August 27, 2021
“Medical tyranny!”
My capacity for empathy is really being challenged in 2021. The Delta variant is raging across the country, now putting children in hospitals. ICU beds are filled to capacity with unvaccinated COVID patients who are not vaccinated because they didn’t have access to immunization. They chose to be unvaccinated. Over 80 million Americans are still unvaccinated. A recent poll found that 29 percent of Republicans refuse to get vaccinated. (Side note: I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were private school snobs and Democrats were knuckle dragging factory workers. Now Democrats are the over-educated Volvo drivers and Republicans are the Neanderthals that believe whatever noted white supremacist Tucker Carlson tells them to believe. “The election was stolen!” “Tom Hanks is an alien pedophile!”)
Variants rage through America and kids are on ventilators because of these people. A North Carolina study found that the unvaccinated are 15 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the unvaccinated , but there’s an anti-mask rally coming to your town. We’re 10 minutes away from another economy-crushing shutdown because MAGA Mike hates the CDC and thinks Dr. Anthony Fauci is out to destroy America. I’m not talking about cancer patients and other immunocompromised people who can’t tolerate the vaccine. I’m talking about people like Marjorie Taylor Greene who equate mask mandates with the Holocaust. I’m talking about people who claim they have “medical research” to back up their positions, but none of it is in peer reviewed science journals.
What am I supposed to think of these people?
The sociologist and educator wants to see these people as victims. They’ve been manipulated by right-wing media and self-serving politicians, like Florida governor Ron DeSantis. They’re the result of 40 years of defunding education that’s replaced scientific research with something you saw on YouTube. (Reading is hard.) We have failed these people and they are dying because they think the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine is “fake news.”
Or maybe they’re just idiots.
These people don’t trust the “the science.” That is until they get sick and show up at the hospital asking those same medical scientists to save their assess. Heaven help you if you have a stroke or a heart attack right now. The hospital is chocked full of covidiots, who can’t say they were wrong because they have ventilators shoved down their necks. There is always prayer, I guess. Good luck with that heart attack! I’m praying for you.
I want to be compassionate, but I’m just angry. I’ve seen these Mensa Society members at town halls and school board meetings screaming about FREEDOM! They want to be free to unmask their kids in school and go to Dairy Queen for the Flamethrower Combo with their face uncovered. “I’m not anti-vaccine. I’m pro-freedom,” they robotically say. They’re dooming their children to the ICU and the rest of us to an endless pandemic. I’m free to walk down the middle of I-5. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Freedumb!
Of course, there are endless stories of these folks ending up in the hospital, wishing they would have gotten the vaccine. A whole lot of them die. Should we laugh? Tweet, “I told you so!” Make a comment about Darwin and the thinning of the herd?
There’s an old adage in comedy that says, tragedy + time = comedy. It’s probably too soon to laugh at the anti-vaccine people who have died. That includes the pathetic conservative radio host Phil Valentine who regularly spread lies about the coronavirus and the vaccines on his syndicated show. He died last week of COVID. They say God has a sense of humor and I’ll just leave it at that.
I wrestle with this issue because my mother is one of these covidiots. I generally think of her as an intelligent person, but, now in her late 70s, she’s become influenced by whatever crap she reads on the internet. Her mother, once a psychologist, fell under the spell of televangelist and prostitute funder Jimmy Swaggart in her later years and gave the family inheritance to the Jesus Man on TV. Similarly, watching my mother’s magical thinking being exploited by internet based mis-information is just heartbreaking. “Well, I heard…” You know what I heard Mom? People like you are dying right and left.
While I was in the basement, making it through my mild case of COVID earlier this month (I had the Johnson &. Johnson vaccine), she was a comforting voice, calling from Georgia. She had refused to get vaccinated and I tried to explain to her that the reason I was sick was because the unvaccinated have created a petri dish that has allowed the much more deadly Delta variant to spread. I begged her to get vaccinated. Being 78 in Georgia and living with her (also unvaccinated) grandson puts her at high risk. Finally, out of frustration I told her not to call me until she was vaccinated. I haven’t heard from her since. She chose the lies over her son.
It’s like America is taking a national IQ test right now. I used to joke there were two types of people in the world, those that love cilantro and idiots. Just replace “love cilantro” with “got the vaccine.” I’m cool with you willing to die for your “freedom,” but I’m not cool with you putting the rest of us through hell to prove your stupid point; that you’re stupid. And your stupidity is upending my freedom to dive into a mosh pit or know my daughter is safe in her classroom from your disease (excuse me, I mean “hoax”).
Like I said, I’m wrestling with this. I’m 90% fed up with these idiots and want to deny them entry into the hospital when they get sick and realize they need some of that science. But 10% of me still is looking for ways to reach these folks. And that includes my mother.
NOTE: Within 24-hours this post had already attracted the righteous wrath of the QAnon bozos. Lordy.
You call people who are refusing to take the vaccine Neandertal covidiots, uneducated simpletons who do not believe ‘the science’. Did you know that the most vaccine hesitant group of all people is PhDs? Did you know that 50% of medical staff, doctors and nurses, do not want this vaccine? Another study shows that people who are vaccine hesitant are much more informed on actual science, medical studies, knowledge of mRNA technology, etc. than the pro-vaccine group.
