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

When I read that Sen. Johnson's objections directly referenced the FDA and its vaccine approval process, the FDA, its website, and any official documents related to its Pfizer vaccine authorizations were the first sources I pursued. You made your search choices and I made mine.

Sen. Johnson is one of America's most dependable sources of false and/or misleading information about... most anything(!) including COVID-19. History and the facts show that basically every substantive allegation he makes about... most anything(!)... is false or misleading. But such is the fate common to nearly every claim made by conspiracy theory advocates.

I'm not impressed by the presentation to which you linked, Wolfgang.

In comments that follow the content of an email distributed by Ochsner Health to its employees, the presentation offers this:

"By current federal and most state statutes, no employer is legally permitted to discriminate against any employee based on marital status. A penalty against a spouse for non compliance with an employer vaccine mandate is a punitive action only against married persons. Find a court that will look at this as a violation of the discrimination clause, because it only targets married employees. Let’s see what happens."

The first thing I noticed is the presentation's inaccurate characterization of the target of the Ochsner action. The presentation claims the action is "only against married persons," when the email it quotes makes clear that the poorly named "Spousal COVID Vaccine Fee" targets spouses AND domestic partners (in the law, domestic partners are NOT spouses). In response to a question as to whether the fee also applies to "unvaccinated dependents who fall into the vaccinated age range (currently ages 12 and older)," the Ochsner email says, "No. At this time, our focus is only on spouses/domestic partners covered by our medical plans." So, no, the fee is NOT "only against married persons." I'm not impressed by critiques that don't demonstrate awareness of the third party content they themselves choose to employ.

But there's more. The critique calls the fee "an employee vaccine mandate... only against married persons." The Ochsner action is NOT a mandate because it applies, as the quoted email makes clear, ONLY to employees "covered by [Ochsner] medical plans." Employees who choose health insurance from other provider(s) will not be subject to the Ochsner fee. In addition, as Ochsner made clear in response to media inquiries, exemptions from the fee based on "medical and religious objections" will be considered. In addition, no employee affected by the fee HAS TO get his or her spouse/domestic partner vaccinated; they may pay the fee and permit their unvaccinated spouses/domestic partners to remain so.

And finally, according to the Ochsner statement to the media, the company imposes an analogous fee on spouses/domestic partners who use tobacco products, apparently without strenuous objection from opponents of "mandates... only against married persons."

In my view, it's not a merely an issue of "vocabulary nuances" when a writer describes an action as a "mandate" for "spouses only" when that action is not a mandate and does not target "spouses only" because truth and facts matter, especially relevant truth and facts, as in this case. Given the value you place on careful and accurate reading of biblical texts, and the objections you raise when others stray from what you believe is the careful and accurate reading of them, I'm surprised by your characterization of the presentation's errors I pointed out.

Is the Ochsner fee a "demand"? I suppose so, yes - but perhaps it's more of a set of options. Ochsner says to its employees, we want your spouse or domestic partner to be vaccinated, but that person doesn't HAVE to be vaccinated. Here are your options: vaccination, fee, health insurance from another provider, or termination. Your choice. (EDIT: I'm guessing the termination would be from the hospital's health plan, and not from the employee's employment.)

And a violation of "basic human rights"? Which "basic human rights" are violated when a health insurance plan institutes a fee for refusal to take a specific health maintenance step? My wife's employee health plan (she works at a local hospital) would charge us more were she or I to smoke (we don't); I think most health insurance plans do. Are such premium adjustments also violations of "basic human rights," or are they products of a private health insurance plan's right to conduct its business as it sees fit?

I believe "the products [the FDA approved and the EUA authorized versions of the Pfizer vaccine] are legally distinct with certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness" because on its webpage to which I provided a link in a previous post, the FDA says (emphasis added)

"Comirnaty has the same formulation as the FDA-authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and can be used interchangeably to provide the COVID-19 vaccination series without presenting any safety or effectiveness concerns. The products are legally distinct with certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness."

