Hey y'all,
What follows is my brother's email to a fellow business owner (that's also a friend of his) who asked him whether he plans to take the jab himself or mandate it for his employees as a requirement for returning to the office. My brother is a top executive at a company whose clients include 100 of the Fortune 500 companies. He let me share this with you guys because I thought this would be a great piece for SOTT to publish. All names and company references redacted for privacy reasons. If you guys think this would work for SOTT, one thought we both had is to perhaps retain the email format as that makes it more personal and real, and tells people that these kinds of conversations are happening behind the scenes in the corporate world. In fact, maybe even preface it as I did above - it's from a top executive in.. etc etc. But of course, all such editorial decisions are up in the air.
I (SAO) personally thought this was and well-researched and written email. A lot of the content of the email comes from posts Joe and other fellow forumites shared on social media and elsewhere, which I always nab and share with my brother (he doesn't use social media) and my gf. He kinda collected many of them and wrote a covid "manifesto" to his friend to basically make his case that the science IS clear, and it's entirely NOT what most people are led to believe.
What is on the line is of course his entire company's humanity, so unlike most of us who are worried about being jab-mandated by our employers, he also has to worry about being pressured by other executives and investors to mandate it on others, which is twice as frustrating because now he's fighting for the rights, dignity, peace, and financial security of those who work for him. And he's currently the only voice in his company opposing this madness.
Additionally, another reason we thought this might be good for SOTT is simply so that other people in the same predicament (employers AND employees) can send this link to their companies and co-workers if needed, as an argument against mandated vaccinations. A lot of the material could also become part of a legal defense like a class action. It's thorough, and it is difficult if not impossible for any company to truly refute this using data and evidence, at least at this time.
Final note - I am slightly worried that half the links may be dead some months from now, so maybe there's some ways to preserve them for future readers? If not, no biggie, just annoying when stuff just disappears, but I suppose there will be plenty of new juicy studies and data at that time anyway.
Some title ideas:
Vaccines: "The science is clear"
The case against mandating vaccines
Email from the friend to my brother:
My brother's reply:
What follows is my brother's email to a fellow business owner (that's also a friend of his) who asked him whether he plans to take the jab himself or mandate it for his employees as a requirement for returning to the office. My brother is a top executive at a company whose clients include 100 of the Fortune 500 companies. He let me share this with you guys because I thought this would be a great piece for SOTT to publish. All names and company references redacted for privacy reasons. If you guys think this would work for SOTT, one thought we both had is to perhaps retain the email format as that makes it more personal and real, and tells people that these kinds of conversations are happening behind the scenes in the corporate world. In fact, maybe even preface it as I did above - it's from a top executive in.. etc etc. But of course, all such editorial decisions are up in the air.
I (SAO) personally thought this was and well-researched and written email. A lot of the content of the email comes from posts Joe and other fellow forumites shared on social media and elsewhere, which I always nab and share with my brother (he doesn't use social media) and my gf. He kinda collected many of them and wrote a covid "manifesto" to his friend to basically make his case that the science IS clear, and it's entirely NOT what most people are led to believe.
What is on the line is of course his entire company's humanity, so unlike most of us who are worried about being jab-mandated by our employers, he also has to worry about being pressured by other executives and investors to mandate it on others, which is twice as frustrating because now he's fighting for the rights, dignity, peace, and financial security of those who work for him. And he's currently the only voice in his company opposing this madness.
Additionally, another reason we thought this might be good for SOTT is simply so that other people in the same predicament (employers AND employees) can send this link to their companies and co-workers if needed, as an argument against mandated vaccinations. A lot of the material could also become part of a legal defense like a class action. It's thorough, and it is difficult if not impossible for any company to truly refute this using data and evidence, at least at this time.
Final note - I am slightly worried that half the links may be dead some months from now, so maybe there's some ways to preserve them for future readers? If not, no biggie, just annoying when stuff just disappears, but I suppose there will be plenty of new juicy studies and data at that time anyway.
