"The anti-vaccine advocates have been proven wrong in every major claim they have made during the pandemic."
"The anti-vaccine advocates have been proven wrong in every major claim they have made during the pandemic. They claimed that the covid vaccines would lead to heart attacks, infertility, birth defects, and mass death. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. But if you spend much time talking to these people online, which I don’t recommend, you will find that they are not merely undeterred but regard themselves as vindicated, and they have moved on to demanding 'accountability' from the 'establishment.'
"And the 'free thinkers' of the [religious right and alt-right] are increasingly captive to this crackpot caucus... 'open-minded, [only] in the sense of being filled with cobwebs and tumbleweeds and offering no resistance to whatever stray breeze blows through ..."
~ Robert Tracinski, from his post 'The Jerry Springer Debating Society'
10 comments:
"The anti-vaccine advocates have been proven wrong in every major claim they have made during the pandemic.
And what of the claim by the pro-C-19-vaccine crowd, that it would prevent you catching the disease and spreading it? Because of course that claim lay at the heart of the whole government mandated vaccine laws, plus all the social bullying that came with it, You'll kill grandma" etc, which of course was the narrative during the lockdowns. I don't think I'm going to forget the US President muttering darkly about a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" and how "Our patience is wearing thin"
Aside from relying on Associated Press "FACT CHECKERS" (Really? The same sort of people who regularly fact check "Climate Change Deniers" like you), Tracinski's other great mistake is trying to pin this on the loudest, craziest voices.
If the argument is that heart attacks increased because of the C-19 vaccine then that's probably not true. But when it comes to incidents of myocarditis in young men, even Pfizer themselves recognised that, and quite early on in 2021. At which point the argument shifts to cost/benefit, where it always should have been; does the risk of myocarditis killing health young men outweigh their risk of dying from c-19? Given the incredibly low death stats for young men with C-19 I'd say the answer is no. Even more with babies. Is that anti-vax denial?
There were plenty of people like me, with 20-30 lifetime vaccinations (some for rare diseases I might catch in odd parts of the world), including booster shots, who looked at C-19 (Alpha, Delta, etc), its almost exact match to the Flu, at our age and in excellent health, concluded that our chances of surviving if we caught the disease were so high that a vaccination (and lockdowns etc) was not worth it. Run the clock forward a few decades with an aging immune system, and my decision might well be different.
But even then, I'd want to see the same sort of track record that other vaccines have established before I'd take this - you know, the ones that actually do prevent you catching the disease and spreading it - otherwise I'll just regard it as a therapeutic drug that may save my life, along with others like Monoclonal Antibody treatments, and perhaps not as good?
But sure, that makes me an "anti-vax" nut, just like I'm a climate change denier nut. Tracinski might also take note of the number of pissed off people who were convinced/bullied by the arguments, did get the jab and are now wondering why they bothered, having caught C-19 anyway.
One last thing. What was it about Covid that so scared you Peter? I'm struggling to think of any government measure used in response that you opposed - lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates - all that government shite that even officials are now admitting did not get the cost/benefit analysis they should have, all the sort of brainless State enforcement I thought Objectivists especially would oppose, or at least be critical of.
Well I wouldn’t call you a complete nut. Many of your comments seem reasonable, particularly the need for a benefit/cost tradeoff according to age and health. In principle I couldn’t agree more. It’s the reason my teenage sons didn’t get the subsequent shots, and I delayed my 3rd shot. There were some studies suggesting that too short a gap between boosters was suboptimal for long term protection.
But there are elements of nuttiness in there, particularly in your opening statement when you straw man the case for vaccines. I’ve never heard anyone claim that the vaccine would stop you catching or transmitting covid. It decreases your chances of catching it, your symptoms will probably be milder when you do catch it, and the risk of transmitting it to others decrease. All depending of course on the time since your last dose, because the effects do wear off.
Just like having a driving license, not driving excessively fast, and maintaining a road-worthy vehicle don’t guarantee you won’t have an accident that harms you and others. It decreases the chances you will, and that any accident is more likely to be less severe.
