid patient" and because he allegedly had a financial interest in vaccine technology. It is odd, then, that his article places so much faith in Geert Vanden Bossche, a veterinarian who has spent the past decade trying and failing to patent something he calls a "universal vaccine" capable of killing a wide variety of diseases. His assertions, Snopes reported in March 2021, are part of a thinly veiled campaign to get people to pay more attention to an invention he tried and failed to patent at least twice.
...from https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/#smg-zone-post-body-4
Why, if I ask questions like the above, or post links like what you find above, will my thoughts be deleted from all major social media platforms?
Health care is at a disadvantage because there are no parallel requirements for transparency by the commentators on television, the internet, and social media promoting scientific fake news. As a result, claims from these sources may seem more unbiased than those from the health care system.
...The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has created new threats to trust. This may have been inevitable when facing a novel pathogen that defied preconceived expectations (eg, spread from asymptomatic carriers), leading to rapid advances in scientific understanding of the disease and frequently changing recommendations for prevention and treatment. However, the preexisting distrust in science was exacerbated by conflicting messages, questionable treatments reported in research publications, concerns about political interference in public health recommendations and decisions regarding the efficacy of therapeutics, and pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. In addition, Black and Latino communities faced inadequate testing, financial barriers to care, and disproportionately high rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths, further threatening their trust in physicians, the health care system, public health, and science.5
...from https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2774033#247482866
The four major companies who are making these covid vaccines are/have either:
1. Never brought a vaccine to market before covid (Moderna and Johnson & Johnson).
2. Are serial felons (Pfizer, and Astra Zeneca).
3. Are both (Johnson & Johnson).
(I haven't looked into AstraZeneca, because it's not currently used in the US.)
Pfizer:
Lawsuits
Violation Tracker
asbestos payout
~500 deaths... Defective heart valves
"too big to fail" payout
Celebrex royalties payout
largest health care fraud payout
Johnson & Johnson:
Recalls & lawsuits
Violation tracker
Risperdal adverse effects payouts
Risperdal safety marketing payout
Greece, Poland, Romania, Iraq bribery payout
OTC drug fraud payout
700 injuries... vaginal implant payout
Baby powder payouts
Talcum powder cancer payout
Baby powder payout
Opiod epidemic payout
Opiod payout
Oh, and apparently J&J (whose vaccine is approved for "Emergency Use" in the US) and Astrazenca (whose vaccine is not approved for "Emergency Use" in the US), had a little mix up in their ingredients...in 15 million doses. Oops.
But while errors with an impact of that magnitude sound shocking, they're also a reminder that the U.S. vaccine manufacturing process has strict quality control measures designed to catch these problems before they reach the public.
Before each batch of vaccines is released by the FDA, it undergoes rigorous and extensive testing to ensure vaccine safety. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, manufacturers are required to submit the results of each quality control test for each batch of vaccines 48 hours prior to its distribution. This stringent quality control process has led to what the FDA describes as the safest vaccine supply in U.S. history.
If drug companies willfully choose to put harmful products in the market, when they can be sued, why would we trust any product where they have NO liability?
The covid-vaccine makers are allowed to create a one-size-fits-all product, with no testing on sub-populations (i.e. people with specific health conditions), and yet they are unwilling to accept any responsibility for any adverse events or deaths their products cause.
If a company is not willing to stand behind their product as safe, especially one they rushed to market and skipped animal trials on, I am not willing to take a chance on their product.
Tony Fauci owns over 1,000 patents (see this video for more details), including patents being used on the Moderna vaccine...which he approved government funding for.
In fact, the NIH (which NIAID is part of) claims joint ownership of Moderna's vaccine.
Does anyone else see this as a MAJOR conflict of interest, or criminal even?
A search of the Securities Exchange Commission's database, which contains information on publicly traded companies, turned up no documents linking Fauci directly to Moderna.
...There are 70 potential COVID-19 vaccines in development, one of which was created by NIAID scientists in partnership with Moderna, Inc. That vaccine is being manufactured by an organization that the Gates Foundation supports, but there's no evidence that NIAID or Fauci will directly profit from that support.
"Fauci and Six Others at NIAID Own Patents in the Moderna Vaccine"
This is not correct and it also isn't a critique of vaccine safety.
...from https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/#smg-zone-post-body-4
Okay? Why does this matter? None of these people are on the independent safety review board for safety and data integrity for the vaccines.
FAUCI IS ON THE HOT SEAT FOR ILLEGAL GAIN-OF-FUNCTION RESEARCH
What is "Gain-of-Function" research?
It's where scientists attempt to make viruses gain functions--i.e. make them more transmissible and deadlier.