Some title ideas:
Vaccines: "The science is clear"
The case against mandating vaccines
Email from the friend to my brother:
My brother's reply:
From: [REDACTED]
Date: Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:56 PM
Subject: MY POV on Mandating Employee Vaccinations
To: [REDACTED]
I appreciate you reaching out. What follows is admittedly lengthy (though I do provide my "summary POV" a couple paragraphs down before I dive into supporting detail). I tried to be succinct, but practically speaking your question for me was akin to "hey, so what's your take on management?"The analogy here being I'm passionate about both subjects so it was hard to choose between sending back a brief 2-minute POV, or filling this email with enough content fit for a university level course. I didn't know what you had an appetite for, so I just simply did my best to try and be helpful (and heck, even had some fun while I was at it...).
My framework for this entire POV: in the famous words of W. Edwards Deming, "In God we trust. All others must bring data.” As I hope you've come to know me by now, I care more deeply about facts & morals than I do ideology or identity politics, the latter for which I just don't give a shit. You give me a good reason to do something and I am 100% all over it. You give me either faulty reasoning or an unethical ultimatum, and I simply cannot get on board out of a moral obligation to what's right.
So to answer your questions with that sole framework in mind, here's my summary POV:
(#1) I still have no plans to get vaccinated anytime in the foreseeable future (unless something radically changes the risk equation), given:
(#2) I remain vehemently opposed to vaccine mandates for this specific virus (primarily on the basis of (i) 1b above, (ii) the medical literature, which has shown unequivocally these vaccines will drive the very prolonging of this pandemic indefinitely through never-ending variants, and thus/therefore (iii) on moral grounds, as, if (i) and (ii) are true, then any decision to proceed with mandates would be nothing short of a descent by the West towards fascism**, the likes of which hasn't reared its ugly head since the early 20th century. Finally, at a distant, distant second, I am against these mandates from a logistical perspective*.
*E.g., how will you account for boosters (i.e., will those who were vaccinated too far in the past (e.g., January (and thus have substantially waning transmission protection)) also be excluded from the office)? What about those who got a different jab (e.g., AstraZeneca, Sputnik, CoronaVac, etc.), each of which has varying levels of effectiveness (and varying levels of effectiveness reduction over time) against different variants? How will you handle those that already had COVID-19 (and therefore (a) have even higher immunity than the vaccinated, and (b) who face higher health risks if they get vaccinated post- natural infection)? What will you do with the immunocompromised (folks with organ transplants or cancer patients) who got the vaccine but have low viable antibodies because they require evermore booster shots? What will you do when future variants require different jabs? I could go on, but I trust you get the point. My real question for you is, will you be responsible for coordinating monthly/quarterly management meetings to update & maintain these ever-changing mandate policies covering ever-growing future use cases?
**And if you think I'm exaggerating, look no further than NY State Assembly Bill A416, which proposes forcibly putting carriers of COVID-19 who do not conform to the state's medical guidelines into the akin of internment fucking camps, where they will be forced into a treatment deemed appropriate by the state and detained indefinitely until they comply. Imagine a U.S. legislative policy so bad, that even Russia Today was able to shit all over it as being far too draconian. And it's not just the state of NY but the CDC as well.
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Last comments before I dive into supporting details
To not lose sight of being pragmatic as it pertains to your inquiry, I want to point out that at this juncture even a discussion about vaccine mandates is mostly moot. We already know (confirmed) that those who are vaccinated/infected carry as much viral load as the unvaccinated. Which, coupled with waning transmission prevention efficacy means for all practical intents & purposes those vaccinated and those unvaccinated pose similar risks to one another. And this is notwithstanding even more cutting edge research (not even yet published i.e. currently pre-print in The Lancet), which suggests those vaccinated carry significantly (upwards of 200x) more viral load than the unvaccinated (which would, if peer-reviewed, flip the risk equation on its head even further in that those vaccinated would pose far greater risk to one another than those unvaccinated). (And it is worth noting that this development would not even be inconsistent with what the NIH/CDC has found with other vaccines -- in this 2017 study, for example, it was assessed that those who were vaccinated for influenza shed 6.3x as much virus as those who are unvaccinated. Crazy stuff.)
