So it’s finally happened. During my partial hiatus from this blog last week, President Biden laid out his plans going forward to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Prominent in his six-pronged plan to address the COVID-19 pandemic is a federal vaccine mandate. Specifically, President. Biden is mandating either vaccination against COVID-19 or weekly testing for all federal workers and workers for companies on federal government contracts, as well as all employees of hospitals and other health care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement for their services. In addition, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will issue a rule using emergency authority requiring employers with more than 100 employees to ensure that their workers either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or tested weekly. In addition, OSHA’s new Emergency Temporary Standard will also “apply to public sector state and local government workers, including educators and school staff, in the 26 states and two territories with a state OSHA plan.” This is a long-overdue federal response to the pandemic, and, predictably, the Republican Party is losing its mind over it.
As Amber Ruffin’s regular segment on her weekly show asks, “How did we get here?” Given that I’ve been explaining for several years now how Republicans have been increasingly embracing not just opposition to vaccine mandates, but actual antivaccine misinformation as no longer fringe but part of the mainstream of the party, I thought that Joe Biden’s recent announcement and the Republican Party’s reaction to it provided a perfect excuse to review some history, given that it’s been two years since I last addressed this specific question. Unfortunately, that history shows that the Republican Party is no longer just flirting with the antivaccine movement, as was true six years ago; rather, the Republican Party has become the antivaccine party.
So…how did we get here? Of necessity, a lot of this story will be a rehash, but it’s a timely one given President Biden’s executive order. Also, given that I haven’t put this story together in a coherent fashion in at least a couple of years I think it’s worthwhile to risk this post being a rehash if it saves my readers from having to click on too many links. (Not that I don’t encourage you to click on the links, I hasten to add. It’s just that I’ve tried to structure this post so that you don’t have to click on them unless you’re interested in more information.)
There was a time not so long ago (perhaps a decade, but certainly no longer than 20 years ago), when there was a widely held stereotype that antivaxxers were generally hippy-dippy, granola-crunching lefties. Indeed, given the association between conservatives and right wing populists and antivaccine activism today, it’s definitely a stereotype that has persisted long past any resemblance to reality. Be that as it may, back in Jenny McCarthy‘s heyday as the celebrity face of the antivaccine movement around 13 years ago, contributing to that perception were prominent left-wing antivaxxers, such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (still an antivax leader, and now, predictably, an antimask COVID-19 conspiracy theorist) and a number of Hollywood celebrities like Rob Schneider (admittedly, I’m being generous in my definition of “celebrity”), Mayim Bialik, and Robert De Niro. It’s also true that areas with a lot of affluent people on the coasts whose politics tend to lean heavily liberal, have been focuses of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses over the years.
In actuality, this perception of a strong leftward political bias in the antivaccine movement was never really accurate. It’s long been known that antivaccine views tended to be the pseudoscience that crossed political boundaries. Indeed, there has always been a libertarian and right wing component to the antivaccine movement, with a very strong strain of antivaccine views on the right as well. Examples included General Bert Stubblebine III’s Natural Solutions Foundation, far right libertarians, and others who distrust the government, including government-recommended vaccine schedules, an observation that led me once to ask in 2013 why the antivaccine movement seemed so at home among libertarians. Indeed, at the right-wing Libertarian FreedomFest in 2012, I was privileged to watch a debate between Julian Whitaker and Steve Novella about vaccines. At the debate, vaccine pseudoscience flowed freely from Whitaker in a most embarrassing fashion, and I couldn’t help but note that FreedomFest that year featured two screenings of Leslie Manookian’s antivaccine propaganda piece, The Greater Good and had featured antivaccine talks in previous years. Ironically, at one point, one of the antivaccine bloggers at the crank blog Age of Autism blamed “progressivism” for failing to “get” autism. (Translation: From his perspective, his fellow progressives don’t accept the vaccine-autism link the way he would like, while conservatives apparently did.)
