I am fully vaccinated. My wife is fully vaccinated. Our kids have also completed or mostly completed the standard sequence.
None of us have partaken in the covid shots.
And at this point none of us will be partaking in additional shots of any type until further notice.
We understand that in this decision we likely will have our freedoms limited. We will likely have our freedom to travel restricted, and kids freedom to public education curtailed. But to be honest at some level the value of these things, particularly the latter, have also significantly diminished.
We’ve actually made this decision many weeks ago, but I guess I feel I need to put it out there that I’ve actually drawn that line.
In fact here is a line:
Here’s another one:
I could possibly even say I’m building a wall here, but actually even now we’re not excluding the possibility that a vaccination might someday be the correct course of action. The default state though has flipped from:
“trust that medicine is working in our interest”
to:
“No. You need to demonstrate this.
And I’m perfectly capable of peer reviewing your ass. Bring it on.1”
We call this in the vernacular: “A default deny posture”.
I think part of what’s gotten me into rant mode today is reading some still fairly apologetic2 critiques3 of last week’s ACIP unanimous shitfuckery4 affirmation5.
I think I have documented my path to this position here. Though as I re-read, its a bit waffly, but I drew that line for the covid shots here. Which actually was almost exactly a year ago. Some lessons learned from that effort:
Learned actually trying to argue this on scientific merits is apparently not the way to get these approved. Though I had a pretty solid case (helped by breakthrough fatalities in my state actually exceeding the inflated ‘unvaxxed’, which I dutifully referenced, the week I filled out the religious exception form), my application was never approved. I learned the handful of others who stood up, who essentially answered all the questions “none of your business” did get their exceptions approved.
We are allowed to defer to divine authority, we’re allowed to defer to medical authority, but in no shape or form are we to have the audacity or ability to argue against such a mandate on our own. I’ve since learned this has always been the case for child vaccinations as well. Only the respective ordained priest class may absolve you of your sins.
As we came up to the start of the school year this summer, this documents further steps along this path. I think I’ve not yet written about what followed:
The week after I wrote that post, we went to our appointment with the pediatrician. He did the usual checks, and when we got to the end, and we were asked about the requisite shots (in this case TDAP was on the menu), I said “hold up”.
“After the last two years I am not comfortable with any further shots for my family. I have spent a lot of time studying case data, learned how to download and analyze VAERS data, and read about the diseases and pathogens targetted by the shots currently up on the schedule. To be honest, here where we are now, in the US, where these are largely eradicated, I see there is not significant risk from disease, but VAERS instead shows me risk from the shots. Were we in a different country with different set of conditions, my risk assessment may be different. But here and now these make no sense to me.”
The pediatrician looked down at the floor, frowning, and I could see his jaw muscles clench.
“Look — I’ve obviously not had the training you have had. What am I missing? I’m certainly open to argument why these should be done now”.
The doctor was not originally from the US, and he told me how he had once worked in communities that had been ravaged by some of the pathogens targetted by these vaccines. That entire villages were devastated, and that he believed these saved many lives that could otherwise have been lost there. I don’t doubt he experienced this.
“But we are not there, and though admittedly we are likely benefitting from some level of privilege through relative wealth, the fact is these pathogens are not a risk in this country, if not this half of this hemisphere. Especially for his age group. If we were traveling elsewhere, we might come to a different conclusion. Add to that the misdirection regarding the covid shots these last two years, I am not comfortable with any of these at this point without some deep dives on each of them.”
Interestingly, without elaboration, his answer was two words: “Same page.”
I then said
“I have spent the last couple years armpit deep in VAERS, trying to keep up on medrxiv6 to understand what’s been going on for covid. What would you recommend I read to understand these child sequence shots. Is there trial data available for these things?”
“Everything I have is on the CDC webpage”.
Ah.
So OK, no we’re not really on the same page then.
So, disappointed, I gave him the religious exception form to sign, which clearly states that he is affirming ONLY that he has instructed me on the value of vaccines.
I took the form and filled out the rest, this time I think smarter than the one for my employer. Where it asked for justification I wrote something like:
“Although we have had many of the injections listed here in the past, we find continuing this practice no longer is accomodated by our sincerely held religious beliefs.”