Sounds at least a touch unethical, right?
How could that possibly be helpful?
Our government agreed, and banned the practice.
So what did the Fauci-led NIAID do?
They pivoted and outsourced the gain-of-function research (in coronaviruses no less) to China--to the tune of a $600K grant.
You can see more details, including the important timeline of these events in this fantastically well-researched documentary.
The $600K grant, which Fauci had no direct oversight over, was an extension of an existing grant that had been funded since 2014. The "illegal" gain of function research alleged to have been conducted through this grant was initiated before the U.S. imposed a pause on "Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS and SARS Viruses." None of these conspiratorial diversions, however, hold any relevance to COVID-19 vaccine safety.
...from https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/#smg-zone-post-body-4
There is some smoke here, but we do not yet perceive the fire claimed by Paul. To some extent, all money is fungible. But the EcoHealth funding was not related to the experiments, but the collection of samples. The NIH grant includes language that some say suggests gain-of-function research; NIH says that is a misinterpretation. Paul’s statements about Baric’s research also appear overblown. We wavered between Two and Three Pinocchios, but decided on Two because there still are enough questions about the work at the Wuhan lab to warrant further scrutiny, even if the NIH connection to possible gain-of-function research appears so far to be elusive.
In 2014, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the NIH arm that Fauci heads, awarded a $3.4 million grant to the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, which aims to protect people from viruses that jump from species to species.
...The group hired the virology lab in Wuhan to conduct genetic analyses of bat coronaviruses collected in Yunnan province, about 800 miles southwest of Wuhan.
...EcoHealth Alliance paid the lab $598,500 over five years. The lab had secured approval from both the U.S. State Department and the NIH.
...All parties involved in the grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology have denied that it involved gain-of-function research. The grant was approved in May 2014. Five months later, the Obama administration announced it would not fund new projects that involved gain-of-function research, citing safety and security risks, though there’s an exception in the moratorium that allows it for research "urgently necessary to protect public health or national security."
...However, some scientists told PolitiFact that the Wuhan lab did conduct gain-of-function research on bat viruses, some of which was funded by the Ecohealth Alliance grant.
...MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt reviewed a paper that was published with financial assistance from the grant for PolitiFact in February. According to Esvelt, certain techniques that the researchers used seemed to meet the definition of gain-of-function research, but their work was not related to the virus that causes COVID-19. Esvelt told PolitiFact that "the work reported in this specific paper definitely did NOT lead to the creation of SARS-CoV-2," because the genetic sequences of the virus studied in the paper differ from that of the new coronavirus.
...from https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/may/17/debating-origins-covid-19-virus-what-we-know-what-/
Two reasons COVID gets more lethal over time:
Even with government-funded studies, scientists don’t have clearcut instructions for exactly what constitutes gain-of-function research that would require additional scrutiny.
Would modifying viruses to understand which mutations made them more virulent, and more able to evade drugs and vaccines, fall into this category? Virus experts do such work routinely, says Ho, and he himself has conducted such experiments for years with HIV, as well as with SARS-CoV-2. What’s more, these new versions of viruses and bacteria are constantly being created by nature as well, in response to natural selection pressures. That’s why scientists mutate viruses like SARS-CoV-2 to understand which changes the virus might develop next out in the real world, and what they would mean for existing vaccines and treatments. “These mutations are going to occur naturally,” says Ho. “We are trying to get ahead of it—that’s just routine for many virus studies. The problem right now is there is a lack of clear guidelines, both from the government and from the [scientific] journals.”
...from https://time.com/6225643/lab-made-covid-19-virus-controversy/
NO INFORMED CONSENT
What most who are taking the vaccine don't know is that because these products are still in clinical trials, anyone who gets the shot is now part of the clinical trial.
They are part of the experiment.
Those (like me) who do not take it, are part of the control group.
Contrary to the assertions made in this blog post, COVID-19 vaccines that have been granted emergency use authorization in the U.S. have completed phase three trials -- or at least an interim analysis of a phase three trial -- before being approved. It is not true, as claimed in the post, that any person given a COVID-19 vaccine is part of a clinical trial.
Elliot implies that the FDA is hiding, or would hide, the harmful effects of vaccines from the public. "If the vaccines are causing harm," he opined, "wouldn't we be seeing that all over the news? Surely the FDA would step in and pause the distribution?" At the time of this reporting, the biggest news in the COVID-19 vaccine space is that the FDA paused the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in response to six blood clotting cases out of nearly 7 million doses administered.