It is no coincidence that the most powerful antivaccine legislator in the 1990s and into the first decade of the 2000s was Representative Dan Burton (R-Indiana), who for many years was the foremost promoter of the pseudoscience claiming that vaccines cause autism. His activities in support of antivaccine views as chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform were legion while he was in Congress and Republicans controlled the House. For instance, Burton held showboating, Kangaroo court-style hearings about thimerosal and autism back in 2002 that now remind me, more than anything else, of the hearings about Stanislaw Burzynski by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) back in the 1990s. Burton also was known for harassing FDA officials over thimerosal in vaccines, and at one point tried to insert himself into the Autism Omnibus hearings by writing a letter to the Special Masters asking them to consider crappy scientific papers (e.g., a this paper, which was pure crap) allegedly supporting a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.
Rep. Burton wasn’t the only antivaccine Republican, even back in the day before Donald Trump and long before the pandemic. For example, his successor as chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), flirted with the antivaccine Canary Party, although in fairness it wasn’t always clear whether Issa was a true believer or just opportunistically took a large donation from a prominent wealthy antivaxxer named Jennifer Larson and then gave her a hearing on vaccines and autism to make it look as though she’d gotten something for her money. Fortunately, Issa’s hearing in 2012 was a bust. Before that elsewhere in California, The Canary Party, a rabidly antivaccine group that pushes the idea that toxins in vaccines are responsible for autism and all sorts of health issues and that autism “biomed” quackery is the way to cure vaccine injury teamed up with the East Bay Tea Party to oppose vaccine mandates in California.
Moving away from California, Michelle Bachman was also known to drop the occasional antivaccine bon mot as well. Meanwhile, the Texas Republican Party famously included a “vaccine choice” plank in its 2012 party platform. Also on the right-wing antivaccine political crew back in those days was Rep. Bill Posey (R-Florida), who has in the past introduced dubious legislation demanding the Holy Grail for antivaccinationists, a “vaccinated versus unvaccinated” study. True, Posey did co-sponsored that bill with Carol Maloney (D-New York), but she’s the only Democrat holding federal office in the last decade whom I’ve ever been able to find willing to go on record supporting a piece of legislation giving the antivaccine movement something it desperately wanted. More recently (as in six years ago), Rep. Posey was promoting the “CDC whistleblower” conspiracy theory that ended up forming the basis of Del Bigtree and Andrew Wakefield‘s 2016 antivaccine propaganda movie disguised as a documentary VAXXED.
It hasn’t been just right wing politicians pandering to antivaxxers, either. Fox News, for instance, has long played footsies with antivaxxers. Prepandemic examples abound, such as when the Fox and Friends crew did sympathetic pieces about Andrew Wakefield, interviews with Dr. Bob Sears, SafeMinds’ anti-vaccine PSA campaign, Louise Kuo Habakus (who is virulently anti-vaccine herself and has long been politically active in New Jersey pushing for transparent “philosophical exemption” laws). During the previous pandemic (you know, the H1N1 pandemic that everyone’s forgotten about now), FOX News fell for the story of a young woman claiming dystonia from a vaccine. Of course, today Fox News feeds its viewers a steady diet of antivaccine propaganda from its star pundits Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and others, to the point where it’s been speculated that Fox News could be sued if anyone dies because of acting on its antivaccine rhetoric.
By 2015, the rightward shift of the antivaccine movement was undeniable, to the point where the national media started noticing. What really fueled this shift was the political reaction to SB 277, the law passed in 2015 in California in response to the Disneyland measles outbreak of December 2014. In brief, SB 277 eliminated nonmedical “personal belief” exemptions to school vaccine mandates, including religious exemptions. After SB 277, only valid medical exemptions could be used to excuse a child from school vaccine requirements. Long before SB 277, antivaxxers had discovered that appealing to right wing political messages, such as “freedom,” “parental rights,” and opposition to government mandates, was a powerful message that drew in conservatives and libertarians who might not have been antivaccine. While this appeal had been going on years before SB 277, in 2015 it was turbocharged, and the question of school vaccine mandates began its unfortunate road to being far more politicized than mandates had ever been before. Groups like Texans for Vaccine Choice, Michigan for Vaccine Choice, and all the other statewide grassroots groups for “vaccine choice” became forces to be reckoned with, with antivaxxers joining the 2016 Presidential campaign to raise money and lobby to oppose vaccine mandates and demand “investigations” of links between vaccines and autism.
