This is taken from my comments on my Facebook page. Much more discussion (including vigorous opposing views) can be read there.
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No one has said — from the beginning — that vaccines were required. If they aren’t, they aren’t. Social distancing and quarantine where necessary also prevent the spread until this nightmare is finally over.
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My reasons for not receiving it stem from my holistic health philosophy and also objection to use of baby parts in almost all vaccines (all but one, as I understand) — even though the Church has permitted it as a very remote connection to evil.
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It’s said that 70% of the population will be vaccinated. I have no objection whatsoever to anyone else doing so. I’m not opposed to them. I’m not saying they are evil. Vaccination will do great good, as it did with, for example, polio (the most famous success). This is my personal choice: much like conscientious objection to the military. Between people already getting the virus, vaccines, and herd immunity, I think the end will eventually come.
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How is it that the Spanish flu (February 1918 to April 1920) ever came to an end without a vaccine? Death estimates are usually between 20 and 50 million. How could it ever end? There were not only no vaccines then but no effective antiviral drugs, either. The Wikipedia article about it stated:
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[A] 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. [9][10] Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, all exacerbated by the recent war, promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.
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It also observed: “By the summer of 1919, the flu pandemic came to an end, as those that were infected either died or developed immunity.”
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How could that be without a vaccine? Well, it seems to me (though I am a non-expert on these things) that herd immunity was the key, or at least one of the key factors.
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Even His Eminence Lord Anthony Fauci, is on public record, stating the following:
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You don’t want to mandate and try and force anyone to take a vaccine. We’ve never done that. You can mandate for certain groups of people like health workers, but for the general population you can’t. [added in context, from another similar article: We don’t want to be mandating from the federal government to the general population.] It would be unenforceable and not appropriate.” (“COVID-19 vaccine won’t be mandatory in US, says Fauci”, MedicalXPress, 8-19-20)
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As noted in a WebMD article (a standard medical site), Lord Fauci was even more definite:
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I don’t think you’ll ever see a mandating of vaccine, particularly for the general public. . . . [I’d be] pretty surprised if you mandated it for any element of the general public. . . . [people] have the right to refuse a vaccine. If someone refuses the vaccine in the general public, then there’s nothing you can do about that. You cannot force someone to take a vaccine. (“COVID-19 Vaccine Likely Won’t Be Mandatory”, Carolyn Crist, 8-20-20)
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Here are some more opinions from Dr. Fauci. How many would have to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity?:
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In a wide-ranging interview Tuesday on Morning Edition, NPR’s Rachel Martin asked Fauci how many Americans need to receive the vaccine to have an impact on the number of COVID-19 infections.
*“I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact,” Fauci said. “But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity.”
*Herd immunity occurs when enough people become immune to the disease that the spread of the virus from person to person becomes unlikely. Fauci pointed to polio and measles as examples of herd immunity. (“Fauci Predicts U.S. Could See Signs Of Herd Immunity By Late March Or Early April”, Brakkton Booker, NPR, 12-15-20)
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So I am simply in the 15-25% who won’t be vaccinated. I choose not to for the reasons I gave; many others choose to receive it. Herd immunity and the end of the pandemic can still take place, with these different personal choices.
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I’ve followed the regulations. I wear masks in public, non-family settings (even though I think more is claimed for them than is warranted by science). I distance. I have seen very few friends or family. I work at home as it is, and have (excepting a few extra part-time jobs) these past nineteen years. We avoided going to Mass for several weeks when our parish (including my priest) had a run of the virus. I didn’t go to church yesterday because I felt under the weather; precisely to avoid even giving this thing (probably my strong immune system fighting off a cold or flu) to anyone else. No one in my family has gotten the virus, and so we’re not spreading it to anyone else.
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Recently, a friend of my son’s came down with it. So he and his sister and my wife all immediately got tested, and all came back negative. I’m not causing anyone to die or even get infected. I don’t condemn anyone for getting the vaccine. More power to them. That’s their choice. I say it is a good thing overall. I’ve never ever even slightly hinted otherwise. Likewise, I have my choice, and I expect not to be condemned for it either. Live and let live. I have given my reasons here and they are perfectly legitimate.
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Herd immunity will be achieved without 100% vaccination. I believe this was the case with even polio (though I haven’t been able to verify the percentage vaccinated): the most spectacular success with vaccinations.
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Dr. Fauci was even wrong (as he has often been) about the results of vaccination, by percentage. Right now, about 20% of the US population is fully vaccinated. Yet deaths decreased by 13% last week, as I documented in my recent article. Remember, Fauci said we needed 50% vaccination before we “START to see an impact.”
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My article also showed how there is virtually no correlation between “closed states” and a decrease in the virus. My own Michigan, in fact, has the highest rates in the country, for now at least two weeks, yet it has one of the most closed policies. Texas, with a completely open policy now, has one case per 1611 people. Florida has been open for six months. It has one case per 577 people: less than three closed states: Michigan: one per 213 people, New Jersey: one per 311 people, and Pennsylvania: one case per 436 people.
