As we sit here in July 2021, there has been much in the way of enforced behavior, fake news, accusations, insults, judgments, lies, agendas, and also some… news about where we are with this whole Covid pandemic.
I am not vaccinated, and I don’t plan on vaccinating unless there are tested and approved vaccines that fit what I’d call the normal behavior of vaccines that are antibody based versus any mRNA solutions we’ve seen. I think Novavax may be one that’s looking promising, and I will take it if it’s proven effective without serious side effects. I AM NOT against vaccines. Until then, I believe that there ARE other treatment methods that work, so I am not freaked out about catching Covid. Not that I deliberately run up to everyone I see and tell them to sneeze on me. But, I think sharing why and how I came to my current covid treatment position would help add some context to what I share and why.
Covid Virus Beginnings. Okay, so here goes. Back in January 2020 (boy that seemed ages ago), my wife and her sister were talking a lot about this Wuhan virus and I didn’t really pay too much attention to the issue of its spread or contagiousness. I did get a heads up from some remote sources, and had a gut sense that this was some type of bioweapon accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The zoonotic theory never sat with me, even though we all saw videos of Chinese people eating bats. You all saw that, right? Nasty as all get out. For real. So yes, I was an early believer in the lab theory. Maybe being Taiwanese with a heaping dose of mistrust in all things CCP influenced my bias, but I think my bias is well founded.
Lockdown Starts. But once Covid really spread like wildfire and we were in March and were given the directive to shut down and lockdown for two weeks, I was all in and willing to do my part. I was happy to help all of us fellow Americans and humans get through this. Don’t you all remember how eerily silent and quiet it was when you walked outside? I do. It was surreal.
But then, it just stayed locked down and shut down. All of a sudden we’re getting lay off news, business shut downs, articles and new shows about all the deaths and people going to ER and tons of caskets–especially that overhead shot of 50+ wood caskets being mass buried in New York. I think we as a nation all collectively freaked out, myself included. I remember watching the news coming out of China where all the masks were shipped to, and the PPE’s being in short supply all over. Further, my mom died April just over a month into the lockdown, so I was especially aware of the relational impact, logistical issues with size restrictions for gatherings, masks, etc. because of Covid. We were maxed out at 11 for her memorial, and there was always the fear of transmission in that room.
HCQ Fake News. During this time, when President Trump touted Operation Warpspeed, I think there was news about hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Z-pack being effective. I remember Daniel Dae Kim, the actor from Lost, saying he got Covid and recovered specifically using this course of treatment. I’m not sure about you, but I immediately thought that this was a cheap and surefire medical treatment that would be adopted wholesale. Even Trump was pushing it and had bought the drug from India. Remember that? And remember all the push back by the reports saying it’s dangerous, it’s ineffective, it doesn’t work? I do, because I was beyond flabbergasted why there was such resistance to HCQ, which has been approved and in use for many years (I know it was politics, but still.). That was a red flag. A big one that made me pause and think something was off. If it helped even save one life, it was worth it. The benefit was underplayed and the dangers magnified. Wrong. Just wrong.
Election 2020. To add to the complexity of Covid, we have to remember it was election season. All the new reports and “journalists” and politicians and people (from the left side, to be honest) were all accusing Trump of his murderous failure to take action to stop this pandemic. Remember all the claims of not restocking the masks, or that Trump should’ve had a national plan? I get that. I do. My thought back then: I think we as a people have been slowly trained to be complacent and simply demand that one “big man” step up and lead us through. It was always weird to me how people point to Taiwan or some other smaller country, and use that as proof we were failing. Hey, when you have 22 million people, it’s a heck of a lot easier to manage than 330 million. Trump followed the federalist system, which has always been in place, and is still the best decentralization of power for a vast country. Trump worked with the “president” of each state to make sure they got what they needed. Were there mistakes? Well, duh. But, each time one was made, it was always amplified and magnified politically to drag Trump down. I knew it was political because there was never reporting on the Dem’s missteps, but always only Trump’s. Some people still think Trump told people to inject Chlorox–oh yeah, that was…Joe Biden.
Trust the Science Hypocrisy. Then George Floyd died, and the country burned. I’ll only say this: we all had a heaping dose of science double standards about Covid superspreader events and complicity to murder when comparing the BLM protests to Trump rallies.
So, this double dose of discrediting of an effective drug, HCQ, and the hypocrisy of how infectious Covid was depending on your politics made me skeptical and distrusting of anyone who says, “trust the science.” I won’t even go into the news reports floating in the background where we found out that Fauci was involved in all sorts of shady and murky activity related to gain of function research at WIV.
The overall sense that differing scientific views were stifled, while others were being reported as THE only correct science was another red flag. We all know, or should know, that science is never a straight path. There will always be competing views until the truth of a particular issue is arrived at.
The Karens. I know there were mask mandates and lockdowns and zoom schooling. But one thing that really disturbed me was the number of people with authoritarian mindsets who had to tell people off. We all saw or experienced it, and I didn’t like it. I know the virus is serious, but the degree to which people felt it gave them license to be little Hitlers really was eye opening. I know the argument was collective cooperation for safety versus individual freedom to choose one’s own direction. I believe that the political, haphazard, hypocritical and truly non-scientific application of rules and “mandates” made it harder to voluntarily agree.