I recall hearing predictions that we would probably all eventually get covid, which turned out to essentially be correct. Also that it was likely (but not certain) covid would eventually evolve into something less deadly (because evolution usually works against a virus that kills of its host). So no surprises there, even though the vaccines saved millions of lives. Just like the people Robert is referring to though, for some reason you think this vindicates your scepticism.
As a result I’m left sceptical that when you do a benefit/cost tradeoff, you’ve actually understood the benefits and not over-stating the costs.
At the heart of the scepticism seems to be a failure to appreciate on a basic level what a vaccine actually does, combined with an innate scepticism of anything ‘unnatural’ you often see from the environmentalists, A vaccine essentially introduces some elements of what makes up the virus itself, in safer way that stimulates some of the same immune response. As a result your body will be more prepared in handling the actual virus when it comes. It was never claimed to eliminate it.
I am unjabbed and thank fully so. The jab is not a vaccine, it is to quote pfizer a gene therapy.
I have had covid, very mild compared to some of the flu's over the years, the same for my unjabbed immediate family.
I have seen many around me, multiple jabbed, getting far worse illness and repeatedly.
Ardern's 'safe and effective' followed by 'you wont get sick or die' were lies.
Hi Mark, like Tom above I’ve had dozens of vaccines - at last count 45, plus the usual childhood ones. I was a gazetted yellow fever vaccinator for over 25 years. I absolutely endorse the theory and practice of immunisation and believe it has saved millions if not billions of lives. But the Pfizer coronavirus mRNA gene therapy, along with those from other pharmaceutical companies, was rolled out without adequate trials to provide knowledge of the potential harms caused by this treatment. The public were not adequately informed that they were participating in a drug trial. And I believe over time the harms caused by the Pfizer therapy will become increasingly evident. I would not recommend the gene therapy to anyone. Its administration to pregnant women and children I would class as an act of criminal negligence. One of the worst parts of this growing scandal has been the belittling and derision directed toward scientists, doctors and in fact anyone who expresses a healthy scepticism over the way the pandemic was managed. It is absolutely healthy and reasonable to be a sceptic in these times, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Richard McGrath
Thanks Richard. Can you provide any links to scientific critiques of the Pfizer vaccine?
You talk about inadequate trials. In any field, including mine (engineering). there’s always a tradeoff between increased certainty you get by delaying the implementation of something, and the loss of benefit from that delay. Milllions would have died, and we would have been locked up for longer if trials had been longer. Are you taking that into account both benefits and costs when you call the trials “inadequate”, or are you just saying there’s some risk/potential downside?
A final question Richard. Do you think there might be a tendency for you to naturally be more critical of covid vaccines than you’d otherwise be because: (a) you were already grumpy about what governments were doing in response to the pandemic, and (b) governments were the ones telling us to get vaccinated?
To answer your last post first, Mark, probably yes to both questions. I was annoyed about the enforced lockdown, and at the PM for telling us that government was the sole source of truth. The lockdowns had long lasting effects on the mental health of many people, especially children, some of whom could be damaged for years.
I recall making this comment and then it just didn't seem to appear so I never checked back - until now.
I’ve never heard anyone claim that the vaccine would stop you catching or transmitting covid.
As the following visual says, "Oh Really"?
https://i.imgflip.com/8aw64k.jpg
"A vaccine essentially introduces some elements of what makes up the virus itself, in a safer way that stimulates some of the same immune response."
Is Mark's description here of what a vaccine does really in line with how the mRNA technology works?
What elements of the virus get introduced into the body with the Pfizer injection? None.
Mark is describing a traditional vaccine.
With the Pfizer jab, genetic material (mRNA) forces the body to create a simulated protein.
I'm surprised he hasn't made this distinction. Is he not aware of the difference?
This is not a minor point.
Doesn't this get to the whole crux of the issue of why so many people have refused the jab?
Post a Comment