Stephan: When I was a boy, polio was the epidemic of the moment. In 1952 alone almost 60,000 boys and girls became infected with it, thousands died and even many of those who lived were condemned to the hell of being trapped in an iron lung with only your head poking out of the metal cylinder. When the vaccines to protect from polio came in there was none of the anti-vaxxer nonsense that we see today. We were just glad to get the protection. When I was in the fourth grade a boy in my neighborhood contracted polio, and suddenly dropped out of our lives, we the kids on the street. I still see him in my mind as I saw him for the last time. A 9 year old boy with whom I used to run through the woods, now living in a hospital ward basically encased in a coffin that breathed for him.
I get emails from anti-vaxxers all the time, particularly one woman who writes me several times a week with some anti-vaxxer nonsense attached. Anti-vaxxerism I have come to see it as a form of mental illness: the inability to correctly assess facts because of a syndrome. And it is dangerous because it negatively affects our ability to achieve national herd immunity.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty/Brandon Laufenberg
As soon as the United States authorized the use of the first COVID-19 vaccine in mid-December, a small but vocal group of skeptics and conspiracy theorists, baselessly convinced that the jabs were lethal, started hunting for dead people. At first their efforts were relatively small-bore and haphazard—although far from innocuous. But as the scale and sophistication of America’s vaccine rollout have exponentially ramped up over the last three months, so have efforts to hunt down alleged vaccine fatalities.
Starting in mid-January, several social media channels and websites emerged as hubs for stories, generated by admins and users pulling together snippets from across the internet and crafting them into cohesive narratives and brief posts, linking reported deaths to COVID vaccinations. Several of these platforms have grown notably, and become more formalized, in recent weeks. Unsurprisingly, given the robust safety profile of the vaccines in use in the United States, they rarely detail how a vaccination supposedly caused a given death.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not found a causal connection between COVID vaccines and virtually […]
Pretty damning accusations of mental defect because I refuse, so far, to be vaccinated. I too was vaccinated twice I think for polio back in the day(?) with a shot then a sugar cube. My mother, being an educated woman, made sure I got every thing offered at the time which seemed to the young me a lot of visits for shots. The next round happened after joining the Air Force where I got a vaccination log book or passport if you like. Through all this period early childhood into early adulthood I was frequently sick; colds, flu, sore throats, ear infections, skin infections, sinus congestion/infection and general illnesses all often treated with otc or doctor mediated interventions.
By my 30s I gradually became aware of eating better, exercising more, reading about alternative views of health, discovering how “healthy people” lived most of whom avoided the conventional medical profession and their recommendations. Gradually over the years I felt better, got more vitality, my chronic issues slowly disappeared with reappearance only after periods of stress and/or too much sugar, a former addiction.
These days I am, not to challenge the gods, ever sick with any of the situations that used to plague me. Being old based on current statistics I should be sick, sick, sick and on half a dozen drugs but so far none. I intend to die healthy and don’t want to mess with what has been working.
This vaccine is not like the old ones it is a new experimental technology without knowledge of long-term effects. Damn me if you will for not taking care of you but if your vax is so effective then it is I who should worry, yes????????????
Rev. Dean
on Sunday, April 25, 2021 at 9:33 am
I remember having to get vaccinations in the US Army before going overseas during the Vietnam era and one of my buddies died from the vaccination. I knew he was getting sick because it was obvious, but when I told the officer in charge he said nothing was wrong, yet the guy died by morning. It is also very hard to get a shot in my area even if you want one. They say they will call you or send an email when a vaccine shot is available. If you are near the phone or your device to see your email at the precise time, you miss out on your chance to get a vaccine. I personally am having a difficult time getting a shot because it is spring and time to work in the garden, so I am rarely near my phone or computer. I do hope I will get a chance to get a shot, but with all the robocalls and scam calls and scam emails I get, it is very difficult to be there at just the right moment.
Pretty damning accusations of mental defect because I refuse, so far, to be vaccinated. I too was vaccinated twice I think for polio back in the day(?) with a shot then a sugar cube. My mother, being an educated woman, made sure I got every thing offered at the time which seemed to the young me a lot of visits for shots. The next round happened after joining the Air Force where I got a vaccination log book or passport if you like. Through all this period early childhood into early adulthood I was frequently sick; colds, flu, sore throats, ear infections, skin infections, sinus congestion/infection and general illnesses all often treated with otc or doctor mediated interventions.
By my 30s I gradually became aware of eating better, exercising more, reading about alternative views of health, discovering how “healthy people” lived most of whom avoided the conventional medical profession and their recommendations. Gradually over the years I felt better, got more vitality, my chronic issues slowly disappeared with reappearance only after periods of stress and/or too much sugar, a former addiction.
These days I am, not to challenge the gods, ever sick with any of the situations that used to plague me. Being old based on current statistics I should be sick, sick, sick and on half a dozen drugs but so far none. I intend to die healthy and don’t want to mess with what has been working.
This vaccine is not like the old ones it is a new experimental technology without knowledge of long-term effects. Damn me if you will for not taking care of you but if your vax is so effective then it is I who should worry, yes????????????
I remember having to get vaccinations in the US Army before going overseas during the Vietnam era and one of my buddies died from the vaccination. I knew he was getting sick because it was obvious, but when I told the officer in charge he said nothing was wrong, yet the guy died by morning. It is also very hard to get a shot in my area even if you want one. They say they will call you or send an email when a vaccine shot is available. If you are near the phone or your device to see your email at the precise time, you miss out on your chance to get a vaccine. I personally am having a difficult time getting a shot because it is spring and time to work in the garden, so I am rarely near my phone or computer. I do hope I will get a chance to get a shot, but with all the robocalls and scam calls and scam emails I get, it is very difficult to be there at just the right moment.