Antivaccine views even infected the 2016 Presidential campaign, and it wasn’t just because Donald Trump, with his antivaccine statements dating as far back as 2007 blaming vaccines for autism, was the frontrunner for the GOP nomination. Would that it were just him! Unfortunately, several of the GOP candidates, including Ben Carson, Rand Paul (who really is antivaccine), Chris Christie, and Carly Fiorina (remember her?) pandering to antivaxxers. Sadly, several of the GOP candidates from 2016, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, and former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who did at the time speak up and strongly support school vaccine mandates have since—shall we say?—adjusted their views to oppose vaccine mandates of any kind. In my own state in 2018, a Michigan Republican candidate for Congress in my own district held an antivaccine “roundtable” during the primary season, which included my outgoing antivaccine state Senator Patrick Colbeck (who was running for governor) and my state Representative Jeff Noble, who, if not antivaccine himself, clearly was antivaccine-adjacent. This not-so-dynamic duo had cosponsored a bill not just once, but twice, (both sets of bills fortunately never making it out of committee) that would have stripped the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services of the power to require parents requesting religious and philosophical exemptions to school vaccine mandates to travel to their county health office for an educational program about vaccines. They also co-sponsored a dubious “informed consent” (actually, fear mongering misinformed consent) about “fetal cells” in vaccines. By then, I was wondering whether the GOP had become the party of antivaxxers.
By 2019, the year before the pandemic, the situation had gotten even worse. With appeals to “freedom” and “parental rights” serving as a “gateway drug,” if you will, to antivaccine conspiracy theories, the Republican Party had not aligned itself decisively with antivaxxers. Examples abounded even prepandemic, with the Ohio Statehouse having become a hotbed of antivaccine Republican legislators, Oregon Republicans refusing to work until a provaccine bill was shelved, and multiple openly antivaccine Republican candidates running for office. Going beyond even that, antivaxxers have even attracted far right wing militia groups to their cause, a trend that has accelerated during the pandemic, with such groups contributing to the harassment of health care workers and even cancer patients at hospitals with vaccine mandates and, more recently, violent confrontations. As journalist Tara Haelle recently put it, the pandemic is the moment antivaxxers have been waiting for.
Given this history, the reaction of Republican Party luminaries to President Biden’s vaccine mandate was, sadly, predictable:
Resistance to vaccine mandates was once a fringe position in both parties, more the realm of misinformed celebrities than mainstream political thought. But the fury over Mr. Biden’s mandates shows how a once-extreme stance has moved to the center of the Republican Party. The governors’ opposition reflects the anger and fear about the vaccine among constituents now central to their base, while ignoring longstanding policy and legal precedent in favor of similar vaccination requirements.
“Republicans care about getting beyond this pandemic every bit as much as Democrats do,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. But, he added, “politicians are certainly happy to exploit this issue for political gain, which is why I think the Republican governors are up in arms.”
Dr. Jha is far too kind. Although I once believed this, it’s now been a long time since I could believe that Republicans “care about getting beyond this pandemic every bit as much as Democrats do.” Their actions demonstrate clearly that they do not, unless you count their wishful thinking that everything will be hunky dory if we just appeal to individual responsibility and put no restrictions with actual teeth on anyone or any business, as “caring.” Given the extreme resistance of nearly the entire Republican Party to very basic public health interventions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and minimize the death and damage caused by the pandemic, I can no longer hold this “both sides” position that characterizes Republican resistance to vaccine and mask mandates as an honest disagreement on the best strategy to slow the pandemic.
Let’s consider the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) as an example of what I’m talking about. You will recall that this was a declaration sponsored by the right-wing think tank the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) and spearheaded by three scientists, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, who called on countries to end “lockdowns” and advocated “focused protection” of the vulnerable, ignoring the simple fact that it is impossible to protect the vulnerable from COVID-19 when the coronavirus is spreading more or less unchecked through the “healthy” population responsible for the care of the vulnerable. You’d think that GBD signatories, opposing “lockdowns” and mask mandates, would be all for mass COVID-19 vaccination as the single most powerful remaining tool for “focused protection.” You’d be wrong:
You’d think that she’d appreciate that, at the very least, it’s advantageous to protect frontline workers against serious illness from COVID-19, and, of course, the vaccine does prevent forward transmission. It just isn’t 100% effective in doing so, but even if it’s only 50% effective it would still be worthwhile. Basically, the GBD signatories are going antivaccine, with, for instance, another applauding a bad study because it concludes that vaccinating children is likely more harmful than just letting them get COVID-19:
You might recall that in March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hosted a video roundtable with the GBD signatories in which they expressed opposition to masks, testing and tracing, physical distancing, and mass vaccination. More recently, Bhattacharya testified in support of DeSantis’s ban on mask mandates for Florida public schools. Now consider that AIER is a right wing, science denying think tank, and a perusal of its website will reveal a variety of antivaccine posts, including references to vaccine mandates as “totalitarian.”