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The atmosphere in the US today is more and more pressure to be vaccinated, under pain of (what else is new in Liberal World?) being accused of not caring about the lives of other human beings. Yet even Dr. Fauci says that 75-85% vaccination will bring about herd immunity and has said several times that it can’t be forced.
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The more extreme vaccination advocates can’t have it both ways. It’s either required for everyone (legally and/or medically) or it’s not. If it’s not, then those of us who choose not to receive it ought not be accused of callousness towards human life. I’ve done nothing whatsoever to help spread this virus or harm any other human being. I’m not like a host of liberal / leftist Democrat politicians who force their states or cities to take all these measures, while often ignoring it themselves. I’ve actually consistently followed all the regulations, even when I disagreed with them. And I have — from the beginning early last year — consistently opposed hysteria and fanaticism on this issue from both the left and the right.
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We can also look at percentage vaccinated in states and how well the same states are doing with regard to the virus. in Texas (open), 1 in 1611 statistically will obtain the virus at all (and that’s not even getting into how the vast majority of those cases are minor). It’s vaccination rate right now is 18.7% [ranked 45th out of 50 states]. The three states with the highest rates of infection (all closed and blue states: Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), as of four days ago had vaccination rates of 21.8%, 25.2%, and 21.7% all higher than Texas. Yet one is 7.6 times more likely to catch the virus in Michigan, compared to Texas, 5.2 times more likely in New Jersey, 3.7 times more likely in Pennsylvania, and 2.2 times more likely in New York state.
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I’m healthy by practicing a holistic philosophy. I’ve never been to the hospital since I was about 6, to get my tonsils removed (and even that was probably unnecessary: we now know, I think). The Church says Catholics can take it, but I say that I will not personally take any medicine that either includes parts of slaughtered babies or which used those parts in experiments in order to be produced. The thing itself is “Nazi medical practice.” So it’s a matter of both morality and conscience, and of personal philosophy of good health.
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I deny that I am endangering people’s lives in any sense. If I don’t have the virus (due to sensible precautions taken), or don’t get it, I am not harming anyone. If, on the other hand, I do get it, then I immediately quarantine, take medications, and become immune to it after I get it. Either way, I have not caused harm to anyone else.
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If we want to find deliberate harm, we go to someone like Gov. Cuomo in New York, who literally caused some 15,000 deaths in nursing homes due to brain-dead policies. Those are deaths. We all know that in the overwhelming number of cases of COVID, the person recovers. So even if, theoretically, I did cause someone else to get it, unless they are elderly and with pre-existing conditions, it is almost a vanishingly small chance that they are in danger of death. Those are the statistics, not hysteria and irrational emotionalism that we see all around us these days.
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I haven’t been around at all, any elderly person, let alone one with a serious condition, since this thing began. My wife hadn’t seen her 90-year-old mother for over a year until recently. I didn’t (and couldn’t) even visit my sister in the hospital when she was dying. I had to write her a farewell letter. I could barely attend her funeral.
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Meanwhile, political gatherings (of both the right and left), Antifa and BLM riots, awards shows, etc. have involved many thousands of people not distancing, not wearing any masks (or only a few doing so). We hear not a word about that, but Dave Armstrong and his family are supposedly causing people to die. It’s a lie. And I won’t take that from anyone. It’s simply not the case that I or anyone in my family (almost none of whom have been vaccinated) have caused known harm (related to COVID) to any other human being.
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What is truly disturbing is the notion that we can (or as many folks think: should) be forced to receive treatments that we don’t want. That’s the same mentality that actually led to (and logically leads to) forced sterilizations of black men, to euthanasia, to the Nazi Holocaust, and the one-child policy and forced abortion in China. This is why even Lord Fauci opposes forced vaccination. But in the present mass hysteria many overlook that.
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I live a very healthy life. I have eaten health food (finances permitting!) since 1983 (and my wife is even stricter than I am), take all kinds of vitamins and other natural supplements, get exercise (though I could do a lot more), get lots of sun, have a very good immune system (I rarely even get colds or the flu) and have never been to the hospital except for tonsil removal. I’ve never had a serious illness. I’ve never been drunk; I’ve never taken drugs, I’ve never smoked. I have never received a flu shot. I prevent it by living and eating in a healthy way. I get the flu maybe once every five years; a cold about every three years. Surely those are also factors in preventing the spread of a virus: to not get it in the first place, and to not get it largely because of healthy life choices.
