You shan’t be considered vaccinated until the 15th day after the last dose on the evolving schedule, and so were you to be 1 of the rarefied to perish as a result of an adverse reaction 13 days post dose, the reports will note you as an un-vaccinated individual who perished from covid, and your name will suffer posthumously by the ire of the clamoring masses who chatter about the bad behavior of the unvaxxed.
[random comment on CBC.ca]
“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told 60 Minutes on March 8, 2020.
“What about a month or so or two or three ago when people were saying ‘you don’t really need to wear a mask’. Well the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community and many people were saying this were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment (including the n95 masks and the surgical masks) were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people (namely the health care workers who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm ways to take care of people who you know are infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected we did not want them to be without the equipment that they needed so there was not enthusiasm about going out and everybody buying a mask or getting a mask we were afraid that that would deter away and the people who really needed it.”
This meme makes the issue seem so clear.
And yet the fact that we have such a short memory works in both directions when it comes to polio vaccines.
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In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned. Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine had caused 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.
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Of course, they eventually came up with an effective polio vaccine.
But the polo vaccines offer lifelong (or at least near-lifelong) immunity.
The covid vaccines seem to last for ~6 months.
The polio vaccines also offer sterilizing immunity, preventing infection and protecting against disease and transmission.
The covid vaccines are quite effective at reducing illness and hospitalization. But it’s becoming evident that they do not prevent infection and transmission of the virus.
Another way in which the polio / covid analogy falls apart is that polio vaccines were administered during polio epidemics. In other words: regional outbreaks. And they were administered (and continue to be administered) in areas where no polio is present.
By contrast, the covid vaccines are being administered during a pandemic. Covid is everywhere, all around the world, and the goal of creating herd immunity in specific populations with a non-sterilizing vaccine is a totally different scenario. So far it does not seem to be anywhere near ending the crisis, even in the countries with the highest vaccination rates in the world.
Meanwhile, the WHO have stated that we are never going to end the pandemic by vaccinating people in developed countries while ignoring people in the developing world. The people who need the vaccine the most are the ones in crowded slums with poor sanitation, and it is from those countries that the next variants will continue to emerge.
P.S. One last thing: polio ravages children. Covid does not. Please think extra carefully before vaccinating children for something that does not cause them significant harm.
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Sources:
How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to a Growing Vaccine Crisis | NIH
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
Polio Vaccine Effectiveness and Duration of Protection | CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-duration-protection.html
WHO asks wealthy nations to hold off on Covid vaccine boosters at least through September | WHO
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/who-calls-for-moratorium-on-covid-vaccine-boosters-at-least-through-september.html
We are well past the point where this type of divisiveness is not only toxic, it is completely unfounded.
It turns out that vaccinated people are just as capable of contracting and transmitting covid, AND they’re more likely to do so asymptomatically without even realizing it.
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[The CDC] released a study that showed the Delta variant produced similar amounts of virus in vaccinated and unvaccinated people if they got infected — data that suggests vaccinated people who get a breakthrough infection could have a similar tendency to spread the virus as the unvaccinated.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/05/health/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html
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“There are reports coming in that vaccinated populations have cases of infection, particularly with the delta variant,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, said at a press briefing Monday. “The majority of these are mild or asymptomatic infections.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/12/most-fully-vaccinated-people-who-get-covid-delta-infections-are-asymptomatic-who-says-.html
I’m sorry that our politicians and public health “experts” — who claim to “follow the science” — are actually spreading misinformation that isn’t based on current science whatsoever.
I hope people will begin to think for themselves.
There are 8.14 million children in Canada (0 to 19 years old).
As of September 10th, 2021 a total of 15 children (0 to 19 years old) have died of covid throughout the entire pandemic.
In other words, 0.0002% of children in Canada have died from covid.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/444868/canada-resident-population-by-age-group/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228632/number-covid-deaths-canada-by-age/
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The US has 74 million children and 364 have died from covid throughout the entire pandemic.
0.0005% of US children have died from covid.
That’s not at all what I’ve seen.
In fact, independent of education level, the vaccine hesitant I’ve met in the ER are typically more familiar with vaccine studies and more aware of their own covid risks than vaccinated people are.
For example, many of my nurses have refused the vaccine despite having seen more covid-related death and devastation than most people.
I ask them, “Why refuse the vaccine?”
They tell me that, while they have seen the first-hand dangers of covid in the elderly, the obese and diabetics, they think their risk is low.
They’re not wrong.
One nurse showed me the Oxford risk calculator.
A 30 year-old female has about a 1 in 7000 chance of catching covid and being hospitalized over 90 days.
She asked me, can I assure her that studies have found that her risk of serious harm from the vaccine is lower than her risk of hospitalization?
The truth is, I can’t. Our trials weren’t big enough. They weren’t big enough to show that the vaccines cause myocarditis. Yet now we know they do.
A recent observational study suggests the risk of vaccine-induced myocarditis in young males is higher than their risk of hospitalization from covid.
Is this true? We don’t know! It is based on observational data. To KNOW it’s not true we need a large trial that proves the vaccines reduce hospitalization more than they cause myocarditis in that age group.
The former FDA commissioner said the original premise of the vaccine was to reduce death and hospitalization. And that was the data that came out of the initial clinical trials. Except, as you all know very well (and unfortunately so did my nurse), the initial clinical trials DID NOT find a reduction in death or hospitalization, likely because they were inadequately powered.
The former commissioner is correct that the initial clinical trials SHOULD have found a reduction in these metrics.
We need your help on the front lines to stop vaccine hesitancy.
Demand that the booster trials are large enough to at least find a reduction in hospitalization.
Without this data we, the medical establishment, cannot possibly call out anti-vaccine activists who publicly claim that the vaccines harm more than they save, especially in the young and the healthy.
The fact that we do not have the clinical evidence to say that these activists are wrong should terrify us all.
Dr. Joseph Fraiman
Emergency room physician
New Orleans, Louisiana
Speaking before the FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee on September 17, 2021
COVID-NET conducts population-based surveillance for laboratory-confirmed COVID-19–associated hospitalizations in 99 counties across 14 states. Residents of the surveillance catchment area who received positive molecular or rapid antigen detection test results for SARS-CoV-2 during hospitalization or within 14 days before admission were classified as having COVID-19–associated hospitalizations.