Before you call people idiots, ask yourself, what do these highly educated and knowledgeable people know that you do not…
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Did you “read” that on a YouTube video? I’m sure it’s absolutely true.
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Haha, no, I do not watch youtube or any social media. I actually read medical research data.
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You really need to start researching. It is not hard. After you do actual research, analyze data, question what is being said and written, you will stop belittling people who hold different views than you do. People more often than not form different opinion that is from yours not because they are morons, but because they actually use their knowledge and use critical thinking.
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Feel free to post your sources. (That’s what we do in science.)
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I actually will come back to your website later to post links to various studies. It is somewhat amazing that you as an academic would not do the research yourself in the first place. But I do realize that you are challenging me and try calling my bluff. And perhaps you should; happy to oblige.
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Anytime you’ve got a peer reviewed journal to support your position, Hanna, I’ll take a look at it.
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One follow up comment. Look at Israel how effective your vaccines are. Watch a warning from the Israeli PM Naftali Bennett who is warning vaccinated people that their two doses no longer work and vaccinated people are having terrible outcomes, including double vaccinated young people. Look up ‘antibody dependent enhancement’ or ‘pathogenic priming’. Many doctors and researchers say this is exactly what is happening in the so called breakthrough cases.
Again, you call people morons but you do not refer to any actual medical research papers supporting your arguments. Why do not you research a little on your own rather than repeat the mass media talking points? I am talking the actual research papers in the actual medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, various John Hopkins University studies, or the Lancet (BTW the Lancet had to withdraw their study on effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, it was a fraudulent study saying hydroxychloroquine is not effective against covid; now it is confirmed that hydroxychloroquine works and in fact works extremely well; if taken early it cuts hospitalizations by 80-90% – but you don’t know it from the mass media, do you?). Please EDUCATE!!! yourself instead of spewing propaganda… vaccines work, vaccines work, vaccines work, vaccines work… repeating it does not make it true.
You do not know anything beyond what mass media is feeding you and yet, you call people who read actual medical research papers morons. You are unbelievably ignorant.
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Well said…I totally agree with you.
Thanks for replying to that uneducated buffoon.
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Absolutely dead on Randy. Bravo, I could not have expressed my feelings more accurately. My guess is that Hanna will not return with actual, peer reviewed studies and information (not some psudo-science word-salad from “antivaxx_patriot.ru.info” or the like. They are now COMPLETELY responsible for the length of this viral plague.
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Hi I have a number of pdf files I can send you; how do I send them? This is just a sample from National Library of Medicine:
Adenovirus as an integrating vector
Core Concept – Herd Immunity is an important and often misunderstood concept;
Lipid Nanoparticles: A Novel Approach for Brain Targeting;
Affinity maturation of SARS-COV2 neutralizing antibodies confers potency, breath and resilience to viral escape mutations
Reversed-transcribed SARS-COV2 RNA can integrate into genome of cultured human cells
also see Israel Hospitalization of Fully Vaccinated in Becker’s Hospital Review; look up Retsef Levi on Alarming numbers from Israel of Myocarditis in young people after vaccination
and I have many more.
These papers argue that reverse transfection is possible, natural immunity is vastly superior to vaccine immunity, lipid nanoparticles technology needs more testing to ensure non-toxicity, immunity cannot be achieved by vaccines.
The articles quoted above are hardly anti-vaccine. However, they point out serious potential health issues these vaccines can cause and highlight the need for long-term studies. The current increase of cases in Israel and poor outcomes for fully vaccinated is possibly caused by the antibody dependent enhancement (ADE), something that was indicated by former animal studies in research on coronavirus vaccines. Those studies cautioned against proceeding with human trials and the studies were stopped.
I am not trying to convince you not to take the vaccine. By all means this is the best choice for you and your family, by all means take them and all the future never-ending boosters. Remember though these vaccines are experimental, with no long-term studies or trials, now proven to have very short efficacy, and high risk of very serious side effects (including ADE). Consider also the fact that it is impossible to achieve herd immunity through vaccination with a highly mutating virus.
Considering all the above – please do not force others to take an experimental product, still untested through any long-term trials, and a product that loses efficacy in a few weeks (new study that just came out shows 50% efficacy after just 6 weeks).
And do not call people disagreeing with you ‘morons’ or ‘idiots’ or ‘uneducated’ etc. For your information I am not a conservative, not a Trump supporter and with 18 years of schooling I am rather highly educated. What you do is stereotyping of a worst kind. Very unseemly for an academic professor.
Apologies for any typos – need to run…
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Hanna, nobody is saying there doesn’t need to be more research. That’s how science works. But all the evidence now is that the vaccines are safe and effective. You know what is long lasting? Death from COVID,
I know if I hadn’t been vaccinated, I would have ended up in the hospital and/or dead. Again, when you you have scientific evidence in peer reviewed journals that provides evidence to the contrary, I’m happy to look at it. I appreciate you coming back with “evidence,” but it seems like more misinformation designed to confuse the scientifically illiterate.