All of this is to say, despite the nationwide pushes you're seeing for private & federal workplace vaccination mandates (which may have made at least some sense much earlier on), such mandates are unfortunately no longer effective models at this stage, unsupported by what we now understand via the latest science. Instead, if you really want to make a difference in improving workplace safety at this juncture, I would suggest implementing either the 1st, or both, of the following policies:
You asked how we're handling it, and I can tell you that we're doing the first one at [my company], and I would recommend utilizing the second one for any in-person company events. That's it. No mandates. Anything beyond that will lead you into a logistical nightmare (at best), foster a false sense of security as it isn't effective (worse), and in my humble opinion, is purely fucking unethical (at worst of all, which I'd like to think is a decent enough reason not to do something) at this stage.
So anyways, all of the above is the summary of my current POV. What follows below is/are the supporting details for the conclusions I reached in my summary POV 1(a), 1(b), and 2(i) above, if you're interested in the data.
Always happy to chat / update further as the saga continues ✌
best, [REDACTED]
P.S. if you're going to skip Parts 1 & 2 below*, then no worries... I get it, I probably wrote far more than you were looking for. But if indeed you do skip them, try to make it to the Closing Thoughts section way down below -- I've sourced a nifty chart down there that might give your colleagues pause in their ongoing discussions about mandates before they consider the unvaccinated to be idiots for whom behavioral mandates are the only appropriate solution.
*Though I highly recommend Part 1 (where it says "TWO OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER" (then scroll to find #2)) as this contains a suggestion for how to naturally protect yourself from COVID-19.
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PART 1: RISK OF COVID-19 DEATH -> DE MINIMIS FOR ME
First I'll address why I do not view COVID-19 as dangerous for me personally: from the CDC's own data, available here, you can see current the Count of Cases and Count of Deaths by age ->
(Though before I go further, pardon me for abstaining from a lengthy discussion on the reliability of data from an organization that even Dr. Deborah Birx herself -- (an individual who received a Meritorious Service Medal from the U.S. Department of Defense in 1991 and a Medal of Excellence from the CDC in 1994) -- was quoted as saying she didn't trust a single word from. Hmm, I wonder why she didn't "trust" the data, could it be because they were ---> overinflating "COVID-19 deaths"? <---... I digress.)
Anyways, according to the CDC, being 32, my "risk" stands at 0.14% (purely averages speaking, irrespective of the analysis below); a "starting statistic" you could call it.
Immediate issue with this data, unfortunately, is we're only able to count cases with confirmed COVID-19 PCR (or other) test results, undercounting materially true case counts to date. As you might imagine, those asymptomatic do not test themselves regularly or out of nowhere. I mean, personally speaking, I am obviously not testing myself on any basis on any cadence -- I'd only get tested if I had reason to. Thus is the reason, that the CDC already stated well early on in this pandemic that true case counts were "likely" to be upwards of 10x higher than we have documented (which they concluded based on widespread antibody testing). Deaths in the U.S., on the other hand, are religiously tested for COVID-19, capturing the vast majority (if not nearly all) deaths, where a COVID-19 infection was present.
Using these two bits of information from the CDC, we can adjust for a "truer" baseline risk. Now, while I could exercise the luxury of taking on more than a 10x spread (because those younger tend to be more asymptomatic), I'll be conservative just for the sake of it and just use the "10x average" figure. And so, a true starting statistic for me isn't 0.14%, but a markedly lower 0.014%.
Next, we can use Exhibit B, taken right from the CDC website:
Again, this is nothing new and has been known since very early in the pandemic, as you can see from this study for example listing the leading comorbidities as measured in NY as early as April 2020:
And herein lies my second issue with folks who preach to me that vaccines are necessary for my survival (the first being my initial lowly baseline risk).
