“When we finally do, God willing, get a vaccine, who’s going to take the shot? Who’s going to take the shot? Are you going to be the first one to say sign me up?… The question of whether it’s real.” Joe Biden said during the campaign.
“If Donald Trump tells us that we should take it [Covid vaccine]— then I’m not taking it.” Kamala Harris proclaimed during the Vice-Presidential debate in October, 2020.
In the run up to the election, both our current President and Vice-President politicized the vaccines, as they did with every part of the Covid-19 pandemic. The worse the pandemic was, the better their chances of winning the election. They sowed hesitancy in the vaccines, questioning their safety and efficacy purely for political reasons, knowingly risking peoples’ lives solely for their own political power.
And now, Joe Biden announced that he is pushing forward with vaccine mandates because he is frustrated that over 80 million Americans are still not vaccinated. Joe Biden spent months in 2020 creating hesitancy about these vaccines, and now he is blaming and shaming the very people into whom he planted the seed of vaccines-hesitancy for being hesitant to take the vaccines.
The main reason why there is so much vaccine hesitancy has been the poor messaging by the CDC and the White House. The lead spokesman for Covid, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has discredited himself time and again. He told at least 4 provable lies about this virus and vaccines; he lied about masks early in the pandemic; he lied about the possibility of Covid originating from a lab; he lied about his funding of the gain of function research which created this virus; and he continues to lie about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.
Dr. Fauci claimed the vaccines were safe and effective, when he knew that they did not prevent infection the same way vaccines for other viruses do. That is why he said that vaccinated people had to continue to wear masks and social distance, and warned that the unvaccinated are a threat to the vaccinated. These conflicting messages only discredited their pro-vaccine messaging. And as many were weaving through the web of lies and hypocrisies, those who followed orders and got the vaccine were virtue signaling, claiming they are better, and more moral people. And those who didn’t were shamed, and ostracized.
From the beginning, Dr. Fauci, and now the Biden administration have treated the American people like children who could not handle the truth. Instead of being open and honest with us, they chose to lie. Instead of giving us the facts about the vaccines, they told us to shut up and obey. Those who questioned them were mocked, ridiculed, vilified, and blocked on social media. That is absolutely no way to win over people. You win over people and convince them by empathizing with them, and accurately informing them, not by vilifying and lying to them. And now they are implementing vaccine mandates, forcing people to get these medications they don’t want because through their ineptitude they have not effectively convinced the people to get them.
Imagine if your child or an elderly parent was sick and needed to get medical care, but they were hesitant to go to the doctor, would you tell them to ‘shut-up and just do as your told’? Or would you talk to them, and address their fears and concerns with facts and evidence? Would you try to connect and empathize with them, or would you completely dismiss them as idiots, make fun of them, or call them evil?
Many people have not taken Covid seriously, and have stopped listening to our leaders because of the complete hypocrisy about the virus, and the protocols surrounding it by the people setting public policy. Our leaders locked down our schools, shut down our businesses and prevented average citizens from going to an outdoor socially distanced church, but they allowed BLM and Antifa to riot mask-free and non-socially distanced for 5 months last summer. 12-year-olds are being forced to take a vaccines they do not need or want, and at the same time, the people who are forcing these vaccine mandates are ushering hundreds of thousands of Covid positive illegal immigrants into this country from every corner of the world.
They watch as kindergarteners are being forced to wear masks in school, but it is okay for Barack Obama to throw a 400+ guest, 3-day birthday party for himself last month, indoors and mask-less, because the crowd was “sophisticated”. On Sunday, the biggest Covid vaccine virtue signalers, and social media shamers, the A-List celebrities, attended the Emmy’s mask-less, and not socially distanced. These hypocrites do not understand that viruses do not act like them. Viruses do not discriminate against people based on political affiliation, celebrity status, net-worth, and not even your assumed level of virtue. Repeating “woke” talking points on social media may protect you from media criticism and salvage your career, but that means nothing to a virus. “Wokism” protects you against fake threats, but does nothing against real life threats.
Proponents of the vaccines claim that 99% of the people who are dying from Covid-19 are unvaccinated. If that is true, then the vaccinated have nothing to worry about from the unvaccinated. It’s only the unvaccinated who are dying, not the vaccinated. So, the unvaccinated should only be a threat to themselves.
But if we are looking at the statistics of who is dying from Covid, we should consider that 94.5% of the people who have died from this virus were 70+ years of age or had a comorbidly, or both. So why are we forcing healthy 25-year-olds, and college age students to get these vaccines, when to them this virus is not more deadly than the seasonal flu?