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“I know if I hadn’t been vaccinated, I would have ended up in the hospital and/or dead”. I think this shows your level of your fear, more than anything else. Only a very small percentage of Covid cases end up in hospital — fewer the, mostly already duck and elderly.
The unvaxed are not a threat. There is no scientific evidence for that. NONE! The vaccines do not prevent transmission. Viruses naturally mutate — lots. If the delta is more virulent, it may be the vaccines that are causing that. You are fearful and therefore looking for scape goats.
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If the vaccines.work so well, why do you worry about whether or not others take it? Are you suggesting that the shot doesn’t protect you? If not, what’s the point of injecting questionable ingredients into your body?
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And besides kids getting COVID and dying, there’s also how the unvaccinated are facilitating the spread of the Delta variant.
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Because, Maggie, unvaccinated children are getting sick and dying. You might not care about children, but I have a seven year old daughter and I’d like to keep her out of the ICU. (Lordy, it’s so draining talking to these morons.)
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ALL the evidence shows the vaccines are safe and effective? Your own experience begs to differ. Your March article says you were vaccinated and your August post says you contacted Covid! And I’m sure you wear a mask as well. Living in Portland, most of your acquaintances probably wear masks and social distance. Yet, you still caught Covid. Placing blame on the unvaccinated may make you feel better but your hatred is misguided.
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Slightly off topic, but I keep hoping that someone will do a piece on the symbolism of a mask, and what it has become and means to some people. People are willing to disrupt school board meetings, threaten elected officials, and even hurt children, all over a simple mask. It obviously goes well beyond a simple mask. Masks, and the choice to wear them or not, has a life of its own, and it’s clear that they are imbued with some sort of primal meaning for some people.
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Hanna, post sources or gtfo.
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This rant is filled with nothing but gratuitous assertions, blah blah blah. You must love to hear yourself speak.
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https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2021/08/leader-of-anti-mask-movement-in-texas-dies-of-covid.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=theoregonian_sf&fbclid=IwAR2DosTZBD7etJgQzWN895z6OcrM6fSQNZWGYC6eF4PAuvp8UIhRfozBVLk
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Randy the propagandist
Your the covidiot really
The former vp of phizer chief scientist says so
Not! A goof journalist on tv or A Goof! journalist on the internet.
look it it up
lol
I’ll trust his words coming from his mouth to my ears
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“You’re”
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Failure to proofread does not necessarily indicate lack of intelligence anymore than your pointing out the misuse indicates smug narcissism.
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So you take your info from fake media and not capable of doing own research. Do you know how many vax death and serious injury happening every day or you expect it to show up in your news feed?
and long term risk of untested biological agents( which only ignorant folks like you call vaccine).?
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I rest my case.
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Your unvaccinated alone petri dish theory is bull. The very fact that the double vaxxed can get infected means they also are creating variants. ANYONE carrying a live virus is a potential incubator for mutations.
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This piece says in a fit of frustration YOU disowned your mother. Which means you probably angrily raised your voice to your mother and told her to never contact you again until she was vaccinated. YOU chose this, not your mother. YOU drove this wedge into your relationship, not her. I’m sure her heart is broken daily. I’ve lost a child and I can tell you it is a pain like no other and never heals. I’m also sure she would welcome you back in a heartbeat if you would apologize. To paint yourself as the victim in this situation is either shameful or demonstrates stupendous ignorance.
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Maybe English isn’t this person’s first language. I’ll clean up the language errors so you can address the points made.
You surely don’t deny that these vaccines have killed people do you? Common drugs like Aspirin and Tylenol kill a few hundred Americans every year, but the risk is small compared to the benefit accrued. The crux is always do these or any drugs do more harm than good? Simply asserting so doesn’t make it so. There is ample room for debate about these vaccines, and we should be having that debate in a country that has freedom of speech enshrined in its inception, not mandating them before risks are known.
These vaccines are not vaccines in the traditional sense, and they most certainly are untested for long term risks. Taking these vaccines may be worth the gamble, but to deny that there are risks is foolhardy.
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Cars have killed people. Again, nobody is saying that there shouldn’t be further research, but we KNOW Covid is killing thousands and thousands of people every month.
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I’m curious about your not approving my other replies. I used no foul language nor said anything inflammatory.
To your statement about further research, why research if vaccines are the only solution and they are mandatory? It seems you already have the ultimate answer.
Yes, people are dying, the vaccinated as well. How will we stop this if we cannot even discuss alternative treatments? You call those who advocate freedom “morons” and push to silence them or force them to comply. You use the word “science”. Is this how science works; silence dissent and lock out alternate theories? Paying lip service to “further research” is not the same as actually allowing open inquiry; especially not when you label “these people” as morons. You indicate with the title of this piece that the “science” is settled and no further research is needed.
This the road to Lysekoism and it will not serve you well. How long before you get your fourth shot (second booster) and call those who object “deniers”?
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This site has no edit function. The first sentence of the last paragraph should read–“This is the road to Lysenkoism…”
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