...from https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/#smg-zone-post-body-4
...There were "3,410 total cases of suspected, but unconfirmed covid-19 in the overall study population, 1,594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1,816 in the placebo group."
Wait...what?
Did they fail to do science in their scientific study by not verifying a major variable?
Could they not test those "suspected but unconfirmed" cases to find out if they had covid?
Apparently not.
Why not test all 3,410 participants for the sake of accuracy?
3,410 negative COVID-19 PCR tests
He finishes with a call for sharing the raw, patient level data for the trial, and chastises companies for not doing so yet. I can appreciate a call for transparency and data sharing, but he does not make it clear what exact data he is seeking, what analyses he is proposing, or what he expects such analyses to reveal. As all biomedical researchers understand, it is difficult and often impossible to share raw, patient-level data because of privacy laws and the possibility of ascertaining the identity of trial participants, and these trials have already been marked with unprecedented transparency with full confidential protocols publicly available since trial inception, the public posting of full FDA reports containing detailed summaries of all primary and secondary efficacy and safety endpoints even before the meeting, and the prompt publication of results in a leading peer-reviewed journal.
Obviously, with products that have only been on the market a few months, we have no long-term safety data.
In other words, we have no idea what this product will do in the body months or years from now--for ANY population.
Past side effects usually manifested within nine weeks following vaccination.
If that's not alarming enough, here are other gaps in the data--i.e. there is no data to suggest safety or efficacy regarding:
· Anyone younger than age 18 or older than age 55
· Pregnant or lactating mothers
· Auto-immune conditions
· Immunocompromised individuals
· No data on transmission of covid
· No data on preventing mortality from covid
· No data on duration of protection from covid
He specifically called out these groups. His argument is sometimes true but sometimes not true for...
· Anyone younger than age 18: This is true for Moderna and J&J. This is not true for Pfizer (ages 16-18). The Pfizer adolescent trial is up for emergency authorization now (see data here). Moderna's adolescent trial data should be coming in the next month or two.
· Anyone older than age 55: This is just plain false. We have lots of clinical trial data on this. In fact, the vaccines sometimes work BETTER among this group than younger populations.
· Pregnant or lactating mothers: This is true, pregnant or lactating mothers were not eligible to participate in the clinical trials. But we do have quite a bit of safety data on this group already (see here). And multiple professional organizations, like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have consistently stated that the benefits of a vaccine outweigh the risks.
· Auto-immune conditions: This is not true. There is data from the clinical trial. We just don't have a lot, so people with these conditions need to consult with their healthcare providers.
· Immunocompromised individuals: Again not true. There is data in there. We just don't have a lot, so people with these conditions need to consult with their healthcare providers.
· No data on transmission of covid: Moderna had data on this in their clinical trial. Pfizer and J&J did not. But we have it now (see here).
· No data on preventing mortality from covid: This is false. This was the whole point of the clinical trials...? And no one died from the vaccine.
· No data on duration of protection from covid. This is false. We have up to 6 months now. But that's because we only have 6 months worth of data. From our understanding of COVID19 cousins, we think this protection lasts 1-2 years. We also understand the science behind these vaccines very well and are not worried about long term effects (see more here)
Time will tell how this experiment works out.
Given the free pass from liability, and the checkered past of these companies, why would we assume that all their vaccines are safe and made completely above board?
According to a study done by Harvard (at the commission of our own government), less than 1% of all adverse reactions to vaccines are actually submitted to the National Vaccine Adverse Events Reports System (VAERS) - read page 6 at the link above.
(For what it's worth, J&J's vaccine also contains tissues from aborted fetal cells, perhaps a topic for another discussion)
The Pfizer, Moderna & Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines all utilize fetal cell lines.
The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines do not contain fetal cells.
The Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine may contain traces of fetal cells.
THE VACCINES DO NOT STOP TRANSMISSION OR INFECTION
This is just plain wrong. Yes vaccines stop transmission. We have over 10 studies that show this now. The question, now, is how MUCH does it stop transmission? We are seeing anywhere between 70-95%. I've also been updating on a regular basis, and you can see the numbers in my latest vaccine table.
To spread the coronavirus, you have to have the coronavirus. And vaccinated people are far less likely to have the coronavirus--period.
PEOPLE ARE CATCHING COVID AFTER BEING FULLY VACCINATED
There's no silver bullet.
Multiple imperfect precautions work together.
Again, Mr. Elliot is focusing only on the clinical trial results showing that the vaccines were very good at preventing symptomatic disease from COVID-19; they were not designed to demonstrate whether they stopped transmission or infection. As before, Mr. Elliot is ignoring data that has been published since the EUAs were granted for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that demonstrate that the vaccines do appear to prevent infection and reduce asymptomatic transmission.