Knock on wood, but I have no non- COVID-19 induced comorbidities -- zero. My takeaway is just that: for someone like me, COVID-19 is mostly a virus known to exacerbate serious pre-existing conditions to the point of overwhelming the system definitively.
Put another way, imagine a motorcycle rider trying to assess their risk of death from riding (i.e., catching COVID-19). They see a study which puts the risk of death for those motorcycle riders who were (1) drunk (2) doing a wheelie on the highway (3) during a rainstorm, and (4) while texting with a friend (i.e., analogous to four comorbidities). It would be flawed reasoning for a rider who doesn't do any of those things to put themselves in the same risk category as those who do. So while no one is saying motorcycles aren't dangerous -- they certainly are -- they're nowhere even in the vicinity as dangerous as riding while doing all the other things. Likewise, neither should a healthy teenager dwell on their COVID-19 risk with the same fervor as a 100 year-old morbidly obese individual with terminal cancer.
Okay, let's revisit my personal risk again. First, I will ignore the 5% "no comorbidities" statistic above, because out of fairness I want to account for likely COVID-19 induced comorbidities like Respiratory Failure, Sepsis, etc. as well as possible ones like Renal Failure, Cardiac Arrest, and the like. So, let me simply reduce my risk not by 95%, but 57% (conservatively even rounded down further to a clean 50%), which removes just 1 non- COVID-19 induced comorbidity for my age group.
And just like that, my adjusted risk is downgraded to 0.0069% annually (annually, because it's only once a year -- after which time a better-than-vaccination natural immunity kicks in for that season).
So what really is 0.0069%, you might ask? After all, we humans aren't terribly good with numbers like that. To help you put it in perspective, consider that according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, your (or my) risk of dying from a freak car accident in any given year, is 1 in 5,407 or 0.018%.
Let that sink in: based on what we know today, I personally am 268% more likely to die in a car accident tomorrow (or any day this year) than COVID-19. But do you really think that in pre-pandemic times, the "1 in 5,407" statistic kept me locked up inside my house? You think even today (in the middle of a pandemic) that figure stops me from taking a leisurely drive to grab ice cream with my nephews? or catching a movie with my brother? or -- God forbid!! -- hanging out with and actually talking with my friends? No!, and it never could. Because life, my friend, is about dancing in the summer rain, not cowering in fear of getting struck by lightning. But hey, maybe that's just me...
In any case, I want to come back to your comment about concerns your colleagues have regarding young children. When we look at the statistics available (table above), the results are even more stark: for kids aged 5-11, their odds of a fatal COVID-19 infection are 1 in 137,000 when you factor in asymptomatic cases. And again, we're talking about a risk inclusive of those with comorbidities. For kids 5-11 who are perfectly healthy, you can consider their risk nil. Okay, well obviously it could never be actually zero, because we both know sometimes kids also fall off a bike and kill themselves -- that's life. But you don't exactly see people running around freaking out over bicycles all day long, do you? Which is ironic as hell now that we're on the subject, considering that's almost exactly the number of kids that have died from bicycles as from COVID-19 in the same time frame.
So when I hear about folks taking their kids for a bike ride on the weekend (how awful), or worse!, maniacally driving their kids for ice cream (putting those precious kids at 5,091% (51x) the risk of death as COVID-19), but then trembling at the thought of walking into an office the following Monday because there's an unvaccinated person there, so they feel the need to demand forcing medical decisions on those people (like getting jabs with vaccines made by companies whose rap sheets (Pfizer, J&J) would satisfy essay requirements at most colleges, approved by an organization that finds safety issues in 1/3 of its drugs post-approval), I come to the simple conclusion that common sense has left the building -- it's mass hysteria.
Alright, enough beating the completely de minimis personal risk dead horse because the point is clear. But let me add two more small things before getting to the dangers of the vaccine:
TWO OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER
The section above looked at the whole thing purely from a mathematical risk perspective with neither proactive measures in mind, nor accounting for simple and effective (though IMO criminally suppressed) treatment options available to thwart COVID-19 risk even further.