Slowly, I believe many of us saw the pandemic charade for what it is: a power grab for the powers that be. I mean, Newsom still has emergency powers in California. It’s just ironic to note that they always accuse Republicans of being nazis, but they do the same (disclosure: I have no love for any political party, even though I’m forced by default into a certain voting pattern).
Vaccine Rollout. Sadly, politics still surrounded the vaccine as it was made available. Who remembers Biden and Harris casting doubt and distrust by politicizing the vaccine? Here’s a reminder for you.
In this way, the politicization of a national and global health crisis by Democrats created more confusion, frenzy, distrust, and anger, when all of it could’ve been sidestepped by everyone agreeing to put politics aside. But, we all know that’s not what happened. In retrospect, we can see now that the politics followed Rahm Emmanuel’s mantra of “never letting a crisis go to waste.”
Vaccine Pros/Cons. Even in early 2021, I was still on board about taking the vaccine. However, as I started reading about adverse effects, that made me pause. I really dug into it when I was taking my dad to get his vaccine (see, I’m not anti-vax.), and wanted him to understand there were risks. There were definitely deaths, and other significant disabilities and ER visits listed. But, when calculating it against the total number of vaccinations, the percentages were, and are very low. So my dad got double jabbed. That’s fine, no problem–he knew the probabilities and accepted it.
But now I’m reading that the adverse reactions, including death, from the vaccine is way beyond the measure of what is typically expected from a vaccine. This is from Dr. Peter McCullough, who’s testified before the US Senate regarding Covid, and has been very involved in the Covid issue. Dr. McCullough also mentions that there are even worse effects from the vaccine now that there’s been a nine month study of the vaccine’s effects. This video is worth watching.
Beyond the original wild Covid, we’re also now dealing with all the variants. From what I’ve been reading, these are more contagious and with a higher viral load count, but the death rate is lower. In essence, it’s behaving as mutated viruses do–lessening it’s danger as it mutates. In my mind, it’s kind of like the flu. We all know the flu mutates and there are regular flu shots/boosters to try and catch them all. I see Covid as the same, but with a drug treatment as the antidote instead of a vaccine.
I know the argument is that the unvaccinated folks are making the virus more dangerous, but when I look at the mortality with no other co-morbidities, and not just the cases (by the way the PCR test has been withdrawn), Covid looks a whole lot like the flu and has a 95%+ survival rate. But people have been conditioned to believe that getting covid was a death sentence, where you waited your two weeks and then went to the hospital to die. Unless you took the vaccine. Very bad, no good science propaganda to scare people is how I see it.
Do I acknowledge that the vaccine has helped reduce the number of serious cases and effects of Covid. I do. But I also acknowledge that there are NON-VACCINE options out there for those who don’t want to get the vaccine for fear of potential side effects (like being dead) from the vaccine. Is this too much to ask?
One vs. Many. This is where I have a bias on the side of individual choice. If a medicine or vaccine has very low failure/adverse reaction rates, then I would definitely advise people to take it. I know there is still a chance of a reaction, but the probability is in favor of treatment. However, the current vaccine has such a higher than normal adverse effect that I can’t say I’d recommend it. Not especially if I know there are other non-vaccine drug treatments that actually do work. For me, there’s no contest: get a vaccine with higher than average reaction (and I won’t even go into the experimental spike protein details here) or be ready with HCQ or Ivermectin in the event you do get Covid. The added bonus is that once you recover from Covid, the natural immunity is durable and lasting.
Politics Again. But is my position popular or right? Not if you look at all the propaganda news being reported. There is a plurality of doctors that don’t recommend the vaccine. It is entirely dishonest and disingenuous to castigate and label all non-vaccinated folks as knuckle dragging, white supremacist MAGA idiots, especially when the vaccine hesitant are made up of many left-leaning folks. The constant injection of political and emotional coercion over the Covid pandemic and issuing of mandates to take the vaccine, while erasing all traces of alternative drug treatments is the biggest red flag to me. If the government, or the people behind the “trusted” science really were about saving lives, then why is the vaccine the only touted solution? Especially when the negatives of the current vaccines are much higher than average? Yeah, exactly.
In Closing. I read a short Twitter exchange between two people that illustrates the heart of the issue. It went like this:
- Person A: Take the vax, you’ll save humanity.
- Person B: I did. I nearly died, and am permanently disabled now and can’t go back to work.
- Person A: I’m sorry. But everybody should still take the vax. It will save humanity.
You know, when it comes to “saving humanity,” we’re all big-hearted and generous, in a nebulous way. However, when we are face to face with individual real life impact to flesh and blood people, what happens? We revert back to the mantra of “saving humanity” because, while it feels good, it’s meaningless when hit by reality.
And THIS is why I leave the choice to vaccinate up to the individual. While I can wish for all of us to be safe and all do our part to mitigate and reduce the deaths from Covid, I cannot force someone to do so just so that I can feel good about “doing my part.” Not especially when the impacted people have to pay a price–sometimes with their actual lives. Will I change my mind? Yes, when there is a safer vaccine that can also be an option next to already available drug treatments. Till then, you do what you want. Just don’t let me see you driving alone in a car, all masked up.
Oh, one more: If you simply look at Covid cases, but not deaths, it’s not being completely objective and fair. And, if you never do a cost benefit assessment or risk factors compared to other activities in life, it’s an unfinished analysis. Life is all about probabilities of success/failure, and balancing it all out holistically, not in isolation.