To Be Vaccinated or NOT To Be Vaccinated? That is the Question.

it certainly does ... someone wants to provoke another secession to militarily put down in a falsely labeled "civil war"?

I once thought there was a strong sense of liberty and bravery on a constitutional basis present in USA citizens ... the last few years have painfully revealed the error in my thinking ... Where are the free?? what happened to their land?? Where are the brave?? what happened to their home??

Maybe there never was a land of the free nor a home of the brave from the start of the USA? Maybe the USA took the land and the home from the really free and brave by military power and treachery and then stuck the few left over in camps (called reservations) for further humiliation??

Question over question ... better not think about such "non-sense"?

@C Mc ... it also reminds this old man about fascist evils less than a century ago in Germany and other places ...

Battling COVID disinformation is a never-ending and usually unsuccessful enterprise in the modern world, but on occasion, it's worth a go:

The Lew Rockwell article to which you linked badly mangles the truth about the purpose and effect of mRNA vaccines. Mr. Rockwell claims,

"Unlike real vaccines, which use an antigen of the disease you’re trying to prevent, the COVID-19 injections contain synthetic RNA fragments encapsulated in a nanolipid carrier compound, the sole purpose of which is to lessen clinical symptoms associated with the S-1 spike protein, not the actual virus.

They do not actually impart immunity or inhibit transmissibility of the disease. In other words, they are not designed to keep you from getting sick with SARS-CoV-2; they only are supposed to lessen your infection symptoms if or when you do get infected."

The "sole purpose" of the RNA fragments introduced into the cells is NOT to "lessen clinical symptoms associated with the S-1 spike protein." Rather, as the CDC explains HERE, once administered to muscle cells via injection, the RNA instructions help the cells create the spike protein associated with COVID-19. Once said spike protein -- and ONLY the protein; NOT the virus itself -- is in the cells, the cells do away with the RNA instructions and the body recognizes the spike protein as a foreign substance/intruder, which triggers the body's immune system to begin forming the antibodies it will need to fight the actual COVID virus, should it come into contact with it. WITHOUT those antibodies, a person's immune system is not likely to fend off the virus, meaning he or she is significantly more susceptible to contracting COVID at some level of severity, depending on many factors. WITH those antibodies, a person's immune system is significantly better prepared to fend off the virus, or at least to dramatically lessen the symptoms a person experiences.

So mRNA vaccines DO reduce the severity of symptoms and dramatically reduce the chances that recipients will experience hospitalization or death, but they ALSO dramatically increase recipients' ability to fend off the virus. It's not 100% protection! Very few vaccines offer 100% protection. But it is significant protection. How else to explain the fact that in the month of June 2021, 100% of the COVID deaths in state of Maryland were unvaccinated persons, or that in the first six months of this year, preliminary CDC data showed that 99.5% of all COVID deaths were unvaccinated people?

The Lew Rokwell article is filled with falsehoods and other misinformation about mRNA technology and its use in the fight against COVID-19, but I have neither the time nor the energy to debunk it all. I contend that this single example, in which Mr. Rockwell badly misstates the truth about the work of mRNA vaccines, provides sufficient cause to question his article writ large.

It is not a HIPPA violation for prisons to ask visitors for their vaccination status. According to one clearinghouse for HIPPA-related issues and implementation (emphasis added),

"Vaccination information is classed as PHI and is covered by the HIPAA Rules. However, HIPAA only applies to HIPAA-covered entities – healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses – and their business associates. If an employer asks an employee to provide proof that they have been vaccinated in order to allow that individual to work without wearing a facemask, that is not a HIPAA violation as HIPAA does not apply to most employers."

A prison can ask for vaccination status just as an employer can because neither is a HIPAA-covered entity.

And discrimination? In a pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 in the U.S. alone, taking action to limit the spread of COVID in space-limited and densely populated settings such as prisons is clearly justified. Certainly as justified as the rule prisons probably have against visitors wearing side arms or no clothes.

My Google searches did not identify any state with the hospitalization/vaccination numbers you cite here. Which state are you referring to?

Nor did my Google searches identify a 47% increase in hospital ventilator use this year compared to a year ago. Can you provide a link to that data?

