Science-Based Opposition to Covid Vaccines: Countering the Critics
Stop dismissing those who are critical of Covid-vaccines. We probably know more about them than you do. Take notes.
There is a great deal of controversy still swirling around the pandemic and being that my recent piece COVID-19: The Mutants Are Here, in which I argued in favor of vaccine hesitancy, is getting above-average traffic and subsequently triggered a wider gamut of criticism.
My position, which remains unchanged, centers on the recklessness of engaging in an aggressive Covid vaccine vs. Covid virus showdown without seriously considering the long-term ramifications on the larger pandemic.
Geert Vanden Bossche was the first to seriously warn about this. I listened to his case and reviewed his work and found his arguments highly convincing, lucid, and sensible. Below are some of the common criticisms I’ve received over the points raised in COVID-19: The Mutants Are Here along with my rebuttals.
GEERT VANDEN BROSSCHE IS JUST A DOG DOCTOR
This was the most intellectually lazy rebuttal I’ve read, but it was leveled multiple times to the point that there seemed to be a concerted effort to dismissively ridicule Brossche rather than actually refute the substance of his argument.
His resume is also extensive and public, by the way. Check it out.
COVID VACCINES MIGHT REQUIRE ANNUAL BOOSTER SHOTS TO DEAL WITH THE VARIANTS. SO WHAT? WITH MRNA TECHNOLOGY WE CAN DEVELOP THEM FASTER THAN WITH TRADITIONAL METHODS.
My objection is not to the mRNA technology itself, which is an undeniably faster means of developing vaccines, but the fact that we are moving at such unprecedented speeds motivated by for-profit pharmaceutical companies rather than objective science.
Going all-in on attempting to out-vaccinate a still rapidly-evolving pandemic without consideration of the potential blowback is an extremely irresponsible gamble.
We shouldn’t be starting an arms race between vaccines and variants unless we know that we will win that race. Because if we don’t win then we’ll have put evolutionary pressure on the virus to further mutate with nothing to show for it other than stronger, deadlier variants that are substantially more difficult to treat.
FUNNY HOW YOU KEEP USING WORDS LIKE ‘IF’ AND ‘POTENTIALLY’ BUT ACT LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT WILL DEFINITELY HAPPEN.
None of us know what will definitely happen, which is why I refuse to mirror the unjustified certitude of those in favor of mass vaccinating.
There are simply too many variables at play, far too many unknowns, and too many extreme consequences if we’re wrong and ergo it is best to err on the side of caution. We need to have a more nuanced, considerate, and thoughtful discussion over strategy rather than rushing to the most-profitable solution. In the absence of that, I strongly believe that caution is the only sane and rational position, especially for those who are young and healthy. Don’t get vaccinated.
SO YOU THINK WE SHOULDN’T DO ANYTHING? YOU THINK THE PANDEMIC IS A HOAX?
I have never said anything even remotely suggesting that. The pandemic is real and the deaths are real (though likely off by plus or minus 15%). I am not in denial about what we are facing.
What we reasonably can and should do is:
Double and triple-down on a nationwide mask-mandate
Continue social-distancing
Trigger strategic regional lockdowns when applicable
Close indoor dining and bars
Compensate disrupted businesses/workers (otherwise, nix the lockdowns)
Take Vitamin D supplements daily
Diet and exercise
Do not reopen schools
Avoid mass gatherings
These measures alone would sufficiently deprive the virus of oxygen, mitigate the rate of mutation, and allow Covid-19 to naturally burn itself out to a more manageable level.
BUT BUT BUT VACCINES STOPPED POLIO!
Polio was an epidemic, not a pandemic, and had already been around since at least 1789. The first vaccine wasn’t available until the 1950’s, allowing many decades worth of medical data and historical trends to accumulate compared to Covid-19, which has been around for less than a year.
Polio had a significantly higher mortality rate (5-15%) compared to Covid-19 (2.1%, based on the latest data available from John Hopkins. Polio also primarily targeted children (95% of those who died were under the age of 5) compared to Covid-19 (0.000096%) for the same age group.
There was sufficient urgency to warrant mass vaccinations.
Jonas Salk, creator of the polio vaccine, refused a patent for his work, saying the vaccine belonged to the people and that to patent it would be like “patenting the Sun.” The fact that there was no profit-motive involved made it easier for the public to trust the vaccine (and certainly would help today) which was made widely available in 1955 after a field trial of 1.8 million Americans. Cases quickly plummeted within a few years.
But there were also consequences. 40,000 children contracted polio because the vaccine itself created a new mutated strain of of the disease and decades later began causing more cases than the original (wild) version as of 2017. I mention this not to suggest that vaccinating against polio was a mistake, but to illustrate that vaccines can and have spawned new, more prevalent strains of existing illness and we cannot disregard this potential.
YOU SAID THAT THE SURVIVAL RATE FOR INFECTED PEOPLE UNDER 50 WAS 99.8%. THAT’S SOMETHING AN ANTI-VAXXER WOULD SAY!