The NYT article that I cited points out that there is an element of hypocrisy among some of the Republican governors attacking Biden’s vaccine mandate, for example:
There is a deep inconsistency in that argument. Mississippi has some of the strictest vaccine mandates in the nation, which have not drawn opposition from most of its elected officials. Not only does it require children to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and seven other diseases to attend school, but it goes a step further than most states by barring parents from claiming “religious, philosophical or conscientious” exemptions.
And:
Mississippi, which has one of the lowest coronavirus vaccination rates in the nation, has consistently led the United States in childhood vaccinations — a point of pride for its health officials and many of its lawmakers. Alabama, similar to Mississippi, also refuses to acknowledge “philosophical, moral or ethical” exemptions to mandatory childhood vaccinations.
Sure, there’s plenty of hypocrisy among these Republican governors. But ask yourself: Why do Republican governors (and, in fact, Republicans at all levels of government) feel the need to attack President Biden for his decision, regardless of their state’s own vaccination policies? The reason is simple. The COVID-19 pandemic has completed the turn of the Republican Party to the dark side, which began at least a decade ago. The Republican Party is now fully the antivaccine party, and it doesn’t even really pretend any more. Some members might convince themselves that they are really “anti-mandate” and “pro-freedom” rather than antivaccine and perhaps some of them really are. However, appeals to “freedom” were the gateway through which antivaccine conspiracy theories and pseudoscience passed to infect the GOP base to the point where politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Mo Brookes, and a depressing number of other Republican pols pushing antivaccine antivaccine disinformation that wouldn’t be out of place on RFK Jr.’s website. Meanwhile, GOP politicians cynically pander to antivaxxers in the Republican base and gin up their resistance to vaccine mandates, all to increase enthusiasm for opposing other Democratic policies as well. There are a exceptions, such a Governor Mike DeWine in Ohio, but they are becoming increasingly uncommon. The rest of the Republican Party seems to have degenerated into a death cult, in which the eugenics of letting the virus rip through the population in order to achieve “natural” herd immunity (plus those who voluntarily get the vaccine) is the order of the day, the cost in suffering and death be damned.
Even formerly rational Republican politicians now express provaccine views at their electoral peril, leading to:
In 2019, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) fought an effort from some state legislative Republicans to make it easier to get exemptions for other vaccine mandates. “I think it’s important for people to know that we are pro-vaccination in the state of Arizona,” Ducey said at the time. “Vaccinations are good for our kids and helpful for public health.”
Ducey last month banned local governments from requiring coronavirus vaccinations for their employees, and on Thursday he decried Biden’s “dictatorial approach,” saying, “The vaccine is and should be a choice.”
Of course, the descent of the Republican Party into antivax conspiracy theories and mindless resistance to anything perceived as a “vaccine mandate” or government action to promote public health is a bit of a “chicken or the egg?” question. Did this unfortunate turn of events come about because the base pushed Republican politicians towards resistance to vaccine mandates or because Republican politicians, seeing a potential source of activism and support, encouraged antivaccine views? (Why not both?) In any event, the outreach by antivaxxers to right wing groups, both real grassroots and astroturf (and, make no mistake, there is a big astroturf component to the anti-public health movement), has been wildly successful. President Biden’s decision to impose vaccine mandates, as justifiable as it is from a scientific and policy viewpoint, will unfortunately only fan the flames of antivaccinationism in the Republican Party even more, even if he had little choice but to act.