(1) First, on the treatment side. Look, I know there was the whole "orange man (Trump) bad, the FDA disagrees" political BULLSHIT thing going on. Like I said above, I do not give a shit about the political angle of any of this. I require data, and the data could not be more ironclad on the subject matter. I will simply leave these two links here, and avoid another 5 pages in this POV on why IMO this is being criminally suppressed by federal agencies:
- Second, Hydroxychloroquine (link to the studies). Summary table as follows:
By the way, it is worth noting I have a friend right now who has COVID-19. He has felt like shit for the past week. I sent him the studies, and he bought Ivermectin 3 days ago without a prescription from a local store I pointed him to. After a week of feeling like shit, it took him less than a day to get close to symptom free. But hey, I am not a doctor, and "Your Mileage May Vary." There are a dozen other treatments in addition to the ones above that aren't getting approved for mass application, either. Go figure.. I could send you the studies if you want, but anyways let's move on.
(2) As it pertains to the proactive side -- okay, sit tight because I'm going to perform a holy miracle here and give you one of several simple things you can do to essentially ensure never needing to worry about COVID-19 again. Not for you, not for the kids, and not even for the neighbor's dog. Ready? Okay drumroll please.... Did you catch that? If you didn't, I'll decipher it for you. It's your new friend Vitamin D.
If you'd like dozens more studies on this subject, let me know, but start with this good summary I just found for you here -- it's worth a full read, but two pretty charts from the link for you here:
Study #1:
Study #2:
The first study is striking all on its own and worth internalizing, but unfortunately it did group an entire category called "normal" into a single bucket. FYI "normal" is what the medical world considers to be ~20ng/mL. But that's all it is as a level: normal... but far from what we want, which is excellent.
That's where the second study becomes helpful. It puts the explosive nature of the findings into real perspective: at levels of 25ng/mL in the study, no severe or critical hospitalized outcomes were observed. While at levels of 40ng/mL or greater, there were not even hospitalizations. Now personally, I regard it as nothing less than a crime against humanity that neither the WHO nor CDC are PUSHING these (and dozens other peer-reviewed studies on the subject) onto the forefront of our collective media screens. But as for the reason, I must digress, because again I could go down a long and nasty rabbit hole about perverted incentives in the system in terms of why you likely haven't seen them.
In any case, here's what is just so awesome for me... remember when we concluded I had a higher risk of crashing & dying from my trip to the local ice cream shop than from COVID-19? Well, it just got a WHOLE lot better, because my Vitamin D levels happen to be considerably well above 40ng/mL. Which means we need to be honest with ourselves and admit that I effectively have a ZERO clinically observed risk of death from COVID-19. I mean shit.... at this point really the only way I can die of COVID-19 is by having it and then getting into a car accident. Then sure, I will die with COVID-19 (and, as you'll recall from the link above, they would count it!).
So my advice is as follows: get your dang sunshine first thing in the morning. Do not lockdown. In fact, I'd argue it's what caused so many deaths. People were heavily Vitamin D deficient from sitting at home all day, and it literally fucking killed them instead of helped them. And what the CDC did in this regard was at best negligently or at worst intentionally, criminal, and I have nothing but disdain for the way they went about that. Don't even get me started on the youth suicides it led to, the increases in domestic violence, increases in drug overdoses, infanticide, denial of healthcare, and let's not dismiss the whammy of the sheer economic devastation to jobs and small businesses the world over, the bleak economic prognosis for the poorest (how convenient), and the future impact of staggering U.S. debt right here at home. All caused by the CDC and WHO's incompetence.