I don’t care who says it. If you want to refute the math, then let’s have that debate. But the mere fact that an anti-vaxxer would cite a verifiable statistic doesn’t discredit the validity of the statistic. The messenger is irrelevant. Multiple studies have covered the mortality rates based on age groups, all with extremely similar results.
YOU DON’T REALLY CARE ABOUT SAVING LIVES. YOU JUST LIKE TO HEAR YOURSELF TALK.
If I really didn’t care about saving lives then why would I bother spending hundreds of hours researching and writing about this shit? That’s an awful lot of time to spend just to hear myself talk, especially when all I’m getting in return are outraged sheep lashing out with disdain because the truth is too frightening for them to accept.
MILLIONS HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED THE VACCINES. DO YOU REALLY THINK COMPANIES LIKE PFIZER WOULD RISK THE LIVES OF SO MANY PEOPLE?
If properly incentivized to do so and with the legal protections of unprecedented liability waivers, why wouldn’t drug companies risk our lives? Do you think Pfizer or Moderna (or the U.S. Government) actually gives a damn about your health? Since when??
The top goal for Big Pharma is always profit. Their second goal is to make their profits exponential. The third goal is to get away with the first two goals without any legal consequences. Blindly relying on Big Pharma to effectively end the pandemic when those corporations are motivated by profit over people is pure insanity.
YOU REALLY THINK THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL EVERYONE?
Of course not. The U.S. Empire doesn’t want to wipe out most middle-class consumers, but it certainly has no qualms with culling the herd if those most likely to die are the elderly eating up social security benefits, minorities who the systemically racist Empire doesn’t give a shit about, and/or the poor who are dismissed as a mere drag on capitalism. To be clear, those aren’t my views. But that’s how the Oligarchs think.
Case in point, Pfizer has already used their Covid-vaccine to mislead, making a profit at the expense/safety of consumers. On April 1st, 2021 they claimed their vaccine could provide adequate protection against the South African variant based on their own internal study. NBC published this headline uncritically:
April 6th, 2021 Pfizer sells 20 million doses to South Africa.
On April 11th, 2021 an independent report coming out of Israel had very different results, also published by NBC:
”The researchers found the prevalence of B.1.351 among patients who received two doses of the vaccine was about eight times higher than those who were unvaccinated.”
I’m sure Pfizer didn’t mislead anyone on purpose… right?
If Pfizer had a one-and-done cure for Covid-19, do you really think they’d make it public? Do you think this is even being pursued? It isn’t. What they are pursuing is a higher share price by making people more sick so more treatments are required. This is how they actually think. And if you disagree with that, I’m sorry, but you are severely underestimating the sociopathy behind Big Pharma.
WE CANNOT WAIT FOR LONG-TERM STUDIES! WE NEED VACCINES NOW!!
Sounds like fear and panic is clouding your thinking. Vaccine development and manufacturing normally has an average turnaround time of 10-15 years and the fastest in history took four. Our current Covid-19 vaccines took mere months and none have received final approval from the FDA. They have only been granted under EUA status (emergency-use authorization). If you’re young and healthy, what’s the hurry? At bare minimum you should be waiting for full FDA approval. There is no rational reason to roll the dice on the Covid-vaccines unless you are elderly and/or have pre-existing conditions.
COVID UNITS ARE BEING CLOSED, HOSPITALIZATIONS HAVE DROPPED DRAMATICALLY. THE VACCINES MUST BE WORKING… RIGHT?
The original COVID-19 was already burning itself out after the massive winter surge, leading some to falsely attribute the declines to the vaccination rollout. Even if the vaccines were working as advertised, the vaccination rates are not high enough to be the driving force behind such a massive decline in cases (and subsequent hospitalizations/deaths). Even corporate media has admitted this as well as Dr. Fauci, yet many Americans still arrogantly conflate this correlation with causality.
Have we seriously forgotten that cases previously declined after the first and second surges? What caused those declines if Covid vaccines didn’t exist yet? To automatically credit the vaccines for any lull between waves is ridiculous.
IF WE ALL VACCINATED QUICKLY THEN THE VIRUS WOULDN’T HAVE A CHANCE TO MUTATE MUCH.
You don’t think that’s reckless considering that was never even part of the plan? Big Pharma expressly focused on a vaccine that would block symptoms, not transmission. That’s why they still advise that those who vaccinated should continue wearing masks.
They rushed vaccine production so fast that they only recently began testing to find out the effects on transmissibility, which is stunning. They injected that shit into hundreds of millions of people before even bothering to address the key issue? Reducing the spread of the virus wasn’t even a consideration during development when it should have been the number one goal. That tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of Big Pharma.
IF EVERY AMERICAN GOT VACCINATED THE PANDEMIC WOULD BE OVER. PERIOD!!
Even if the vaccines were sufficient at preventing the virus and all its variants, the virus would still be spreading like wildfire in other parts of the world and would continue to mutate and inevitably evolve beyond the vaccine’s reach.