Considering both stats about who is dying from this, it’s easy to look at it this way: according to the rates of death, the “young & healthy” are equivalent to the vaccinated, and the “70+ or unhealthy” are equivalent to unvaccinated. So, get the 70+ or unhealthy vaccinated and leave everyone else alone.
It is proven that this virus affects people differently based on age and health status, yet we are applying a one size fits all prone to dealing with this virus regardless of age and health status. That is completely unconscionable, and completely anti-science. Would a doctor prescribe the same treatment to a person with stage 4 lung cancer and a person with a cancerous mole on his shoulder? No. It would be malpractice. But here we are using the same medical approach for a 75-year-old man with emphysema, and a completely healthy 25-year-old who has a 50 times better chance of survival from Covid.
Many companies have been mandating these vaccines on their employees, firing those who do not want to comply. Would these companies be willing to sign a contract assuming financial responsible for any side effects these vaccines may cause in terms of pain, suffering and lost wages? If the vaccines are required by the employer, then any and all side effects from the vaccines on their employees can be seen as a work place injury where the employer becomes financially responsible. No employer would sign that contract even though they claim the vaccines are 100% safe. Employers want to benefit from the vaccine requirements, while shielded from responsibility if a negative outcome arises. They will hide behind the fact that these vaccines still have not been fully approved by the FDA, so the patient assumes all responsibility of the negative outcomes, as if he took these vaccines voluntarily, free from coercion.
It is still very difficult to make an informed decision about these vaccines. There are three vaccines on the market. Do we know which of the three vaccines is the most effective in preventing infection? Do we know which of the vaccines is the safest from side effects? No. That information should be readily available, updated at least weekly, if not daily, but it is not. Go to the CDC website, and see for yourself.
Where are the readily available numbers on who is being hospitalized and dying from this disease based on age, gender, health status, and any other relevant data point? The public should not have to dig through website after website to piece this information together for themselves. That is where people stumble across misinformation. These numbers should be presented to the public by the CDC clearly and concisely on a regular basis. Instead of yelling at the unvaccinated, threatening mandates, masking, lockdowns and school closures, present the American people with the facts and evidence, and if the facts and evidence logically lead to your conclusions, the overwhelming majority would follow. That’s called “following the science”.
No one has showed evidence of how effective each of the vaccines are. Are they 90% effective, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, 10%? What is the number? They don’t tell us. Which vaccines is the most effective? Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer? Wouldn’t that help in deciding which vaccine to take if you decided on getting vaccinated? They don’t tell you the risk of side effects data either. They stopped collecting and/or sharing the Vaers (vaccine adverse effect) data? Why would they do that?
Hundreds of millions of people have already been vaccinated so the data set is large enough, but they are not sharing the data, why? If the data showed that the vaccines were 95% effective and had 0.001% adverse effect rates, those numbers would be everywhere. Yet they are conspicuously silent. They tell everyone shut-up and comply. All this information, all these hard numbers are vital in making an informed medical decision, yet these numbers are not available to the public, and we are told to trust medical professionals who lied to us again and again.
Are we not tracking this data? If no, that is medical malpractice by the doctors in charge. If we are tracking the data, but not disclosing it to the public—the potential patients, to mislead them into believing the vaccines are safer and more effective than they really are, is also medical malpractice. I know with cancer patients, before a treatment protocol is administered, the doctors go to great lengths to inform the patient that this treatment is X% effective, and in X% of patients develop these side effects. Then the patient can make an informed decision. But that is not the approach with these vaccines. We get a blanket statement, that the vaccines are safe and effective, so take the vaccines. But people can still get the virus, spread the virus, so everyone still has to wear a mask and social distance.
Following the science is not some doctor you don’t know telling you to do something without the supporting evidence behind his recommendation. When I broke my wrist as a 15-year-old, the doctor put my x-ray up on the screen and showed me where my bone was fractured. He didn’t say, I mandate you wear a cast for 6 weeks without an evidence as to why. That doctor treated the 15-year-old me more like an adult than the Dr. Fauci and the Biden administration has shown millions of grown adults in this country and that is why there is so much pushback. We can handle the truth, and we know when you’re lying.
The problem with Biden and people on the left is that they attain their political power not through uniting, but by dividing, and using divisive tactics will not get 100% of the people to follow what you say. You can’t mock and ridicule 75 million people on a daily basis, calling them white supremacists, and domestic terrorist, and expect them to listen to you on any subject matter. And that is the problem with the steep divisions in our country, no leader will ever be able to lead the entire country because elections are won by division, not by unity.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.