As the Delta variant reminds us, it is too early to declare victory over the virus; there may yet be unpleasant surprises. A neighbor, overweight and over 80, has refused vaccination on the grounds that, having isolated himself, he sees no one who might infect him with the virus, that his diet is healthy, that the vaccine might not be effective against new variants (whose emergence, he believes, it might encourage), and that the long-term effects of the vaccines are unknown. No one, he says, can be certain how long the immunity that the vaccines induce lasts. And there will be other viruses, apart from the Covid variants.
Well, I’m not overweight, but I am on the cusp of 80, and I’m with this. I am not an anto-vaxxer. I made sure to get vaccinated against shingles. But my immune has been very, very good to me, and don’t want to mess with it. So far as I can tell, none of the Covid vaccines have been put through the rigorous trials that vaccines are usually put through. And exactly do people who have been vaccinated get Covid, as has happened to Jesse Jackson. The vaccinated, apparently, can transmit the disease to others. (My wife has been vaccinated, but I recently tested negative. I don’t have it and have not had it.) Dalrymple — who is physician — may think his government has handled this well, but what I have seen in this country is politicians taking advantage of the virus to satisfy their inner despot, helped along by too many servile and credulous citizens.
Coronavirus vaccines have been in development for years now. That they were safe was assured, when the FDA put emergency approval on those that passed muster, and now full approval has followed accordingly -- especially in comparison to the dangers of the virus, holy moly, and how! There is no comparison. There is no debate here, only information to give against deadly politicized misinformation.
ReplyDeleteI have a Facebook friend who is or was a staunch Trump cultist. I'll bet she's backsliding off this demigod as much as the QAnon Shaman has. The rubber has hit the road for her. In all that Trump did wrong, including mishandling the virus situation, to her, he could, back then, do no wrong. Everything always spun back to his being great somehow in staunch defensiveness. Like many in the cult, she became an anti-vaxxer.
Yesterday, I noticed on her Facebook page, that she was very ill. But -- she did or does not want to go to the ER, because so many going there have the virus, and she is not vaccinated! All the dozens of responses were for her to get her butt to the ER. She knew that she would have been better off with the vaccine. She knew it all along. The cult has carried her along to this fate, to the door of the ER, and she realizes she knew all along not to go in. She knew all along to get vaccinated. No one was asking her to wear a sign of David. It was always for her benefit.
We know of the famous sick bed and death bed words now, "I should have gotten vaccinated." This applies to the need to go to the ER for treatment as well, before you ever catch the virus, before entering a hospital, "I should have gotten vaccinated." The only humane decision for oneself and for others, is to vaccinate, and it has been safe all along. We all knew that. We knew the confusion was always smoke. The fears that were stirred up by the talking heads, were and always have been unfounded. The only humane decision is to vaccinate. There is no other decision. If you want to risk death, become the next netless tightrope walker. But do not put everyone else at risk. Do not clog up our vital lifecare system. Never do that. It's just wrong.