With the deliberately nonspecific, yet specific “sincerely held religious beliefs” being I hope the key there.
So far we’ve not been kicked out of school. We will see how this goes next year.
With this though there have been further signals steering us to this default deny posture:
The nephew of the guy that uttered something like my title wrote a book7 that begs some important questions.
Authorization of bivalent shots8 without ANY human testing (beyond live, straight to production)
More human than rodent casualties from those shots in a matter of weeks9.
Further reading which suggests many of the classic “success stories” of vaccination, like smallpox10 and polio could be explained very differently.
Though we’d already decided by that point, the unanimous decision to put the covid shots on the child sequence pretty well seals the deal.
Sorry. No. Not happening. The trust authority is now broken. This is exactly analogous to how you handle a computer break-in. Once that has happened you can no longer have any faith of any piece of data residing on that computer. You really have to wipe it and start over. You can, given a critical enough machine, spend incredible effort going through, evaluating checksums, scour the thing with a fine toothed comb, but you still will never be able to have complete faith there is something lurking there. Again that becomes a risk/value assessment.
But I’m sorry — we’re basically where we’ve been handed Hunter’s laptop with the assertion “don’t mind those stains — its Safe & Effective”.
No thanks. For now, while I’m still figuring out what’s going on, I’m going to go find my abacus.
And some donuts.
🍩
I am not an MD, but having been through both, I know how to give PhD comprehensive examinations and how to be the wrong end of a hostile program review.
I think I’m using this word in the “evangelistic” sense, rather than “I’m sorry” sense, but I’m also completely capable of assigning my own meaning to words.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/covid-vaccines-shouldnt-be-routine?r=r6d2x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web particularly #2 there.
Which I’ve decided is my new favorite word. I was thinking of changing this to shitpfuckery, but while wholly appropriate, that spelling is too stumbly to read. The Aussies 🇦🇺🐨 have at least that right. Important references:
https://merylnass.substack.com/p/why-did-cdc-do-it-now/comment/9926497
https://sagehana.substack.com/p/i-cannot-have-mcms-crew-getting-funnier/comment/9946544
https://www.regulations.gov/document/CDC-2022-0111-0001 and
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/acip-meeting-covid-19-injections-the-childhood-immunization-schedule-liveblog-by-meryl-nass-m-d
https://connect.medrxiv.org/relate/content/181
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Real-Anthony-Fauci/Robert-F-Kennedy/Children-s-Health-Defense/9781510766808
And of course now the movie: https://www.therealanthonyfaucimovie.com/trailer/
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-moderna-pfizer-biontech-bivalent-covid-19-vaccines-use#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20U.S.%20Food%20and,following%20primary%20or%20booster%20vaccination
https://open.substack.com/pub/drflurmgooglybean/p/and-the-mice-win?r=r6d2x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
This one though I’m not entirely sure about — I listened to a podcast with Dr Tenpenny and Dr McCullough last week or so ago where she declared smallpox really was “a skin disease”. That seems like quite a stretch — begs the question what then eliminated most of the Native American population? Completely agree though that injecting with nonsterile drippings from infected sores is perhaps not an ideal situation.
Ich bin ein Antivaxxer
Excellent post.
Late to the party, I know… but wanted to acknowledge your fine work here. I too am now an “antivaxxer” until the landscape changes.
Very good. As regards smallpox it is toxic poisoning and not what we were told although I used to believe what I now call the virology nonsense.
As regards "...what then eliminated most of the Native American population?" Alcohol, abuse and murder by the colonists, often at instigation of Roman Catholic church and others. Stealing of lands once lived in by the Native Americans so reduced to poverty and starvation.
I said to someone who asked, not unkindly, if I was an anti-vaxxer. I said no, I was anti stupid. Foolishly perhaps, I believe that sticking poisons into oneself is a Very Bad Idea and I am not masochistic.
There is a very severe pandemic in the world called Stupid 20 which started, not surprisingly, in 2020. It has morphed through various variants. I explain here if you should be interested.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2021/01/08/stupid-20/
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2022/05/11/100-up-and-stupid-20-variants/