There was a time when a very health-conscious America would look askance at anything and everything we would put in our bodies for fear that it was unhealthy. Fast food restaurants would change up their ingredients to make them more natural as a way to entice the choosy to eat there. Billions of dollars are spent on packaging and ad placements that make any given food item, supplement, soap, and clothing item seem like a safe, good-for-you purchase that further gets us back to nature. Even dog food brands put a lot of time and effort into making you buy their product by telling you how healthy and natural their food is for your chihuahua.
To be fair, we’re still living in that time, but judging by the way Americans are reacting to a vaccine that combats COVID-19, you wouldn’t know that. The same people who go to Starbucks and request their grande latte be made with specific ingredients and in specific ways because it’s healthier are the same people who demand that you inject something into your body that has no long-term testing associated with it and has side effects we’re not clear about.
It’s because of this very reason that many have decided against getting the shots. It’s why I know a few of my friends and family aren’t getting the shot. It’s why I’m not getting the shot.
In a more reasonable world, this reasoning would be perfectly reasonable. Vaccines aren’t perfect and come with their own dangers. Even the common flu vaccine has taken quite a few lives over the course of its existence. In 2019, getting the vaccine resulted in 203 deaths. That number may seem very high, but when you compare it to the 160 million people dosed with the vaccine every year, the stat seems far less frightening. To be clear, every death is a tragedy, and the vaccine may have saved lives many times over than the lives that it took, but the data may be more incomplete than we know.
It may be the same for the COVID-19 vaccine, which, as Tucker Carlson made clear in a recent op-ed, has had nothing but solid press around it. However, peering into the data as his team did, we see that the COVID-19 vaccine does come with fatal consequences for many, and maybe even many more than we’re being told:
So the question is how do those numbers compare to the death rate from the coronavirus vaccines now being distributed across the country? That’s worth knowing.
We checked today. Here’s the answer, which comes from the same set of government numbers that we just listed: Between late December of 2020, and last month, a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccines in the United States. Three thousand, three hundred and sixty-two — that’s an average of 30 people every day. So, what does that add up to? By the way, that reporting period ended on April 23. We don’t have numbers past that, we’re not quite up to date. But we can assume that another 360 people have died in the 12 days since. That is a total of 3,722 deaths. Almost four thousand people died after getting the COVID vaccines. The actual number is almost certainly much higher than that — perhaps vastly higher.
The data we just cited come from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System — VAERS — which is managed by the CDC and the FDA. VARES has received a lot of criticism over the years, some of it founded. Some critics have argued for a long time that VARES undercounts vaccine injuries. A report submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010 concluded that “fewer than one percent of vaccine adverse events are reported” by the VARES system. Fewer than one percent. So what is the real number of people who apparently have been killed or injured by the vaccine? Well, we don’t know that number. Nobody does, and we’re not going to speculate about it. But it’s clear that what is happening now, for whatever reason, is not even close to normal. It’s not even close to what we’ve seen in previous years with previous vaccines.
Conspiracy theories aren’t my forte, and I want to be clear that I’m not trying to push any. Further, it should be noted that the quote above doesn’t specify whether or to what extent those deaths after getting COVID vaccines have been causally linked to the vaccines. However, I tend to become very uncomfortable when something with a massive lack of data around it is being pushed on me from sources ranging from peer to government.
What’s more, side effects are already starting to surface as Carlson covers:
Some of the side effects defy explanation. Researcher Alex Berenson has noted that coronavirus vaccines now account for almost one-third of all tinnitus reports in the VAERS database. That’s the ringing in your ears. The American Tinnitus Association says it’s received “many questions” on the link.
Researchers at Oxford and UCLA have begun tracking coronavirus vaccine side effects across eight separate countries. They found, that “Women aged 18 to 34 years had a higher rate of deep vein thrombosis than men of the same age.” They also found that heart attacks were “common” in people aged 85 and older who had taken the vaccine. They found serious potential side effects in some children, “anaphylaxis [and] appendicitis were more common in young people.”
People have to understand that vaccines aren’t like Tylenol. It’s not just something you take and watch as the bad symptoms go away. Vaccines are far more complex and handle a far more complex problem.
It’s clear from just the death numbers that there’s a risk attached to the vaccine, and judging by the reports we have to ask ourselves what else does it affect? Fertility? Brain or muscle degradation over the long term? Higher cancer risk? We don’t know.
It hasn’t been around long enough for us to see, and for that reason, I’m out.
Does this make me an anti-vaxxer? No, it doesn’t. I don’t think vaccines are evil and I think getting them is a good thing for the most part. The nuance here is that I’m just not sure about this one, and we’re at a point where the Coronavirus isn’t the threat we originally thought it was, nor is it as prevalent as it used to be.
According to a Pew Research poll, it’s not even at the top of America’s concerns anymore with the border crisis becoming a more pressing matter.
But people in this day and age don’t seem to care about nuance anymore. It’s an either/or situation. Either you want to get the vaccine and stop being a death dealer to your fellow man, or your a crazy anti-vaxxer with zero regard for human life. Think of the children, you monster!
Reality is far less black and white than we’ve made it out to be. Reason, nuance, personal preference, and more may play into someone’s decision, and that’s not to say that over the course of months they may change their mind as more data comes in. I certainly might, and that’s my decision. It might not be yours, and that’s okay, too. We’re both Americans with the freedom to make these decisions for ourselves.
And that’s how we need to keep it. No vaccine passports. No othering of those who don’t get it. No campaigns to make public pariahs out of those who don’t want it. Today, it’s the COVID-19 vaccine, but tomorrow it may be about a decision you made, and you don’t want to set the precedent that people who don’t go along with the crowd should be ostracized and cast out.
We know where that leads.