Honestly -- my personal advice if you want to stop worrying about COVID-19 for the rest of your life (if you still even are), would be to follow the Dan Miller protocol. Each of his bits of advice is like an extra layer of bulletproof glass on top of Kevlar against COVID-19. And remind your colleagues, too, to stop relying on the "American way" of taking a pill to solve all their problems and blaming the unvaccinated. That is not only completely debunked now as I've demonstrated throughout but it is weak morally. It's high time we all do the hard self-work of making ourselves physically resilient, and stop feebly making outward demands of others to inject into their bodies the equivalent of a slow-acting poison. Because the science on that shit is clear -- these specific vaccines are largely poison to countless millions who are not at high natural COVID-19 risk and do not need it, and these vaccines will not be the savior so many think they will.
Speaking of which... perfect segway.
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(VERY BRIEFLY) PART 2: LONG-TERM RISKS OF [SPECIFICALLY] THE COVID-19 VACCINE -> HIGH
As I'm sure you'll remember, a while back I mentioned I would send you a thorough, synthesized summary outlining the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines and how the risks they carry far outweigh the risks of the virus itself. Unfortunately, I am not even a fraction of the way through the hundred plus pages of medical literature showing that conclusion -- I'm still working through it. I absolutely feel terrible for not having lived up to my promise, though I'm sure you can appreciate the sheer herculean nature of synthesizing 7 months' of research involving almost a thousand individual pieces of data, and weeks' worth of video testimonials by researchers, all into something "succinct and digestible", all the meanwhile working on [my company] in the middle of it all.
In any case, it would be disingenuous of me I didn't at least provide a sneak peak of a random assortment of links I had handy for why I will not get the vaccine (aside from the fact that COVID-19 poses no risk to me, per the first section):
Some bonus links in your spare time that caught my eye in just the past week:
- Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens (bad for me, terrible for society; moral obligation not to partake in this)
- Is a Coronavirus Vaccine a Ticking Time Bomb? (Spoiler alert: likely is)
- A Pathologist Summary of What These Jabs do to the Brain & Other Organs
- Might COVID Injections Reduce Lifespan?
- MIT & International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research: Worse Than the Disease? Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19
- How COVID-19 Vaccine Can Destroy Your Immune System
- The Inanity of RNA Vaccines For COVID-19
- New Report Sheds Light on Vaccine Doomsday Cult (sketchy website, but well explained content. I suppose even a broken clock can be right twice a day...)
- Children 50 TIMES More Likely to Die from Covid Vaccine Than From Virus (from the former CSO of Pfizer)
- Pfizer vaccine in Israel: Mortality rate 'hundreds of times greater in vaccinated young people'
- Are COVID shots fueling more dangerous mutations?
- Less than a third of delta variant deaths are in the unvaccinated (not really an article regarding vaccine dangers, but more so inefficacy)
- +1,000 additional articles, papers, studies, you name it that I could send anyone that wants the full dump of 'em (unsynthesized, of course)
- Fun Quick Video: Mt. Vernon, IN School Board Meeting (though he got a couple things wrong, some points are good food for thought)
- Podcast: The High Wire -- A Sea of Lies (in depth discussion about perverse incentives driving bad decisions by the CDC (particularly the second half of the video))
- Podcast: Objective:Health - Study on the Adverse Effects of the Pfizer Vaccine (in which the presenters discuss a paper by the same name).
- Short & Sweet: Why non-lethal pressure on the virus is bad (versus natural immunity) -> Part 1 | Part 2
- +100 more videos and podcasts on the subject to anyone who asks (unsynthesized, of course)
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CLOSING THOUGHTS
If you made it this far and checked out even any of the content, kudos. Most folks here in the Northeast stop listening to me once I say "hey, there's something not right here in this data" or "I'm not too worried about COVID-19 personally". They think I'm a nut. Now, if you've made it this far and checked out most of the content, then I already know you're starting to wonder if you're losing your mind, because boy do I have a club pass with your name on it, if you'd like one
Alas, contrary to popular belief it's far from a nut club, despite how strong the external pressure is these days to try to make it out to be the case. Rather, It's a club filled with precisely the very people who we're supposed to be listening to as a society:
The CDC would have you believing it is just the crazy and uneducated who are most wary of their (and the FDA/WHO's) conclusions -- you know, it's all the rednecks down south! And they're right, it is the uneducated (left of the chart). But it is disingenuous for them to try and ignore on the nightly news research like this out of Carnegie Mellon suggesting the biggest group of those most vaccine-hesitant happen to be the smartest folks in the world -- the ones I've certainly not been ignoring, despite their being shamed, cancelled off of social media, and publicly silenced.
