It's Not the Vaccine; It's the Mandates

The vaccine-mandate vehicle is moving us into a caste system driven by totalitarian leaders who believe in “the greater good,” “the benevolent lie,” and their own intellectual and moral superiority.

I believe that mandating [Covid] vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea. We’ve done this for decades and decades, requiring polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis” [vaccines].

Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 08-29-21

We are eager to extend the protection afforded by the vaccine to this younger population, subject to regulatory authorization, especially as we track the spread of the Delta variant and the substantial threat it poses to children.

-Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer 09-20-21

To me it’s unconscionable that a society uses its children as shields for adults….I’d have to worry about the ethical input into those people, to design a clinical trial for vaccines on young children under five who have extremely low risk from this disease.

-Dr. Scott Atlas, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (On American Thought Leaders with Jan Jekielek 09-23-21)

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a petri dish for the analysis of human behavior at the individual, communal, and governmental level. From the response to masks and lockdowns, to the response to the vaccines and vaccine mandates, we see all of humanity on stage in a story as dramatic, twisted, and tragic as a Shakespearean play.

The answers to difficult questions are seldom black and white; it’s generally somewhere in the shades of gray where we find common ground and balanced solutions. Keeping that in mind, ask yourself this: What do I think when someone questions the COVID-19 vaccines?

Here are some common answers: “Conspiracy theorist,” “Anti-vaxxer,” “Selfish,” “Unscientific,” “Trump supporter,” “Grandma-killer,” “Uneducated.”

No matter what we think – good or bad – about the COVID-19 vaccines, there is no denying that they are new, and that we have no long-term data for them. This is especially concerning when there is a huge push to approve the vaccines for children, supposedly “for their protection.”

The fact that the Pfizer vaccine was given full approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on August 23, 2021 provides no additional knowledge about the long-term effects of the vaccine. When the emergency authorization use was given to the Covid vaccines, there had been no trials conducted on children, pregnant women, or immunocompromised people. There hasn’t been enough passage of time to do long-term studies in any population.

Although the COVID-19 vaccines appear to be effective at reducing severity of disease and reducing deaths, there have also been thousands of adverse reactions to the vaccines, as reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The VAERS system can be subject to anecdotal or second-hand manipulation, but is still a useful tool. Another system VigiAccess (http://vigiaccess.org – enter “Covid-19 vaccines” in the search feature), launched by the World Health Organization, also lists thousands of adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines.

Why has there been such a negative response to just asking questions and expressing concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines? Who does this benefit? The drug companies? The government officials and public health officials who have staked their reputations on the efficacy of the vaccines? Professional medical boards and public education associations that are notoriously political?

I don’t know the answer to those questions. What I do know is that there has been failure, almost from the beginning, to deal with COVID-19 in a rational way, or to put perspective on the large numbers we deal with as we talk about it. Public health information from Redfield and Walensky of the CDC, from Dr. Anthony Fauci, and from many others like them, has often been erratic, one-sided, and sometimes illogical.

Dr. Fauci talks about other immunizations for children as justification for requiring that they be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to attend school. This is comparing apples to oranges. COVID-19 is not a high-risk disease for children and young adults. Almost from the outset, we have known that Covid targets the elderly and those with comorbidities.

As a compariosn, polio targeted children from its appearance in 1894, killing or crippling hundreds of thousands before Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine that became available to the public in 1955. 
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/salk-announces-polio-vaccine

In comparison to the lethality of polio, in the U.S. during an almost two-year period COVID-19 has contributed to the deaths of 464 children in the 0-17 age group, most of whom had comorbidities. During this same period COVID-19 is listed as the cause of 3,376 deaths in the 18-29 age group, meaning Covid deaths comprise a small number of the overall deaths in both age groups.

Still, mandatory vaccines for adults and children are the expressed goal for the White House, Dr. Fauci, and the CDC. Pres. Biden’s mandate for all companies with more than 100 employees to require vaccines or mandatory testing, is unconstitutional and most likely will not hold up in court, but it's going to take time for the issues to be worked out in the legal process.

In the meantime, some hospitals are finding it difficult to function as they lose qualified medical personnel who are refusing vaccination. Schools are losing good teachers and staff for the same reason. The military is moving to discharge those who refuse the vaccine. People are losing their jobs. This isn’t helping the economy.

Some see no problem with this, because they've taken the Covid jab and don't understand why anyone else would resist vaccination. They fail to recognize the deep concerns some have about the Covid vaccines, and seem to think it "serves them right." To those who think this way, I say: Someday it will be your turn. To look the other way while family members and neighbors are losing their jobs and being ostracized, whatever the reason, is immoral.

I believe in vaccinations and had my children immunized on the schedule recommended by their pediatricians. My husband and I have also received what are considered the “standard vaccinations.” But this situation is different. Very different. Requiring large swaths of the public to receive a certain medical treatment in order to participate in daily life has never before been implemented in the U.S.

Where does it stop? With the booster shots? On September 1, 2021 Dr. Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Dr. Philip Krause, deputy director of the office, resigned. Both were considered “veteran vaccine reviewers,” and their departure was met with dismay by many in the medical community.

On September 13, 2021 Dr. Gruber and Dr. Krause co-authored a paper in The Lancet with several other medical professionals questioning the wisdom of blanket recommendations for booster shots of the Covid vaccines. The article states:

“The currently available evidence does not show the need for widespread use of booster vaccination in populations that have received an effective primary vaccination regimen.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02046-8/fulltext

On September 22, 2021, an influential advisory committee to the CDC, made up of outside experts, rejected 15-0 a plan to give Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots to everyone. Instead the committee endorsed limiting the Pfizer-BioNTech booster vaccine to individuals 65 years of age and older, and those 18 through 64 years of age who are at high risk of severe COVID-19. They voted, 9-6, against authorizing vaccines for those considered to be in high-risk transmission environments. Concern was raised about booster shots possibly causing myocarditis in young people, and a desire for Pfizer to run more extensive booster trials before submitting its findings to the FDA.

"A healthy person less than 30, I would wait to see how this rolls out," said Dr. Paul Offit, one of the advisory committee members. "Wait for a few million doses to get out there."

CDC Director Walensky was not content. She chose to break from the professional advisory panel the next day, by expanding approval of the Pfizer COVID-19 booster shot for workers age 18-64 who are deemed by the government to work in “high risk occupational and institutional settings.”

With Walensky’s increase “roughly 60 million of the 100 million Americans who originally received the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine are now eligible for a third shot,” according to CNBC. The eligible include educators, health-care personnel, and supermarket employees.

Walensky stated, “In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good.” Justifying actions for "the greater good," does not instill historic confidence.

At this point in time, the word “eligible” is a euphemism for what will likely be "required" within a short time, based on what has happened so far.

The vaccine-mandate vehicle is moving us into a caste system driven by totalitarian leaders who believe in “the greater good,” “the benevolent lie,” and their own intellectual and moral superiority.

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Updated 09-25-21 for minor corrections and clarity.