Everything is upside down in 2020. Once-cherished beliefs about our safety, rights, health, our leadership, families, state, country, and society have been upended – possibly forever. Up is down; black is white. Masks are essential; masks are useless. Lockdowns are crucial; lockdowns are harmful. COVID-19 will claim more than 3% of us; COVID-19 has a mortality rate of 0.26%. Ventilators are essential; ventilators kill patients. Everything is in disarray now and being questioned.
With Dr. Anthony Fauci, the World Health Organization, the CDC, and the Surgeon General of the United States all on record with spectacular reversals on the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, or both, you know that even though pronouncements are made with supreme confidence by those we trust with our health, they actually don’t know what they’re talking about.
Amid this miasma of mixed messaging is the beating heart at the center of the coronavirus pandemic: vaccines. Despite a growing body of science indicating some impressive efficacy of early treatments — ranging from zinc and vitamin D, to azithromycin, hydroxychloroquine, high-dose vitamin C, Regeneron, and even nebulized budesonide — non-scientist Bill Gates and many others are focused solely on formulating a vaccine to administer to everyone on earth.
The mandating of masks — when no existing science proves their efficacy and an abundance of science demonstrates their uselessness — has been a dry run for compulsory vaccination. If people will mask up because they are told to, without any proof masks work to protect the wearer or those in proximity, surely universal vaccine uptake will be a cakewalk, right?
Not so fast. Curiously, a burgeoning swath of those folks who mocked or railed against “anti-vaxxers” (they prefer “vaccine risk-aware,” “vaccine safety concerned,“ or “vaccine-hesitant”) have a brand-new appreciation for the potential risks and adverse events associated with introducing a virus into your bloodstream via injection.
This week Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), who will talk about anything to distract from his failed leadership, which directly resulted in the deaths of more than 6,000 elderly New Yorkers, talked with professional Democrat coddler George Stephanopoulos about vaccines. Cuomo stated:
“You are going to say to the American people, now, here’s a vaccine, it is new, it was done quickly, but trust this federal administration and their health administration that it’s safe? And we’re not 100% sure of the consequences? I think it’s going to be a very skeptical American public about taking the vaccine, and it should be.”
Cuomo is nothing if not a political animal, so there is little surprise that everything he says is a political calculation. In this case, he happens to have stumbled into the vaccine-hesitant camp (recall what they say about a stopped watch) as an ancillary benefit to his foremost agenda, which is to throw shade at his nemesis, President Trump, by casting doubt on his “warp speed” vaccine.
It is fascinating to see the governor pivot away from a belief in the modern miracle vaccines are purported to be to the “science denialism” with which a certain class of liberals has always derided the vaccines. Russia Today stated the governor has gone “full anti-vaxxer.” But Cuomo also called out the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as untrustworthy about vaccine safety.
Cuomo’s a company man, as is Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), who recently stated she wouldn’t take a vaccine endorsed by Trump. It has become a kind of a parlor game to see how quickly Democrats will oppose anything for which the president advocates, including, one assumes, being against puppies and kittens if the commander in chief were to favor them.
But Harris isn’t alone. In March, some 66% of respondents stated they would take a COVID vaccine, but after a crash course in the concerns of those crazy “anti-vaxxers,” the percentage of people willing to risk the COVID shot dropped to 51% just a few months later.
President Trump expressed real concern about vaccinations openly and honestly in the run-up to the 2016 election. When he gained the White House, he partnered briefly with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is on the front lines of vaccine safety. That moment came and went, and now the president appears to have flip-flopped as he touts the “warp speed” vaccine his administration hopes to deliver as a coronavirus silver bullet. He is responding with conventional wisdom to enormous pressures in a national health emergency and has had to rely on the often dubious advice of “experts” Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. As a result, on this issue, the president has been utterly misguided.
Vaccines take years to develop and test for safety. There will be no long-term safety trials with a vaccine developed in mere months, and hence no idea what adverse events might result in a year or two. Vaccines developed by AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Johnson and Johnson, and Moderna have been loudly trumpeted in the media – only to have “paused” or suspended development after “unexplained illnesses” and “serious adverse events” in the trials, including an inflammatory reaction known as transverse myelitis that attacks the spinal cord.
Even vaccine industrialist and spokesperson Paul Offit, who once said a child could theoretically be administered 10,000 vaccines at once and be fine, has grave doubts about the COVID vaccine. Maybe he should be reported to the World Health Organization, which determined “vaccine hesitancy” to be one of the top 20 threats to global health in 2019.
But, wait, aren’t vaccines “safe and effective”? After all, this has been the primary talking point regurgitated in the mainstream media for decades in all stories about vaccinations. Hillary Clinton tweeted back in 2015, “The science is clear. The earth is round, the sky is blue, and vaccines work.” One wonders if 2016’s Also Ran is aware of the four suspended COVID vaccine trials.
Clinton’s disparagement of the vaccine-hesitant now includes the woman who may well beat her to the oval office, Kamala Harris – as well as a growing legion of former doubters on the left. But Hillary’s upbraiding is mild compared to the journalists of Boston. In May 2017, the Boston Herald published an “editorial staff” op-ed that called anti-vaxxers’ views “a hanging offense.” And this week, an editorial in The Boston Globe averred that any COVID vaccine approved for use must be made compulsory for all Americans. Creeping fascism and hangings – all just in time for Halloween.
Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of Children’s Health Defense continues what he has done for more than a decade – though it now appears to have become suddenly fashionable. He’s looking out for the safety of children by educating, speaking out, watch-dogging, and suing our federal agencies in charge of vaccine oversight in league with Del Bigtree of Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN). In 2018, they won a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services in which the federal government admitted it has no proof of having done vaccine safety testing since 1988.
Recently, ICAN petitioned the FDA to revoke or suspend licensure for the two Hepatitis B vaccines given to every baby in the United States on the day of birth “until their safety, as required by law, is determined in a properly designed clinical trial of sufficient duration.” The safety trials for one Hep B vaccine lasted four days, while the other lasted five. That’s how seriously the federal government takes the safety of newborns.
The proposed COVID-19 vaccine is yet another vaccine that will have undergone few if any short-term safety trials and zero long-term ones. Perhaps it’s time to end the politicization of medical processes and stop crying heresy when concerned parents ask questions.
Are we all “anti-vaxxers” now?
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Read more from Pennel Bird.