If you vaccinated 90% of people on the planet in a very short period of time, then sure. That just might work. But to slowly vaccinate and in only a handful of wealthy countries…? That’s a dead end. A global problem requires a global solution and this is not it. Which means more mutations, more lockdowns, more economic collapse, and more death. Congratulations!
WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU MORE THAN ACTUAL SCIENTISTS?
You should trust the science, which is what I’m citing. None of what I’m espousing is opinion-based. Increasingly more scientists are recognizing that there has been a major miscalculation in the mass vaccination effort. Expect many more to step up in the coming weeks and months ahead, I guarantee it.
The last time I explained all of this to my own family they decided to accuse me of maliciously creating drama as if I were some kind of dismissible anti-science loon captured by QAnon.
Nancy Kaufman, podcast host of Grey Matters, who previously interviewed me about Covid-19 and censorship (and couldn’t even spell my name correctly) suddenly lost her mind and accused me of being an anti-vaxxer and a sociopath (!), dismissing me because I’m an independent journalist who doesn’t work for the New York Times:
You’re the lemmings who went down the rabbit hole, folks. Not me. You’re the people who arrogantly won’t even entertain being wrong, who fail to have the nuance to see the bigger picture, and lash out when you have no substantive argument to refute my findings which are very much grounded in science.
Here are some references (updated 4/24/2021):
“All Covid-19 vaccines use the coronavirus spike protein to induce immunity in some way or another. But recent studies have found that coronavirus spike proteins alone — without the whole virion or genome — are sufficient to induce biological abnormalities in brain and blood vessel cells.”
- Shin Jie Yong, exposing a truth despite ironically writing an otherwise pro-vaccine propagandist article (source) December 26, 2020
“Mass infection prevention and mass vaccination with leaky Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic can only breed highly infectious variants.”
- Geert Vanden Brossche, Biotech/Vaccine consultant with PhD in Virology (source) March 6, 2021
”What we are effectively doing is creating a gain-of-function experiment with humanity by creating a concentrated evolutionary pressure.”
- Brett Weinstein, evolutionary biologist, host of the DarkHorse podcast, and all-around brilliant thinker (source) March 27, 2021
“The more people becoming infected or vaccinated, the higher the selection pressure on the spike antigen becomes. This makes the key target of the antibody response more subject to mutations.”
- Alexandre Le Vert, Executive Chairman and co-founder of the French vaccine firm Osivax (source), February 2, 2021
“Many of the vaccines currently being developed for Covid-19 are targeting surface proteins and particularly the spike [protein]. Our results suggest that this may not produce an equivalently safe, effective, and long-lived immune response compared to that seen with live attenuated vaccines.”
- Thomas Rademacher, co-founder and CEO of Emergex Vaccines (source) February 2, 2021
The emergence of a double mutant variant in the CARS-CoV2 virus is “not abnormal” and is perhaps an indication of the “pressure from human interventions, said experts a day after the Union health ministry announced the finding.
”When a virus is under pressure from use of medications and vaccines and herd immunity it would mutate more. The point is whether vaccine production can keep pace with virus mutations.”
- Dr. Nerges Mistry, Foundation for Medical Research in Mumbai (source) March 26, 2021
”Studying the composition and dynamics of viral mutant spectra in infected individuals shows us that to avoid selection of severe acute respiratory syndrome corona- virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) escape mutants, vaccination campaigns for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) should be launched when disease incidence is low.”
- Esteban Domingo and Celia Perales, Journal of Virology (source), April 2021
”…vaccines themselves represent a selection pressure for evolution of vaccine-resistant variants, so the coupling of a policy of permitting high levels of transmission/virus multiplication during vaccine roll-out with the expectation that vaccines will deal with the pandemic, is unrealistic.”
- Ruibang Luo, Agnès Delaunay-Moisan, Kenneth Timmis, Antoine Danchin, Environmental Microbiology, Volume 23, Issue 5 (source), April 5, 2021
“The evolutionary pressures on the virus are changing and will continue to change. Most notably through the impact of large-scale vaccination, which will almost certainly drive the emergence of new variants of interest and potentially variants of concern. It's really an arms race between what we can throw at this virus, and its ability to evolve strategies to evade our toolkit.”
- Dr. Bronwyn MacInnis, genomicist and associate director of Malaria and Viral Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (source), April 14, 2021
Great writeup and I appreciate your tackling all the sheeple queries. However, have you considered the anti-social costs of wearing masks and keeping schools closed? This is creating a generational trauma among those least susceptible. Depression, weight gain, low self-esteem, drop-outs, even suicides... the list goes on. There has never been a moment in history that has punished the youth during any sort of crisis, as is being done right now. As for masks and social distancing, again, have you considered the social embodiment costs of this extremely anti-social practice? Adults have other experience to draw on, and can expect to move through it. For anyone in their twenties and below, I can't imagine how this will affect their lives going forward.