TV Vaccine ‘Experts’
Bless their hearts
No one is able to predict accurately all the time but you would hope ‘experts’ on TV — whose task is to advise and guide the less informed public — to at least provide reliable and mostly accurate pronouncements on issues of importance. But, not so. If these experts were placing bets on horses many would end up leaving the race track with empty wallets… and perhaps even shirtless and shoeless.
Back on March 4th I posted my thoughts regarding how long these vaccines would be effective. I had come across early studies that showed blood antibody titers diminishing rapidly as each month passed. With the understanding that new variants would render their effectiveness even weaker, I questioned the overall duration of protection. This — along with other factors including the many unknowns regarding the severity and range of adverse reactions — contributed to my hesitation to immediately jump on the exuberant “I got my vaccine… we can do this” bandwagon. A friend had issues with my hesitancy. He commented with a link to a radio interview of Dr. Paul Offit, from Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, and frequent TV guest. My friend dismissed my concerns and urged my readers to heed this doc’s advice. Dr. Offit, called the ‘king of vaccines,’ happens to be on the board of the 15 member Vaccine Advisory Committee of the FDA.
During the radio interview …. when asked how long the vaccines would be protective, he predicted about 2 to 3 years …. I replied to my friend that I doubted the accuracy of this forecast (but who was I to contradict the ‘king’?).
Two months ago Dr. Offit predicted serious disease would be averted by these vaccines for at least 3 to 5 years ….
As data from Israel now indicates, a few months is about how long protection lasts. Israel quickly and aggressively vaccinated more than 80% of its adult population. Due to an exponential rise in new cases it recently started giving a third booster shot to its citizens (will the third and fourth be the charm?).
There has been a rapid rise in infections in the USA in both the vaxed and the unvaxed. Immune compromised individuals have started their third booster shots and the rest of the population will soon follow. I personally know several friends, vaxed between January through April, who have been infected; one visited the ER for persistent shortness of breath, another was hospitalized with exhaustion and cardiac issues.
Certain US cities have planned mandates where only the vaccinated can enter restaurants, gyms or certain indoor spaces. Are those jabbed any more protected from getting infected or transmitting the virus than the unvaxed or ones who have had a natural infection? Anyone else recognize the futility of such mandates?
Is it really about public health or something else?
Is it possible a few months from now those vaccinated earlier this year will be considered unprotected and discriminated against — similar to the never-vaxed — unless they submit to a third and fourth shot? At least half of my friends who got the two shots are not eager to line up for a third.
Ironically the unjabbed dining outdoors will be significantly less likely to get infected than the jabbed seated indoors.
To be honest I had never paid much attention to vaccines during my medical career. I gave them to patients without any concerns. I remember back in my residency days the hepatitis B vaccine was offered. Without even bothering to glance at the package insert I just rolled up my shirt sleeve. Some years I even got the annual flu shot. I started looking into these current vaccines in December of 2020 alarmed at the speed of their introduction and aggressive promotion.
Within a few weeks of intense research I felt I could predict more accurately than the professional experts who have focused their entire career on this topic. Covid-19 vaccine hesitant individuals have been repeatedly critiqued and ridiculed for simply asking basic science questions. But, when you look back, several confident assertions advanced by ‘know-it-alls’ on major media outlets could now be easily characterized by legitimate fact checkers as ‘false information.’
Here are some delectable examples:
1. Covid vaccines provide at least 90% protection from infection for a year or longer. (Sadly, this promise led many people to engage in risky behavior; and some are subsequently suffering the consequences.)
2. The vaccinated rarely transmit the virus. (Even the CDC now admits this not to be true. This claim is used to blame the unvaxed for the continuing pandemic rather than blaming the vaccine for not stopping transmission…. or blaming risky behavior.)
3. If you get vaccinated you will not be hospitalized or die from Covid. (This gem was actually uttered by the top guy at the White House. Needless to say countless fully-vaxed have died.)
4. Vaccines are our only path to herd immunity. (I predicted this was not possible back in March, but my post was deleted. The article that explains the reasons is on my personal website, RaySahelian com.)
5. CDC: If you are vaccinated you don’t need to wear masks indoors. Three months later: If you are vaccinated you still need to put masks on indoors. (Did the CDC ‘misinform’ the public? Does it deserve a few days in Facebook jail? Check out my May 20th “Foolproof Mask Guideline” post and peruse the comments section while sipping from a glass of your favorite intoxicant.)
I find it amusing when friends place comments on my posts rebuffing my carefully thought-out analyses believing they have equivalency degrees in medicine or epidemiology having fawningly followed the “Honey, I lost my shirt and shoes at the race track” TV docs or read a few articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, or Forbes. Suffering from CNNitis, they think they are getting a wide variety of opinions from different mainstream sources, not realizing they are all basically relaying a similar WHO, CDC and FDA message.
The bottom line:
Perhaps it’s time for those who have fervently followed the official narrative to, at the very least, hold back criticizing those who have a different opinion; and, preferably, be receptive to the possibility that there are alternative (and perhaps more accurate) perspectives to this complex topic. A true rational and scientific mind adapts to up-to-date and convincing information.
This post is not intended to be an analysis of the overall vaccine benefit to risk ratio; or the influence of the shots on the severity of infections and hospitalizations (I have touched on these topics previously, particularly the July 27 post).
This post is about failed forecasts, promises, or recommendations by those in authority who assure us to trust their pronouncements… and that anyone else’s opinion is ‘misinformation.’
If you wish to discuss the benefit-to-risk ratio, first provide the accurate number of vaccinated individuals who have had serious adverse reactions, are suffering ongoing cardiac, neurological, rheumatologcal, dermatological, vascular, and respiratory issues, and have visited the ER, have been hospitalized, or died.
Explain the distribution of spike proteins in the body post vaccines and their potential future cardiovascular and neurological implications.
Tell us, with citations, how safe and effective the third and fourth booster shots will be against the Delta variant, and when we should expect a fifth and a sixth.
Explain why the rates of hospitalizations and deaths from Covid infections in the vaxed are vastly different in other countries compared to the statistics provided by the CDC in the USA.
Explain the difference between total antibody levels and neutralizing antibodies, and the concept of antibody dependent enhancement.
Explain the concept of vaccine-induced vaccine-escape mutations, which even CNN has admitted as a possibility.
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