In the paragraph before the one I just quoted, the FDA says this about the two vaccines (emphasis added):

"The FDA-approved Comirnaty (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA), made by Pfizer for BioNTech and the FDA-authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine under EUA have the same formulation and can be used interchangeably to provide the COVID-19 vaccination series without presenting any safety or effectiveness concerns. For purposes of administration, doses distributed under the EUA are interchangeable with the licensed doses. The Vaccine Information Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers provides additional information about both the approved and authorized vaccines."

Given that those paragraphs (and the support they provide for my "extraordinary conclusions") are both VERY prominent in the FDA webpage to which I linked in a previous post, I'm surprised by your questions. Am I correct to presume that you read the FDA page, but did not find its scientific findings persuasive, those, perhaps in your view, too much a product of the agency's own "arcane process"?

How a person decides to get vaccinated is FAR, FAR, FAR less important to me than THAT the person decides to get vaccinated.

I listen to the FDA, the CDC, NIH, and virology and immunology experts in order to reach my conclusion about the vaccines. When the FDA grants EUA to vaccines based on 30,000-45,000 person clinical trials, I trust the FDA's guidance. When it then grants, so far, final approval to one of those vaccines based on the experience of the hundreds of millions of doses administered to Americans to-date, I again trust the FDA's guidance. What's "cabalistic" about that?

I quoted from and rely upon the FDA and CDC, among others - each a reputable scientific agency. Is it your contention that documents, studies, and decisions produced by the CDC and FDA through their respective data accumulation and review processes provide "no scientific suggestion of any kind"? Which specific agencies, organizations, or other bodies do you believe produce credible and reputable "scientific" suggestions when it comes to approving vaccines? Please identify those agencies et al by name.

Aided not by something I read "somewhere," but by what I read on the CDC's website (emphasis is in the original)...

Yet the FDA referred to "certain differences" between the approved and authorized vaccines! What deep state conspiracy has been revealed here?! I don't know. But I do know that the ingredients in the two vaccines are EXACTLY the same. Check them out for yourself:

The PFIZER-BIONTECH VACCINE and the COMIRNATY VACCINE.

The Comirnaty document explicitly declares that the two vaccines have the "same formulation and can be used interchangeably."

I very definitely will.

Please describe the process YOU used that led you to decide to get vaccinated.

The FDA's statement doesn't refer only to "certain differences." Its statement refers to "certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness." (emphasis added)

Who said there were "certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness"? As you know from the link I've twice provided, the FDA did.

How were those differences determined? The University of Nebraska Medical Center explains the FDA's reference to them as a product of procedural necessity:

I've provided you with the ingredients list of the two vaccines. I assume that you've compared the two lists and found them, as I did, identical, all the way down to the sucrose each vaccine contains. And you have the the CDC's and an independent medical center's determinations that the vaccines are identical. On the basis of those facts - the identical ingredient lists and the two determinations - I conclude that WHATEVER those "certain differences" are, they have nothing to do with the pharmaceutical contents of the two drugs. I welcome you to question that, but if you do, please provide the factual - not speculative - basis upon which you do so.

No.

Please quote the statement, paper, or press release in which the FDA "told" the public to believe its declarations about the two vaccines.

Please provide links to evidence that supports your claim that the FDA "regularly makes errors," along with the reason(s) you believe that evidence.

No.

Points for consistency?

Nice dodge.

In deciding to get vaccinated, I trusted the FDA, the CDC, public health experts, and the nation's prominent virologists and immunologists. You called my process "arcane" and "cabalistic." I assume that you don't believe the process YOU used was "arcane" or "cabalistic." So please tell me whom YOU trusted as you made your decision. I don't want any personal information or details. I want only to know the roles/positions and areas of expertise of the person(s), agencies, and/or other sources you trusted as you made your choice. Who and/or what convinced you to get vaccinated, especially given all the information out there that people like Wolfgang have been highlighting, information that might have been against YOUR "prejudice"?

Yes. The FDA did say that. That authority alone is all you need to believe you are right. Yet, you haven't a clue what the FDA means by that statement. You have no idea what certain differences are accept by blind faith without known clinical studies or trials that the FDA knows they do not impact safety or effectiveness. Blind faith, Bill. Blind faith in a human agency that makes mistakes.