124 replies on “The Republican Party is now undeniably the antivaccine party”
re the perception and reality of left-leaning anti-vaxxers….
if righties stress the importance of freedom and self-determination, the leftists have always singled out Nature as their motivation ( of course, these two paths intersect at G-d ) : some of the more vocal advocates years ago spoke about the horrors of injecting foreign, lab produced substances into pure infants, much as they rejected SBM care for childbirth care and other medical issues. Nature loving mothers’ sites sprung up on the net and on FaceBook. Amongst those I have surveyed for a long time, I notice a shift towards libertarian ideas although they still claim Nature is Best. Some of the formerly left-leaning advocates have even deserted their party or have grown disillusioned with it: Del ( who grew up in Boulder!), Rossi, Wright and other anti-vax mothers like those at the now ostensibly defunct TMR . RFK jr is an interesting case because of his familial roots and his environmentalism but he also sounds like a freedom hawk especially when he sidles up to Trump and diverse political protestors in Germany that included unsavoury types.
Natural healt entrepreneurs try to have it both ways: a bigger audience means more potential customers, although Mike Adams may frighten liberals away with his rants about demons, pedophiles and criminal politicians. Null tries to sound liberal to court his older audience and libertarian to find new converts. Mercola sells to everyone.
Anti-vax/ anti-mask/ anti-shutdown advocates are supposedly protesting en masse today, shutting down schools and workplaces.
I checked the news but the only place I saw mention of the protest was @ high wire talk who had a live feed of the hundreds/ thousands ( they said both these figures) who attended and the irate speakers: teachers, CHD reps, a little known mayoral candidate** and DEL BIGTREE, who came to talk ” Science” which he of course butchered in diverse ways as he asked everyone to “catch this cold”; they later marched to Brooklyn***. Del and CHD will probably put tapes of the events on their sites.
** mayoral races are usually decided by primary – it’s bluer than California
*** I doubt that Brooklyn will care.
Alright, there’s been slight mention of the rally by Yahoo/Yahoo UK, Fox. They even mentioned DEL and the march to Brooklyn
I’m not too worried about them converting the masses because nyc.gov/ Covid 19 data shows that NYers are already vaccinated at a high rate whether you look by borough, age group ( all 60%+ and 70%+) AND importantly, the hospital rate/ death rate are very low.
Similarly, across the Hudson, these rates look excellent as well and the Rt is 1.01 and positivity is at 5%.
WHICH is a stark contrast to other places.
If readers have ever been to NYC, they’ll know how difficult avoiding contact with people is and what a task PH had set before them throughout the pandemic.
sadmar mentions a factor: both the right and left object to vaccines based on interference with either G-d’s Plan/ Nature’s Wisdom which boils down to a
rejection of science. Nature/ G-d knows better! So of course, they imagine g-dless towns like NY will not do the right thing.
There are probably areas of New York State where this would have been more meaningful, if less photographed.
A couple weeks back Paul Krugman has an excellent column “The Snake Oil Theory of the Modern Right”, about how ‘Natural Health’ grifts have been central to the New Right pretty much from the get go — mainly in the form of assorted ‘miracle’ supplements.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/covid-misinformation-supplements.html
Krugman links to a longer, older (2012) article on the subject by historian Rick Perlstein that I’d call essential reading for anyone who follows the intersection of anti-science and politics. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
(there’s been a lot of good, smart, and well-written stuff in The Baffler over the years…)
More deaths have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) from the covid shots, than from all other vaccines combined for the last 30 years. This massive increase in reported deaths (and other serious injuries) remains unexplained by the CDC and FDA. https://www.virginiastoner.com/cvax-risk
Will anyone demand an explanation, amidst all the pain of arm-twisting? Or will we discover, through re-education, that it isn’t a red flag of potential mortal danger at all–it’s a red flag of dreaded republicanism. OMG, I had no idea it was that bad.
Why haven’t you asked them yourself? The public comment period for the most recent ACIP meeting is closed, but another should be coming soon.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/index.html
(Link may require some navigation to get to the public comment page)
I hate to give attention to a known and obvious troll, but everything having to do with VAERS and covid vaccines has been explained countless times here and elsewhere. I demand an explanation as to why you don’t/refuse to understand those explanations!
You say the massive increase in deaths and other serious injuries reported to VAERS from the covid shots has been “explained countless times here and elsewhere.” Where are the analyses of the VAERS data? The only paper on the issue I’ve seen is an opinion piece from this blog, that doesn’t contain any analyses of the VAERS data at all.
