Last week I failed to restrain myself from responding to a post made by a FB acquaintance whom I’d met in person only once, at a sailing afterparty. In the post, this acquaintance was gloating over an article stating that hundreds of students were disenrolled from a public university for refusing to be forcefully vaccinated.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

I firmly believe that it is wrong to deny education (or employment) in any public institution based on the individual’s decision to not be injected with a vaccine.

Why?

The vaccine is proving to be highly effective for people who feel at risk from covid – thus anyone that feels threatened by the unvaccinated, can effectively protect themselves by being vaccinated themselves.

Student-age individuals and practically everyone of working age, are not at a significant statistical risk of death, or long-term complications from covid – this is especially true for the Delta variant, which has proven to thus far be less deadly (possibly due to better treatment protocols). Although the numbers of cases are spiking, and hospitalizations have increased, the survivability rates across the board (even for unvaccinated people) are greater than 99% overall and are in the 99.8% territory for people under 50*. Actual deaths from Covid ARE IN FACT ON THE DECLINE**. When we start to discuss risks for college-aged individuals, we start to get into the territory where taking 3 round trips by car to get the vaccine shots, may actually hold a comparable risk of injury or death, than contracting covid – and this is absurd! As such, I strongly feel that the vaccination mandates have more to do with politics, panic, and a power grab, than anything related to health or saving lives.

Am I personally an anti-vaxxer?

No. I am a believer in modern medicine, science, and vaccines. Within the past six years, due to travels and changes in personal life, I have spent thousands of dollars out-of-pocket getting electively vaccinated for a great number of things where I felt that my risk factors were significant. I maintain booster shots for other common things – shingles, tetanus, etc. If I were to travel to the tropics of Africa or South America, I would absolutely take the Yellow Fever vaccine.

Why do I have a problem with these Covid vaccines?

The issue of Covid and the vaccines has been greatly politicized. Politicians and others in power, who have no medical training whatsoever have put themselves above the medical establishment professionals in pushing these vaccines through and bypassing many safety protocols. These vaccines are NOT like the flu shot! They are RNA/mRNA vaccines, which anecdotally was the cause of humans turning into zombies in the plotline of the I Am Legend movie. Anecdotes aside, there is good reason why we have safety protocols for development of vaccines. Yet there are numerous verified stories of doctors and scientists being fired when raising concerns about the long-term safety of these vaccines. This makes me uncertain about their outcomes and given the relatively low risk of complications arising from contracting covid, I feel that taking the vaccine may carry a greater risk to my health than the risk of contracting covid.

Do I advocate others to not take these vaccines?

No. I recommended and encouraged my 71-yearold father, who has heart and lung conditions, to get vaccinated as soon as possible (and he did). I feel that others at risk and especially those who are elderly, should take this vaccine. In the short term, the vaccine is proving to be relatively safe and quite effective. My research into the claims of 12,000 dead from the vaccine lead me to conclude that due to the fact that many very-very sick people with extremely short life expectancies were first to be vaccinated, they passed from the vaccine acting as the proverbial ‘last straw’. My primary concern for the not-at-risk population, is that this poorly tested vaccine, which bypassed safety protocols, may carry unknown side effects that may come to the surface ten or twenty years later. Those most at risk from covid, are not going to be around 20 years from now anyway. But for the rest of us, this is a valid concern.

Does FDA’s retroactive approval of a vaccine make it ok?

I do not believe so. Again – there are tons of undue political pressures being exerted – threats of firings and destruction of careers. Those are not conditions under which true evaluations can be performed.

What are my thoughts on Covid overall?

I maintain that we as a society over-reacted and killed a fly with a nuclear bomb. Many in power used this crisis for political and economic gains, while unjustly destroying the lives of many others. I suspect that some in power, who’d realized that we overreacted, are now building a “paper tiger” to make the virus seem like a bigger deal than it is to justify their actions for posterity. The 600,000 deaths often cited by the panicked, were derived through unparalleled changes in protocol related to how we classify causes of death. Deaths from seasonal flu, COPD, routine heart attacks, and cancers, have been shifted and attributed to Covid. The 2018-2019 flu seasons were unusually mild, leaving a lot of frail individuals among us, who then succumbed to influenza-like-illnesses in the 2020 season. By my calculations based on source data, the numbers on Excess Deaths from the CDC are undeniable – the total numbers of death in the US reasonably attributable to Covid, stand at fewer than 40-60 thousand.***

Meanwhile, in 2020 we’ve broken all records for deaths from bacterial pneumonia (caused by the wearing of unwashed masks). The data is clear that hundreds of thousands of treatable cancers have not been diagnosed in time because people were either unable, or too fearful to go in for routine checkups. Same goes for many other deadly chronic diseases. And then there is suicide – especially among the young where the graduating class at West Seattle Highschool had 3 kids who ended their lives, comprising an unheard-of 1% suicide rate. In terms of “lifetime lost”, our actions that were meant to control the spread of the virus caused more death than the virus itself. And we need to stop the insanity!

What leaves me most perplexed is that it seems like most people who are rooting for shutdowns, mandates, and regulations, are the millennials. Discussing covid with these people, it is clear that they feel an imminent and mortal personal danger from this virus which is what empowers them to condone and justify disastrous actions like curfews, forceful shutdowns of businesses, and forced vaccinations. Yet according to even the grossly over-inflated data from the CDC, the total number of Covid-related deaths in the 18-29 age group since the start of this disaster, stands at 2,630 individuals. **** On the scale of a 340,000,000 US population, that just about falls within the definition of a “statistical zero”. These people are almost as likely to die from accidental drowning (which kills roughly 4,000 Americans annually) yet they appear to be by far and away the most vaccinated, most mask-wearing, and certainly the loudest when in comes to their support for others to be just like them. I can only conclude that the ‘participation trophy generation’ clearly grew up without the life skills necessary to perform any independent data analysis whatsoever.

As my friends know, I have been writing my thoughts about the coronavirus and covid since February of 2020. In performing my own data analysis, verifying findings published in articles from creditable sources, and posting links to raw data from WHO, CDC and EuroMOMO, I’ve NEVER endorsed any political views, parties, or candidates. I have spoken out against and criticized many of the policies enacted by public officials, but I feel that these have been without any regard for their party affiliation. If one party is catching more of my flack than the other, it is solely based on their deeds.

Yet time and time again, when people lose the argument on the basis of data analysis, they resort to baselessly tarring me with political affiliations to which I vehemently do not subscribe. For the record: I am proud to say that I’ve voted for 3rd party candidates in every single presidential election since I was legally able to vote.

For my trouble of voicing these opinions and spending hours over numerous posts within that thread (and others) to validate my opinion, I was unfriended, blocked, and my writings deleted. As in so many times before – I can lead a horse to water…

I am appalled by the numbers of people living in their echo chambers, stating loosely based strong believes, and excommunicating those who do not agree with them. This is a trying time for us as a nation. Dialogue is key.

* Covid survivability rates: (https://www.cdc.gov/…/hospitalization-death-by-age.html) the reference group presently has only 2,761 deaths. (https://data.cdc.gov/…/Provisional-COVID-19…/9bhg-hcku) For comparison, roughly 4,000 people per year drown.

** Covid deaths are on the decline: (https://www.wkbn.com/…/the-delta-variant-is-surging-in…/)

*** Excess Deaths counts per CDC – see previous 2 years under the yellow line building up “dry tinder” of frail individuals. (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm)

**** CDC total deaths related to Covid 19 broken our by age group showing that only 2,630 individuals died in the 18-29 age group. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/)