I point this out, not because the detail has value, but because it demonstrates your thinking processes which we discussed earlier, and you wished for me to elucidate.

Were you not told? You didn't dream up this stuff by yourself. You posted a link to it. Indeed, you were told.

I could but won't because you and every reader here knows off hand of multiple errors the FDA has made even recently. If not, Google appears to be your mistress, ask her.

Nothing wrong with heeding guidance from FDA, CDC, and others. However, the process you demonstrated was the example I was looking for to answer earlier discussion about your thinking process you present in many areas of this forum.

My sources include these same agencies you mention above, whom I respect. I did not and do not find their arguments compelling enough to make vaccination imperative. My personal decision was based also on personal life choices given interactions I have with others. Mostly, I prayed and sought God's will on the matter and believed I had an answer for my specific situation. I heeded that answer. With or without the vaccine, God is equally able to intervene in caring for his people's health.

The vaccines' manufacturer and two prominent federal scientific agencies (the FDA and the CDC) all say the two vaccines are identical in formulation and efficacy. A distinguished university medical school says the vaccines are identical and that the "certain differences" language is a product of the fact that one is operating under EUA and the other under formal FDA approval. So no, it is NOT the FDA's "authority alone" on which I base my beliefs about and confidence in the two vaccines.

As I demonstrated in my previous post, I indeed DO "have a clue" about those "certain differences," and that clue is not by "blind faith." That "clue" is from the attestation from the sources just mentioned that the two vaccines are identical in formulation and effectiveness. Perhaps for you such declarations don't offer a "clue," but they do for me.

When two drugs are IDENTICAL as to formulation as the two vaccines are, the results of clinical studies on one of the vaccines are, by definition, also the results of clinical studies on the other vaccine.

Do YOU believe the two vaccines - the one under EUA and the one FDA approved - are identical in formulation? Do you believe they are identical in effectiveness? On what specific sources do you base your beliefs? If you don't know whether they're identical as to formulation and/or effectiveness, what information and from what source(s) would equip you to decide?

My response to the word of the vaccines' manufacturer, two prominent federal scientific agencies, and a distinguished university medical school DOES reflect some portion of my thought process. Your abject mischaracterization of my thought process, however, does not.

I didn't ask you to prove that the FDA told me about the formulation and effectiveness of the two vaccines; of course it told me. I asked you to prove your claim that the FDA "told [me] to believe it." Quote the paper, the press release, the public statement, the whatever in which the FDA said, "Here are our findings. Believe it."

A swing and a miss.

So there was nothing wrong with my process - i.e. heeding the guidance from established authorities - except that it was "arcane" and "cabalistic"... for reasons you still haven't identified.

I heeded the guidance from at least some of the same experts you consulted in making your decision. And there was "nothing wrong" with my doing so, other then it was "arcane" and "cabalistic." Please help me understand how my process was "arcane" and "cabalistic" but yours - which included many of the same sources - wasn't.

Thanks for sharing a part of your story.

???

I said nothing of the kind. I merely asked you to quote the paper, study, press release, or other public statement in which the FDA "told" me to believe what they said about the vaccines. OF COURSE it wants all of us to believe that it's telling the truth; but I didn't question or comment about that. I asked only that you show me where the FDA "told" me - your word, not mine - to believe its findings. That you have yet to provide such a quotation suggests strongly that you won't be able to, likely because the FDA has never said such a thing.

??? I asked how my process of deciding to get vaccinated - reliance on established science agencies and public health experts - was "arcane" and "cabalistic" but yours was not. I still don't know, so I ask again.

And I ask yet again: What was "arcane" and "cabalistic" about my process? I relied on very public, very established sources of information. What specifically was "different" about your process that allowed it to escape those judgments?

Consider it done, in part because I've never heard the term "warnings of logic."

@Bill_Coley

What did you not understand, Mr. Coley?

You can find those terms defined in a dictionary.

Here, you are clear about what you are unable to understand, which is helpful. I could also have used the preposition "about."

Warnings about logic.

You asked for other responses which I have already provided. A re-read is most efficient for both of us.

I perceive that you are an emotionally sensitive person and shall keep that in mind while attempting better communication.