@NWO Reporter
If you can’t find what you’re looking for, then you’re not looking very hard. The CDC is actively monitoring VAERS for phenomena such as myocarditis (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/myo-outcomes.html) and blood clotting (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-04-23/03-COVID-Shimabukuro-508.pdf) among other adverse events that are plausibly caused by vaccination. In any case, you’re asking for a negative to be proven e.g. that the vaccines aren’t causing death and destruction. That’s simply not possible. Furthermore, any serious analysis of unverified reports (in any context) would be unwise. I invite you to ponder why that’s the case.
Even so, deaths reported in association with the covid vaccines may vastly overshadow any previous vaccine, but the VAERS death rate is not above the normal background death rate. The reason for the increase in reports is that healthcare providers are required by law to report any and all adverse events – coincidental or not – to VAERS (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/vaccination-provider-support.html). With hundreds of millions of doses administered, coincidences add up quickly; especially when millions of the old and dying with not much life in them anyway are given the shot.
Solstice, nothing about VAERS has changed. No one is “required by law” to report, because there are no penalties for not reporting. There’s also infinite discretion about whether to report. And, most vaccine providers won’t even know if their customers die or are disabled by the shot–the drive-thru vax clinic or grocery store where you got your covid shot isn’t going to be calling every week to see if you’re still alive.
And, once again, if the massive increase in deaths reported to VAERS can be explained with your hypothesis, where are the CDC & FDA analyses doing it?
Nowhere in anything you’ve provided does the CDC analyze or explain or even acknowledge the massive increase in deaths and other serious injuries reported to VAERS from the covid shots. The CDC tells us about a handful of blood clot and heart problem reports when there have been hundreds.
@NWO Reporter
I don’t expect you to pull your head out of the sand any time soon, but at least read the links I posted. True, I misspoke when I said “required by law,” but healthcare providers are required by the EUAs to report serious AEs to VAERS. That’s exactly what’s happening. Do you really expect people who have a bad reaction to one of the vaccines to just suck it up or to go die in a ditch unknown to anyone? No, they go to their doctor or to the emergency room, and whoever treats them reports the issue to VAERS. If they’re in nursing home, the staff will report it. Your assumptions of general incompetency are quite disturbing.
As for why no one is doing this magical “analysis” that would reveal the great catastrophe that you think is occurring, I already told you. The CDC is reviewing VAERS reports as they come in. VAERS isn’t good for much more than that. It’s a series of anecdotes, and the plural of anecdote is not data, as Dr Daniel Griffin likes to say. Other databases – VSD etc – consist of actual data and are thus able to be statistically analyzed. Brush up on statistical inference and listen to TWiV if you actually care to find out what’s happening. Stop JAQing off here trying to prove a negative.
While you’re at it, ask them about the temporal anomalies. There was one death each in Jan 1920, May 1932, Feb 1968 and Jan 2001.
And congratulate them on making the vaccines safer, since the death to vaccine ratio (end of month compared to doses administered by 15th of month) has declined from 1 per 66,000 in April to 1 per 264,000 in August.
Or could it be that the people vaccinated in April were older and more likely to die for random causes on a given day than those vaccinated later or (your comparison group) children receiving their childhood vaccinations???
Why are you coyly hinting at a possible explanation for the massive increase in deaths and serious injuries reported to VAERS from the covid shots? If you’ve got some actual data to support your claims, or your suggestions, or hints, or whatever they are, then drop a link.
Here’s my theory: There’s been a massive increase in deaths and serious injuries reported to VAERS from the covid shots, because the covid shots are more dangerous than any other vaccine in history.
That explains why no one at the CDC or FDA will talk about it, just like no one in ACIP will mention it in their safety reports.Those who think public comments are a solution when ACIP is already fully aware of the massive increase in VAERS reports from covid shots and is intentionally concealing it, are deluding themselves or others.
That’s nice. Here’s my theory. You don’t know what you are talking about, no idea how VAERS works, and no idea of comparing baseline rates to VAERS reports to see if there might even be a safety signal. Those of us familiar with VAERS predicted before there was even an EUA for a COVID-19 vaccine that a mass vaccination campaign against the disease would result in lots of reports of everything after vaccination up to and including deaths, just because of the sheer numbers and the unprecedented push to remind people to report adverse events and how many deaths we’d expect within varying timeframes after vaccination just by random chance alone vaccinating tens of millions of people in a short period of time. But, yeah, you do you and your conspiracy nonsense.