Put another way, I would only posit the simple question of when in the history of the world have you ever had thousands of scientists, doctors, and researchers, some of the brightest minds* in their fields around the world sounding an alarm, and the official response be to label them all as batshit crazy and prevent them from speaking? Hint. Personally, I can't support it. A free society must allow all open discussion without ridicule well before we dare discuss collectively forcing medical decisions on people using actual threats against their autonomy. We're far too past that Vietnam-level of government lying bullshit that results in unholy suffering for society for this barbaric nonsense to continue, and it's time for this country to start acting like we learned something about the importance of asking questions. I simply cannot place any trust in the idea I'm not being lied to until every scientist worth their salt has had an opportunity to speak up freely, and the nature of their concerns investigated transparently. And neither should anyone else.
*Such a fun fact it is that among this ocean of scientist voices being smeared & erased from history are (1) the guy who helped invent mRNA vaccine technology, and (2) the former Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Pfizer (who held that role for 16 years and focused on respiratory illnesses), both of whom are saying we have to stop vaccinations at once for those who aren't at actual high-risk with COVID, because for everyone else they not only toxic & dangerous but will be the very cause of this never ending pandemic. Now I don't know about you, but I neither invented mRNA technology nor worked at Pfizer for 16 years as CSO, but if I did, I'd sure prefer the American people heard my concerns, you know, sans the childish smear tactics part. Until then, I will not -- cannot -- accept any mandates on moral grounds.
And so there you have it. My opinion on mandatory vaccinations at this stage: if this were the Bubonic Plague, I'd be the first in line to get the shot. Same for Polio, Tetanus, and a whole lotta other great vaccines. But for COVID-19? Let's just say I wouldn't even know what to tell Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates to apologize sufficiently if I -- knowing what I know now -- supported a mandate. Come to think of it, there's a quote that comes to mind here that I think is a nice way to wrap up this write-up, and commemorate those who continue to protect the rights of society:
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DISCLAIMER -> OBLIGATORY
I obviously have to say this before I sign off.
At the end of the day, I'm not a doctor, I do not have an MD, a Ph.D., or any other useful acronym. All I am is an individual who values truth above hysteria & ideology. I will go wherever the truth points me to without regard for what "side" that puts me on. If it's a contrarian side, then shit I guess I'm going to have to get in some fights. If I'm on the side of the majority, I guess I'll rest easy. But wherever it is, I'm willing to go there, and as I said in my opening statement and reiterated to the group -- I will always remain open to thoughtful and productive dialogue and my POV on every topic is subject to change through lifelong reflection. All I ask for these days is for those who disagree with me to either have the sincerity to work with me using the scientific method to get the facts on this subject, or if they have no interest in that, to let me do it alone without the constant coercion, which is how I'm sure the folks in your office who are unvaccinated, feel.
Anyways, for the actual disclaimer part: we all have to make our own decisions, do our own research (though I'm always happy to keep sending stuff I come across), and take our own risks. Freak accidents can happen, and just like I wouldn't want to be responsible for a car accident that happens if you decide to go to a particular ice cream shop I recommend, it is the same for anything I've sent above and anything you or anyone you may share any of the information with do as a result of it. Always seek and follow professional, accredited advice!<-- the disclaimer part.
Anyone who sees the vaccine as having more benefit than risk, should absolutely take it. I agree 100% with an 85 year-old with five comorbidities getting the jab -- shit if that was me, I'd be getting quadruple jabbed walking around with a gas mask. No really, I would. Because for them the virus is actually very dangerous. And I've recommended it for some that I know personally would benefit from the vaccine because they are at high risk. But that's where it ends. And not a single, inch, further.