Wolfgang's post that followed my previous one reminded me that I forgot to add a comment about the "unusually low" flu season in the U.S. As the CDC notes in the link you provided, @Keep_Smiling_4_Jesus, the explanation for the smaller flu season in 2020-21 is straightforward and, in my view, completely sensible:

"COVID-19 mitigation measures such as wearing face masks, staying home, hand washing, school closures, reduced travel, increased ventilation of indoor spaces, and physical distancing, likely contributed to the decline in 2020-2021 flu incidence, hospitalizations and deaths. Influenza vaccination may also contributed to reduced flu illness during the 2020–2021 season. Flu vaccine effectiveness estimates for 2020-2021 are not available, but a record number of influenza vaccine doses (193.8 million doses) were distributed in the U.S. during 2020-2021."

Due to our COVID mitigation efforts as a nation, Americans spent far less time among crowds of people in the '20-'21 flu season than in previous ones. Of course there were lots of exceptions, but as a whole, we didn't interact with as many people as usual. Fewer interactions => fewer flu cases. And when we did go out, many of us wore masks, particularly indoors, where germs and viruses more easily spread from person to person.

Bottom line: Mask-wearing, hand washing, and staying away from people also slow the spread of viruses other than COVID-19.

If you're referring to COVID rather than the flu that was the subject of my comments to which you responded, then the "treatment" is vaccination. Period. Full stop. Yes, we can stay in our homes and wear masks when we're anywhere else, but that approach will take MUCH, MUCH, MUCH longer to stop COVID than vaccination, in large measure because a consequential portion of the population won't stay home and wear masks when they're anywhere else.

The data are clear: The COVID vaccines are safe and they work (that 99.5% of U.S. COVID deaths in the first half of 2021 were unvaccinated people was not the luck of some draw). The Delta variant is far more transmissible than previous editions of the virus, but the vaccines STILL provide remarkable protection against serious illness, hospitalization, and death. Get vaccinated.

Just in case it hasn't dawned on you --- there is NO STOP to the different illnesses such as respiratory infections ... they have been part of human existence in the past and will be part of human existence in present and future. God's means for fighting such have always been the natural built-in defense systems in the human body... modern science believing folks turn big-pharma essentially in "better than God", not realizing that they have fallen prey to big fat pharma lies.

Since the vaccines according to info from vaccine producers are not even meant to hinder or avert infections (!!!), why should they be the answer and means to Covid infections???

You will be wearing masks and be a loner forever ... and "Covid" will be around as long as people "worship" the Corona-God by wearing their face-diaper or mouth-nose condom ever so proudly. The bad thing is that these "goodie-two-vax" folks demand that everybody must do as they do.

Yes, it's dawned on me that respiratory infections (though COVID-19 is a virus, not an infection) have been and will be part of human existence. It's also dawned on me that "God's means for fighting such" haven't been very effective against COVID, given that the virus has now killed 4.3 million people worldwide, including 615,000+ Americans, in about eighteen months. Name for me another "respiratory infection" (or virus) that killed that many, that globally, and that quickly.

Your proposed solution to the pandemic reminds me of the Exodus 14 report of what Moses told the people he led out of Egypt toward the Promised Land when they expressed fear of the approaching Egyptian army (emphasis added):

13 But Moses told the people, "Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the LORD rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. 14 The LORD himself will fight for you. Just stay calm." 

So Moses tells the people they don't have to do anything to fend off the Egyptians. "God's means of fighting such" enemies will solve the problem for them. All they have to do is stand still and let God take care of it. Similarly, you propose that to fight COVID, all we have to do is stand still and let "God's means" - i.e. "the natural built-in defense systems in the human body" - take care of it for us.

V.15 of Exodus 14 reports God's response to Moses' proposed solution (emphasis added):

15 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving!" 

Moses says, stand still, people. God will take care of the Egyptians for us. God says, don't cry to me! Get moving! TRANSLATION: You are part of the solution to your problem, people.

You say, to fight COVID, stand still, people. Let your body's God-provided natural defenses take care of a virus that has killed millions worldwide (people whose God-provided natural defenses apparently weren't sufficient). In response to your call to inaction, I hear God saying, don't depend on your immune systems to fight a virus against which they don't have antibodies. Get moving! Take the damned vaccine!

