2015: "The Insane Vaccine Debate"

The issue of mandatory vaccination is once again an item of debate in media circles given the recent outbreaks in measles, and fueled this week by the continued inability of politicians to discuss vaccination policy without sounding like anti-science fools....

The current vaccine debate, unlike those prior ones, is actually motivated by a real problem (the return of diseases presumed previously eradicated) as opposed to conspiratorial musings....But vaccination is not about protecting the vaccinated so much as it is about protecting others from disease-carriers. Vaccines are properly understood not on the basis of narrow self-interest but as a defense of the human species.

Fundamentally, the protection against life-threatening plague is one of the original reasons government exists...

If you choose not to vaccinate, private and public institutions should be able to discriminate on that basis. Disneyland should be able to require proof of vaccination as a condition of entry, and so should public schools. You shouldn’t be compelled to vaccinate your child, but neither should the rest of us be compelled to pretend like you did....

If the decline in MMR vaccination continues, perhaps the federal government could take the step of making access to the child tax credit contingent upon vaccination. If we’re going to have redistributive social engineering in the tax code, it may as well be for children who aren’t carrying disease around Disneyland....

The fact remains, and is amplified on a daily basis, that the vaccines have only a spotty degree of success, nowhere near the “95% efficacy” that was claimed for them. In many instances, the vaccine does not successfully engender the immune response antibodies that have been claimed for this course of treatment. Add to that the sometimes serious side effects, not all of which are fully known as of yet, and you have a situation where “an abundance of caution” is definitely called for.

“vaccinations have always been about protecting the individual who got vaccinated”

I assure you, when the military gave me the anthrax vaccine (5 doses), they did so to protect ME. Not to protect the enemy who MIGHT use anthrax as a weapon!

We’ve reached Peak Insanity. Men can get pregnant. Women have penises. And vaccine are to protect the OTHER vaccinated people! And THEN these same people scream, “Follow the science, man!”

And outright government coercion.

My wife is terrified of these vaccines because she has dormant Epstein Barr disease and that puts her at risk for “long haul covid” triggered by the vaccine.

But her employer (hospital) is now requiring the vaccine thanks to Biden.
Plus she will need it to travel - which is important to her. She is effectively being coerced.

I am mostly retired, working from home, and I got my fill of traveling when I was younger and the world was a better and safer place to travel in.

So I can hold out - at least until they start requiring vaccine passports to go shopping. Even then I could get stuff delivered.

But I feel so badly for my wife being forced to make this choice - and for what? These vaccines don’t even work! If they worked, why would vaccinated people be so worried about us unvaccinated spreading it around?

I can’t believe this is happening in America. The founding fathers must be spinning in their graves.

“Wouldn’t that also be an infringement on freedom? Or, will the ‘fully sheltered’ be volunteers?”

Yes, the “fully sheltered” would do so voluntarily (in MY view), but also, yes, the government agencies and the health care establishment should work together to provide such places to those for whom it is not possible to do so on their own.

60% of infections usually occur in the home - viral load + enclosed space + close contact + some period of time, yet what we (as a society, during this “pandemic”) never did was to make it more possible, than it is, for asymptomatic infected persons to go to “quarantine dormitories” (or some such), until either 14 days had passed or they developed symptoms serious enough to go to a hospital. No. People test positive, go home and while they wait to see if they get symptoms, when they do start to get symptoms they have often already infected one or more persons in their home, increasing the “case” counts;
whereas, if “quarantine” alternatives were available, with very minimum “nursing”/healthcare staff assistance, a good part of the “surges” could have been avoided.

Of the only cases in all my extended family, all relatives included, they all occurred after one household member tested positive, became ill, and infection and illness followed with other household members. None of them had isolated instances where just one in the household tested positive (whether already ill or not), that one “stayed home” and everyone else in the house remained unaffected. And yes, the illness for those who were infected was always harsh for the adults and next to nothing for the kids. In all cases the first one infected was one of the adults. If those initial positive infections in each household had been able to go somewhere else for 14 days, at least, their household would not have made the total contribution to the case count that they eventually did.

And yes, none had comorbidity factors and like more than 90% of the population the experience was not fatal.

Interestingly, of all the 80+ year old persons I know, including two relatives, likely due to lack of comorbidity factors, none who got a Covid19 illness had a severe case. One was hospitalized briefly only to help compensate for dehydration due to three days of diarrhea.

Yes. That article is a good piece, and I support its general opinion.

I also think it is not smart to not offer the Covid19 positive infected persons no where but their own home - and thereby their mixing in an enclosed setting with their families - no place else to “shelter” while their infection passes; and some in their household might be exactly among the most vulnerable with comorbidity factors. We know who the truly vulnerable are and it does not seem smart to knowingly make the situation riskier for them, just because we want to develop herd immunity most of all.

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