Might that also explain why fully vaccinated people are continuing to catch covid?
Why do you think we're getting all these conflicting messages about needing to practice social distancing and wear masks AFTER we get a vaccine?
If we're worried about asymptomatic spreaders, would the vaccine not make it more likely that we are creating asymptomatic spread?
COVID vaccines reduce viral load and symptoms.
So the proportion of asymptomatic transmission may increase.
But the overall amount of transmission is reduced.
No, the empirical data on this point is clear: The vaccines reduce asymptomatic transmission. "If it indeed reduces symptoms, anyone who gets it might not even know they are sick and thus they are more likely to spread the virus, right?" Again, no, because the vaccine reduces asymptomatic spread and viral load.
...from https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/#
Chu said the more exposure to COVID-19 that an individual has -- either in terms of prior infection or vaccination -- the broader the immunity and the better the ability to control the virus. In such cases, an individual is more likely to be asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, she said.
Those with diminished viral loads may be less likely to transmit the disease, but they can still infect others, she said. And breakthrough cases can still carry high viral loads, as was observed in the Provincetown, Massachusetts outbreak in July 2021.
...from https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/98632
Why did more vaccinated than unvaccinated people get infected? (Massachusetts, Israel, Vermont)
And those numbers don't include (what is currently) 578 cases of Bell's Palsy.
Cases of Bell's palsy were reported following vaccination of participants in the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials. However, the FDA does not consider these to be above the frequency expected in the general population and has not concluded that these cases were causally related to vaccination.
Therefore, the observed incidence of Bell's palsy in the vaccine arms is between 3·5-times and 7-times higher than would be expected in the general population. This finding signals a potential safety phenomenon and suggests inaccurate reporting of basic epidemiological context to the public.
Overall, both passive and active surveillance systems will be important to ensure vaccine safety. While we call for robust surveillance for potential mRNA vaccine-associated Bell's palsy, we also note that Bell's palsy usually self-resolves and we feel the available coronavirus mRNA vaccines offer a substantial net benefit to public health.
...from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00076-1/fulltext#back-bib9
Astra Zeneca has similarly lost so many lawsuits it's hard to count. Here's one. Here's another...you get the point. And in case you missed it, the company had their covid vaccine suspended in at least 18 countries over concerns of blood clots, and they completely botched their meeting with the FDA with numbers from their study that didn't match.
Adverse events are regularly reported (and regularly weaponized by antivaxxers like Mr. Elliot, even when they are incredibly unlikely to have been caused by the vaccine), and the safety monitoring system has picked up adverse events that are literally one-in-a-million, such as cerebral venous sinus thromboses, with the FDA acting on them rapidly to issue a pause in the use of the vaccine associated with the adverse events.
(I haven't looked into AstraZeneca, because it's not currently used in the US.)
When that happened, an unexplained phenomenon called Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE) also known as Vaccine Enhanced Disease (VED) occurred where the immune system produced a "cytokine storm" (i.e. overwhelmingly attacked the body), and the children/animals died.
Here's the lingering issue...
The vaccine makers have no data to suggest their rushed vaccines have overcome that problem.
Neither COVID-19 disease nor the new COVID-19 vaccines have shown evidence of causing ADE. People infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have not been likely to develop ADE upon repeat exposure. This is true of other coronaviruses as well. Likewise, studies of vaccines in the laboratory with animals or in the clinical trials in people have not found evidence of ADE.
It is true that, early on in the development of COVID-19 vaccines, there were concerns, based on the issues listed by Mr. Elliot, that the phenomenon on antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) might preclude the development of COVID-19 vaccines. These issues had stymied the development of vaccines against the original SARS and MERS coronaviruses, after all. However, as I like to say, it is now April 2021, not April 2020, and we have lots of data, both from the phase 3 clinical trials of the currently authorized vaccines and from 190 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in the US alone that demonstrate this does not happen at a rate detectable by the same vaccine safety monitoring system that has detected one-in-a-million adverse events after COVID-19 vaccines. Mr. Elliot also ignored later science that showed that ADE is a problem mainly in vaccines that do not produce high enough levels of neutralizing antibody. And, again, hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide, and this problem has simply not been observed.
1. Why the covid vaccine may be putting so much pressure on the virus that we are accelerating it's ability to mutate and become more deadly.
2. Why the covid vaccines may be creating vaccine-resistant viruses (similar to anti-biotic resistant bacteria).
High vaccination coverage in a population reduces the spread of the virus and helps prevent new variants from emerging.