If COVID wasn't the cause of death of many/most of those 4.3 million whose death was attributed to COVID, then how do you explain this chart, from the U.S. CDC, which depicts weekly "excess deaths" - deaths in excess of what was expected for that time of year? In particular, why did the number of people dying during the time span depicted in the graph rise well above expected as the number of reported COVID deaths rose, but then fall precipitously as vaccine distribution improved in the opening months of 2021? (NOTE: This chart is NOT about the cause of death! This chart reports the number of deaths in each week, NOT the cause of those deaths.)

In this case, I've heard of your totally unsubstantiated assertion of "fake news statistics."

I guess when the facts don't support your own contentions, you label the statistics the other side uses as "fake news" and move on.

I had trouble finding flu deaths in Germany for many of the years 2014-2019. The number of cases? Yes. The number of what are known as "sick certificates"? Yes. The number of hospitalizations? Yes. But not the number of deaths. Our CDC doesn't estimate flu deaths meticulously. Please give me a link to the data you relied on for the years 2014-19

Here's another "excess deaths" chart, this one graphing weekly excess deaths in several European nations (that is, the number of deaths in excess of norm, NOT the cause of those deaths), as well as the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19:

Notice how closely the two markers track. Clearly, there were excess deaths in 2020 and 2021, and COVID was a primary cause of them.

Clearly also, Germany performed well. Some nations do better than others. Germany, for example, instituted a mask mandate in April 2020. Masks reduce spread, and very likely contributed to Germany's numbers. But not all nations do well. The United States, for example, performed horribly during most of 2020.

According to Johns Hopkins University, our nation's premier COVID tracking center, the U.S. has incurred in the neighborhood of 190 COVID deaths/100k population, whereas Germany has incurred about 110/100k. Much better. [And remember how you cheered for Sweden's freedom-based approach to the pandemic? It has incurred around 140 COVID deaths/100k of population. Better than the U.S. but not as good as Germany. The nation with the earliest and most restrictive lockdown of those three nations had the lowest per capita COVID death rate. Imagine that.]

That some nations have done better than others in mitigating COVID does NOT mean COVID is not a global pandemic. It means only that some nations have done better than others.

In your previous post, you referred only to the human body's immune system, what you described as "God's means for fighting such" things as COVID. I'm happy to find that you have expanded the arsenal of acceptable interventions.

If person X has asymptomatic COVID (a real thing) and some number of others with whom he/she interacts during the day (but doesn't know personally) contract it from his/her unvaccinated, unmasked aerosolized droplets, whom and/or what should the people who get COVID from person X blame? Fate? Bad luck? Given that he or she could have been vaccinated and/or could have worn a mask, does person X bear ANY responsibility for the infections his/her droplets caused?

No responsible public health expert suggests that we should "be vaccinated every 4 weeks," or that we "don't go outside for fear of fellow humans humans," or that we "wear 2-3 masks on top of each other."

And masks might not work? The experience of counties in the American state of Kansas made lots of news last year. Mask mandate counties experienced declining COVID infection rates. Counties that did not implement mask mandate saw their infection rates continue to rise. As one study put it:

"After implementation of mask mandates in 24 Kansas counties, the increasing trend in COVID-19 incidence reversed. Although rates were considerably higher in mandated counties than in nonmandated counties by the executive order, rates in mandated counties declined markedly after July 3, compared with those in nonmandated counties. Kansas counties that had mask mandates in place appear to have mitigated the transmission of COVID-19, whereas counties that did not have mask mandates continued to experience increases in cases."

As for dictating what others do, we already do so successfully and without widespread protest:

• We can't smoke in most public buildings
• We have to wear seat belts when in motor vehicles
• We can't purchase alcohol until we're age 21 or older
• We can't yell "Fire!" in crowded theaters
• We can't carry infant children on our laps when we drive; they have to be secured in special seating

And then there's the matter of "public" health and the dictates of our faith. Here's my simple Scriptural case for vaccinations, which is based on the proposition that I get vaccinated NOT just for my own good or protection, but to contribute to my community and to public health:

• Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and defined neighborliness via a parable about a Samaratin who sacrificed time, money, and potentially personal security to help someone he didn't know and, in everyday life, wouldn't have had much to do with.
• Paul told the Galatian Christians, "For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5.13-14, NLT)
• Paul told the Philippian Christians, "Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had." (Philippians 2.3-5, NLT)
• As a member of my community - the "public" - who is commanded by my Lord and my faith to care about and serve others, I believe taking a vaccine that greatly reduces the chances of my contracting COVID, even more greatly reduces the chances of my experiencing COVID-related serious illness, hospitalization, or death, AND sets a good example, which if followed by others, will build my community's resistance to the virus, is a good and righteous act, consistent with the teachings of Scripture and the example of Jesus.

