TUESDAY, 27 JULY 2021
Everyone these days has an opinion on the Covid-19 vaccination. I’m not convinced it’s safe. Experts differ about safety and efficacy. And there is the common-sense position that any reasonable person should take about things that are injected into your veins that have not yet been properly tested, or that have not gone through the process that vaccinations usually go through. Sceptics also point to numerous examples from J&J, Pfizer, and other pharmaceutical companies that, years after launching products, removed the products from pharmacy shelves due to side effects that did not show up initially. It is also now clear that you can still get Covid-19 even if the vaccine is flowing through your veins.
That said, people who have made a name for themselves as independent thinkers who don’t care much about popular opinion – people like cartoonist and author Scott Adams and journalist Peter Hitchens – have been vaccinated. Adams also makes the point that anyone who is 100% sure about anything regarding the pandemic are not thinking things through properly. Probability is the only reasonable position to take.
It is said that if you are vaccinated you would have milder symptoms after infection, and that you would therefore have a better chance of survival. Supposedly more so if you are over fifty. It is also reasonable to assume that most people will get infected at some point.
That means I will most likely also get Covid-19 at some point. Because I would prefer not to get deadly ill, and because millions of people have received the vaccine so far and have shown little or no side effects, I will get the vaccine as well. That’s the good reason. The bad reason why I would get it is because the government forces you with all sorts of regulations, from how you work to whether or not you can travel. I don’t agree with that at all. Persuade people with reasonable argument. Force them to get an injection, and alarm bells start going off.
WEDNESDAY, 28 JULY 2021
Last thing I want to do is write a long piece about vaccinations and Covid-19.
Some questions will suffice:
1. Can SARS CoV-2 still enter your body even if you’ve received two doses of the vaccine?
2. Can you still develop Covid-19 even if you are fully vaccinated?
3. Can you still transmit the virus to other people after you’ve been fully vaccinated?
If the answer is positive to all three of the above questions, then why get the vaccination? Because, say people who are supposed to know, if you are vaccinated and you get Covid-19, your symptoms will be less severe and you’ll have a better chance of making it – especially if you are older and suffering from other ailments.
Now, I accept this view of the vaccine, and since I’ve recently turned fifty, it might be a good idea to increase my chances against the virus (as I explained yesterday).
But what exactly is the argument put forward by governments and their supporters to force people to get vaccinated? Because they care about people and don’t want them to get seriously ill? Isn’t this something people can decide for themselves? Isn’t this why people are “allowed” to drink and smoke as much as they want? Everyone decides for themselves how much cake and coffee and sugar and salt they want to indulge in. And governments don’t force people to exercise at least thirty minutes a day, and to eat enough vegetables and to cut back on red meat.
As it seems to me, the only way that governments could justify forcing people to get vaccinated is if it reduced spread. If it could be proven that the vaccines were highly effective in doing so, you could perhaps understand why there is so much pressure on people.
The only other reason that could make sense is if governments argued that since vaccinated people would get less severe symptoms, they’d have less of an impact on the country’s health services.
Is that the argument? Then why not launch draconian measures to force fat people to lose weight, or to force people to drink less? Adults either decide for themselves about their own health and lifestyle, or the government decides about it. This thing that the government is forcing people to get injections so that they don’t get too sick with a flu-type virus but is otherwise okay with people systematically destroying their lives doesn’t make sense.
Another thing: If you intentionally damage or end someone else’s life, or it happens because of your negligence, you will be and ought to be punished. How do government measures on Covid-19 vaccines fit into this concept, seeing that doctors and nurses inject people with a substance that may cause more harm to that person than it will prevent?
* * *
Here are some links [see dates on the webpages to see when they were last updated]:
https://factcheck.thedispatch.com/p/do-the-covid-vaccines-offer-100-percent: “At a town hall on July 21, in Cincinnati, President Joe Biden, in stressing the importance of COVID-19 vaccines, made the following statement: ‘If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you’re not going to die.’ The statement is false. Although the COVID-19 vaccines are effective, no single vaccine is 100% effective at preventing infection.”
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html: “Some people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 will still get sick and have a vaccine breakthrough infection because no vaccine is 100% effective.”
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can-vaccinated-people-transmit-covid-19-to-others/: “Can fully vaccinated people still transmit the virus to others, including other vaccinated people? While it is possible, Dr. Cardona says that the ability to transmit COVID-19 may occur at a lower rate. … ‘We are still collecting data and doing ongoing research about the vaccine responses in these vulnerable populations.’”
______________________