...from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html
They explained here that "when an individual is vaccinated, they are less likely to contract and transmit the virus, and therefore less likely to contract and transmit viral variants of COVID-19."
"The idea that viruses would evolve and grow stronger to evade vaccines may seem like common sense, but there is no evidence for these claims," they added.
...There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccinations have caused the original coronavirus to mutate. As explained here by the World Health Organization (WHO), when a virus is spreading widely in a population and infecting many people, it is more likely to mutate. "The more opportunities a virus has to spread, the more it replicates -- and the more opportunities it has to undergo changes," the WHO says.
COVID is high-risk.
COVID vaccines are low-risk.
Masks are no-risk.
Given all the risks above (risks that ALL pharmaceutical products have), would it not be prudent to wait to see if the worst-case scenarios have indeed been avoided?
Given the data we have now, the highly unlikely possibility of rare late side effects cropping up months from now is not a reason, in the middle of a pandemic, to avoid a vaccine against a disease that is killing millions and disabling even more.
According to the CDC's own numbers, covid has a 99.74% survival rate.
Why would I take a risk on a product, that doesn't stop infection or transmission, to help me overcome a cold that has a .26% chance of killing me--actually in my age range is has about a .1% chance of killing me (and .01% chance of killing my kids), but let's not split hairs here.
According to the CDCs own numbers, (scroll down to the section "Comorbidities and other conditions") only 6% of the deaths being attributed to covid are instances where covid seems to be the only issue at hand.
In other words, reduce the death numbers you see on the news by 94% and you have what is likely the real numbers of deaths from just covid.
To bloat the number even more, both the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. changed their guidelines such that those who are suspected or probable (but were never confirmed) of having died of covid, are also included in the death numbers.
Seriously?
If we are going to do that then should we not go back and change the numbers of all past cold and flu seasons so we can compare apples to apples when it comes to death rates?
A COVID-19 case includes confirmed and probable cases and deaths.
...A probable case or death is defined as any one of the following:
· Meets clinical criteria AND epidemiologic linkage with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for SARS-CoV-2;
· Meets presumptive laboratory evidence;
· Meets vital records criteria with no confirmatory laboratory evidence for SARS-CoV-2.
...CDC applies a standard protocol for data reporting across jurisdictions in line with the 2020 Interim Case Definition outlined in CSTE's Position Statement (approved August 5, 2020), such that CDC includes jurisdictions' reported confirmed and probable cases as "cases," and includes jurisdictions' reported confirmed and probable deaths as "deaths." For example, jurisdictions' reports of new confirmed and new probable cases are summed to reflect new cases; the process is similar for deaths. Jurisdictions' probable cases and deaths are also be [sic] included in their cumulative counts.
...from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/faq-surveillance.html#
Probable cases were defined as showing symptoms and having contact with an infected person, or meeting one of those criteria and testing positive for coronavirus antibodies, rather than for the virus itself. Probable deaths meant those who were never tested for the virus but whose death certificates listed covid-19 as the cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death.
...Fewer than half the states are following federal recommendations to report probable novel coronavirus cases and deaths, marking what experts say is an unusual break with public health practices that leads to inconsistent data collection and undercounts of the disease's impact.
According to CDC data, which tracks with the data we compile from states, probable cases that are clearly labeled as such currently make up less than one percent of all cases nationally. For six states that report them separately, however--Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin--probable cases make up between eight and 12 percent of all cases. In Wyoming, more than 20 percent of all known cases are probable cases, and in Puerto Rico, that figure is more than 75 percent. We would, therefore, expect the proportion of probable cases to rise nationally as more states either begin to report them or to label them correctly.
...from https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/what-is-a-probable-case-of-covid-19/#
I ALREADY HAD COVID
Now it appears (as it always has) that I have beautiful, natural, life-long immunity...
...not something likely to wear off in a few months if I get the vaccine.
Elliot asserts that he already had COVID-19 and that it wasn't all that bad. He claims that this means he has "beautiful, natural, life-long immunity" -- an assertion based on eight months of data that does not speak to lifelong immunity.
...from https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/#smg-zone-post-body-4
How does natural immunity compare to post-vaccination immunity?
In my body, and my household, covid is over.
In fact, now that I've had it, there is evidence the covid vaccine might actually be more dangerous for me.
The "might actually be more dangerous" link above is rated as "CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE" at https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/childrens-health-defense/
Here's all the websites that are linked from the 18 Reasons I Won't Be Getting a Covid Vaccine page
...and their mediabiasfactcheck.com rating.
Numbers on the left are the number of links from that website that appear on the page.
No number indicates one link.
mark@chiptape.com