Please share the Scriptural basis for your objection to vaccinations.

I received my second dose of the Moderna vaccine back in mid-March. Nearly everyone in the church I serve received their vaccines before I did. When should we expect the effects of those vaccines' "toxic content" to affect us?

In your broken limb example, when you broke your arm or leg the first time (NOT on purpose), did you consult a doctor - perhaps an orthopedic specialist - to insure the bone(s) healed correctly, or did you allow the bones to heal in whatever position they were in after the break or in which you or your friends/family members placed them so as to rely on God's way of healing bones?

So statistics you don't like are "fake news statistics," and charts you don't like are "manipulated in order to promote panic." Two serious... baseless, fact-free, and unfounded... accusations.

As to the WHO's change of definition: In May 2009, the WHO removed the clause in its definition of the word "pandemic" that referred to "enormous numbers of deaths and illness," in large measure because there is no universally accepted definition of the term "pandemic." That change occurred ten-plus years before the first COVID-19 case, and nearly eleven years before the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

The CDC, creator of the chart I included in my previous post, is a scientific-, not a political organization.

You claimed the content of the vaccines was "toxic." If that's true, why hasn't a single vaccinated person I know, including myself, experienced ANY "toxic" effects? Why aren't reports of the vaccines' "toxic" effects flooding, inundating the CDC and local media outlets? Hundreds of millions of doses have been administered in the U.S. Are we Americans just more resistant to "toxic" vaccine contents than others in the world?

In the question as I asked it in my previous post, I specifically ruled out your breaking an arm or a leg "on purpose." I asked how you would treat a broken limb if you encountered one (but NOT intentionally). Would you allow the bone(s) to set on their own, either as they ended up after the incident that caused the break or as you or as your friends/family set them, because that's "God's way" of healing broken bones? Or would you rather seek out the services of a doctor - an orthopedic specialist, perhaps - to see that the bone(s) were set correctly as they began to heal?

As usual, you chose not to respond to most of the substance of my post. Some things never change. I won't waste my or your time by repeating the questions you didn't answer, except for this one: I presented to you a simple Scripture-based argument in favor of vaccination, and then asked you to present a Scripture-based argument to support your objections to vaccination. I make that request again.

"... From all over the world the evidence is conclusive that the countries with the largest percentage of the population vaccinated are experiencing the largest number of new Covid cases called “breakthroughs,” a deceptive term to keep focus off the fact that it is the vaccines that are likely causing the new illnesses, not a “delta variant.”

Some parts of the world such as Iceland and Gibraltar have between 90% and 100% of their populations vaccinated, yet they are experiencing high numbers of new illnesses. In other parts of the world reports are coming in that 75% of new infections are among the fully vaccinated. US public health officials are saying the fully vaccinated need to wear masks, an admission that the vaccines provide no protection (neither do the masks). Others health officials report that the vaccines are only good for 6 months and boosters are necessary. But if it is the vaccines that are causing the “breakthroughs,” the booster jabs will just cause more illnesses. ..."

--------------------------------------------------------------

Two options: Keep sleeping or wake up.

False. The WHO removed the "enormous numbers of deaths and illness" clause from its definition of "pandemic" before its declaration of the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, not after. And as you know from reading the factcheck.org article to which you provided a link in this part of your reply, the clause's absence did not affect the organization's decision to label H1N1 a pandemic because of its then-in-use phases approach.

As you also know from the factcheck.org article, the U.S. CDC's definition of "pandemic" hasn't changed. It's still an "epidemic that has spread over several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people." By any rational application of that definition, COVID-19 is a pandemic.

It IS hard to believe, isn't it, that medical science could make progress against a virus in just 40 years of intensive research and development by scientists across the planet. Why, you'd think it would take at least 800-1,000 years to make such progress.

When I first sat with a family through open heart bypass surgery in the mid 1980's, we waited at minimum six hours for the surgeon to report the procedure's outcome, and many times eight, even ten hours; I recall one 12 hour wait. Post-op, the patient was then in the hospital for ten days to two weeks. Today? Bypasses take two to three hours tops, and patients are home within five days. What happened to those four to six hours they used to say were part of the surgery? What were they REALLY doing with the patients? I bet big pharma used them to infuse sedated bypass patients with experimental drugs so they could save money on clinical trials! [BTW, I have no evidence to back up my experimental drug theory - in fact, I know it's completely false - but I wanted to show you that I could make stuff up, too.]