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The Church takes no position on the wrongness of holistic health or alternative medicine, that I am aware of. That’s one of my rationales. About 50% of physicians and professors of medicine today are quite open to these approaches. And the number is growing all the time. The Church has stated that use of aborted babies in vaccines and in experimentation for same, is intrinsically evil. It allows Catholics to take the vaccines because of remoteness of “cooperation” with that evil (a well-known criterion of moral theology). That’s one thing, and I have no problem with it. That’s the nuanced, well thought-out wisdom that the Church always exhibits. Everyone buys lots of stuff from China: which has slave labor camps, forced abortion, a one-child policy, and little religious freedom, or freedom of speech. Etc.
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But the converse doesn’t hold. The Church doesn’t say (as far as I am aware) that one is guilty of doing anything wrong for not wishing to even remotely cooperate in the evil of Nazi-like use of aborted baby parts. That’s the choice that any Catholic can make, and there is no basis of condemnation. Nor am I bound to every political or scientific statement that the pope makes. Those are not areas where he is protected with the gift of infallibility (and he himself expressly noted this, in fact, in Laudato si, which I praised to the skies, while respectfully disagreeing with him on nuclear energy and climate change).
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He may say it is great (as an overall proposition) to take the vaccine, which I have no problem with. It will accomplish much good in lowering the incidence of the virus. I agree. I don’t think he has said, on the other hand, that everyone must (as a moral obligation) take it. Even if he has (which I would like to see documented, if so), it would certainly not come under the category of infallible protection, which means that good Catholics can honestly disagree with him (as I would), without being accused of being “dissenters”: let alone supposedly callous and reckless with regard to the lives of others.
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Seasonal flu kills 291,000 to 646,000 people worldwide each year, according to a new estimate that’s higher than the previous one of 250,000 to 500,000 deaths a year.*
The new figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other groups were published Dec. 13 in The Lancet medical journal.
*The updated numbers, which do not include deaths during flu pandemics, are based on more recent data from a larger and more diverse group of countries than the previous estimate, the CDC said. (MedicineNet)
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Now, granted, that’s a lot less than the estimated 2.93 million worldwide deaths from COVID (which presumably includes three months form this year too), but it is still a significant number. A rough prorated amount would be 2.34 million. So the comparison of the flu deaths to COVID would be from 12% to 28%. And that is with massive flu shots being given. Note also that the figures excluded flu pandemics, so with those deaths included, it would be higher.
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During the 2018-2019 flu season, 49.2% of people ages six months and older got a flu vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (USA Facts)
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Whatever goes against the determined Liberal Party Line is ignored or massively downplayed.
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As of Feb. 4, according to the model’s calculations, more than 71 million people in the U.S. – 21.5 percent of Americans – had contracted COVID-19. (News Medical.net)
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About 21.5% have also been fully vaccinated in the US, for a total presumed “immune” total (assuming little overlap) of 43%: not quite up to herd immunity requirements but well on the way.
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If either the government or the people really cared about public health, cigarettes, for starters, would certainly be banned. It’s not just smokers who are harmed, but also those around them (we now know).
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An estimated 154,050 Americans are expected to die from lung cancer in 2018, accounting for approximately 25 percent of all cancer deaths. (“Lung Cancer Fact Sheet”, American Lung Association)
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Smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer. It causes about 90 percent of lung cancer cases. (“Lung Cancer Causes & Risk Factors”, American Lung Association)
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So that is approximately 138,645 lives a year that could arguably have been prevented if cigarettes were illegal. Yet for some reason we don’t hear a massive uproar from bleeding-heart liberals (who care so much about other people: much more than us wicked, heartless conservatives) to ban cigarettes, even though a little more than 350,000 Americans died from COVID in 2020; thus death from lung cancer directly attributable to smoking accounts for about 40% as many deaths as COVID. And all from cigarettes: simple causation, according to the American Lung Association. We don’t even need for a vaccine; just stop smoking or never start.
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Where is the outcry to ban ciggies, at at least voluntarily stop? Simple as pie: don’t smoke; make cigarettes illegal: save over 135,000 lives a year as a result: that many less funerals and grieving loved ones.
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Related Reading
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Photo credit: DonkeyHotey (4-6-20). Anthony Fauci, aka His Eminence, Lord Anthony Fauci, is an American physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. This caricature of Anthony Fauci was adapted from a photo in the public domain from The White House’s Flickr photostream. [Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license]
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Summary: I go through various facts, statistics, & scientific findings regarding COVID vaccines & herd immunity, & explain why I personally won’t be receiving a vaccine, & won’t be “shamed” into it by virtue signalling, “more-compassionate-than-thou” types.
Tags: apocalypticism, Big Brother, black death, closed states, contagious disease, coronavirus, COVID-19, disease, disease control, doom-and-gloom, epidemic, flattening curve, Florida & COVID, flu, leftism & coronavirus, liberal tyranny, mass hysteria, mass panic, Michigan & COVID, New York & COVID, open states, pandemic, quarantine, right-wing conspiratorialism & COVID, Texas & COVID, virus, virus trends, COVID vaccines, vaccination, coronavirus vaccination
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