Currently, the virus that causes AIDS is well managed via something called "Antiretroviral therapy (ART)." According to THIS ARTICLE, "ART has substantially reduced HIV-related morbidity and mortality, improved long-term outcomes for people with HIV and plays a key role in HIV prevention. Treatment guidelines recommend initiating treatment as soon as one is diagnosed with HIV.7 When an individual with HIV is on antiretroviral therapy and the level of HIV in their body is undetectable, there is “effectively no risk” of sexual transmission.8 Still, many people with HIV are not in care, on treatment, or virally suppressed."

The mRNA COVID vaccines were possible so quickly thanks, in large part, to a $14 billion investment from the U.S. Federal government through what the Trump administration called "Operation Warp Speed," and to research that dates back decades. Without both the investment and the underlying research, we would not have had the vaccines as quickly as we did.

The Paul Craig Roberts essay to which you linked in a separate post is, as are basically all of his essays, filled with falsehoods. I have neither the time nor the temperament to debunk them all, in part because in the past, whenever I have debunked Mr. Roberts' (or your) falsehoods, you have refused even to mention, let alone defend, those falsehoods, choosing instead to post a new set of falsehoods.

As if to demonstrate your pattern of refusal to respond to much of the substance of my posts, the list of questions and issues from my recent posts in this thread that you have not mentioned, let alone engaged, is quite lengthy. When it comes to my posts, Wolfgang, it seems that you don't have the two options you proposed at the end of your most recent post, "Keep sleeping or wake up." Instead, you have one option: Ignore and move on.

In this paragraph, you answer your own questions. Why are the vaccinated "so adamant or hostile against someone not vaccinated"? Why "the fuzz and fury to coerce and force unvaccinated to have a shot they do not want"? Why make masks mandatory "to coerce and force unvaccinated to have a shot they do not want"? Because, as you hypothesized in your paragraph's first question, "vaccination is the ultimate or only protection."

As a fully vaccinated person, I'm not concerned at all that I will experience serious illness, hospitalization, or death from COVID. The CDC is out today with new data that say that as of August 2, 99.99% of all COVID infections that resulted in one of those three outcomes were among unvaccinated persons. From THIS SUMMARY OF THE CDC'S DATA:

"As of Aug. 2, more than 164 million people in the United States were fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the CDC. Fewer than 0.001% of those individuals — 1,507 people — died and fewer than 0.005% — 7,101 people — were hospitalized with Covid-19."

Let that soak in. The fully vaccinated have a 99.999% chance that they won't die from COVID, and a 99.995% chance that they won't have to be hospitalized due to the virus. If you were guaranteed a 99.999% chance of winning the lottery, would you play? I bet you would.

The reason the vaccinated are so passionate about others' getting vaccinated is rooted in virology 101: The more viruses spread in a population, the more chances they have to create variants. The more variants that exist, the greater the possibility of a variant that will escape the protection of existing vaccines. Conversely, the less viruses spread in a population, the fewer chances they have to create new variants, and the lower the possibility of a variant that will escape the protection of existing vaccines.

We have the more virulent Delta variant today because of the spread of COVID among the unvaccinated. It's a variant that's strong enough to produce breakthrough infections among the vaccinated that DO NOT RESULT IN SERIOUS ILLNESS, HOSPITALIZATION, OR DEATH, but do produce as much viral load in an infected vaccinated person as is present in an infected unvaccinated person. The result is the infected vaccinated person won't suffer serious effects from the virus - thanks to the vaccine - but he or she will be able to spread the virus to the unvaccinated as easily as infected unvaccinated persons can. And unvaccinated persons do NOT have the protection against COVID-related serious illness, hospitalization, and death that vaccinated persons have.

We are passionate about getting people vaccinated because we want to stop the spread of the virus, we want to minimize the risk of more dangerous variants, we want to save lives and reduce the loads on hospital critical care providers (ICUs in U.S. states that have low vaccination rates are filling up with critically ill COVID patients, creating challenges for those hospitals as they care for other critically ill patients), and because we want to return to something resembling "normal life," which is not possible when only 50% of our population is fully vaccinated.