The massive increase in deaths and serious injuries reported to VAERS is completely unprecedented–nothing like it has ever happened in VAERS 30-year history–and it’s not due to more vaccines. But I don’t doubt the CDC and FDA were expecting a flood of death and serious adverse event reports from the covid shots.
If it’s nothing to worry about, then it wouldn’t be covered up, and we’d have several detailed CDC/FDA analyses of the VAERS data demonstrating why. If it were possible, we’d have already, in triplicate.
@NWO Reporter There have been quite unpresented vaccination campaign, too. And people have told you any number of times, there have hundred of millions vaccinations. Calculate how many people would die without vaccinations. to get background rate.
Here is my theory. The COVID-19 vaccines are becoming much safer according to VAERS.
Up to the end of April 2021 there was one death reported to VAERS within 14 days of vaccination for every 90,000 vaccines given. Since then there has only been one death reported for every 360,000 vaccines given.
It is unprecedented really that vaccines become more safe the more that are given.
Sitting here with two unvaccinated covid cases in bad shape that we don’t have room to admit because all of our ICU and covid ward beds are full…it’s getting harder and harder to not light people like you up. Grow tf up and contribute to the solution. Stop being part of the problem. Barring that? Shut up and let the rest of us fix what you are actively making worse.
People don’t like things shoved down their throats. Why is it that ‘incentives” and “mandates” promoted by the establishment-both Democrats and Republicans-always use punishment as an incentive? And no. The establishment hasn’t done a very good job of promoting vaccines if they have to resort to those mandates and incentives. Meanwhile our political betters exclude themselves and their agencies from those selfsame mandates.
As Glenn Reynolds once quipped, ” I’ll believe there’s a crisis when the people who tell me there’s a crisis start acting like there’s a crisis.”
It would hardly matter if our political leaders exempted themselves from vaccine mandates – they’re not, in general, though for instance OSHA doesn’t have the authority to regulate Congress so Biden’s recent thing can’t – given that they jumped themselves to the head of the vaccine line anyway – indeed “acting like there’s a crisis”.
There is an attitude your health is not my problem. This is public health problem. There is lots of misinformation around, and even political medicine (senator Johnson and Kory). Informing public is quite difficult nowadays.
“People don’t like things shoved down their throats.”
Let’s turn that frown upside down, nervous Nancy:
Fun with vents https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/
How do you feel about seat belt laws?
If you choose to not wear a seat belt in a car and you’re in a crash you are only a danger to yourself and the other people in your vehicle (and maybe anyone standing too close if you’re ejected from the car).
An unvaccinated person is a danger to others by having a much higher risk of infecting others (specifically children who can’t be vaccinated yet) and also by consuming hospital resources so that people who have other conditions can’t be treated in a timely manner.
Most people will do the right thing when asked. Some people will have to be coaxed. Some with have to be ordered. And some people will refuse to do the right thing for no reason other than they don’t want to be told what to do, no matter the risk to themselves. It has nothing to do with the vaccine or the mask, and everything to do with some people wanting to do the wrong thing.
When Dr. Jha says “Republicans care about getting beyond this pandemic every bit as much as Democrats do,” I think he’s referring to voters, not the politicos, as the later would be so obviously wrong. In this, I think he’s following the same coax-them-with-positive-spin of many public health advocates and Biden-admin officials… You know, Joe’s line about the virus not discriminating between Democrats and Republicans, so c’mon man1 yadda yadda. But I think the reality is that a huge chunk of the GOP base at least is indeed caught up in what amounts to a death cult, marked by continuing denialism of what COVID does along with the rock-ass stubborn “I will not do what THEY tell me” refusal of vaccines as well as masks and other and mitigation measures. And we know who THEY are, right, which somehow includes anyone in the so-called ‘mainstream media’ but excludes everyone on Fox, Newsmax, wingnut talk radio…
That’s what this is all about really, which is why it’s different from the old-school antivax of AoA, TMI, RFKJ etc. For those folks, being anti-vax has been the core of their identity, what amounts to a First Principle. That’s why erstwhile environmentalist and liberal scion RFKJ is hanging with fascists (and not vetting their positions on climate or pollution or anything). All of that is disposable in the quest to smite the demonic needle Nazis. But the folks in the deep South — and these are mainly people who didn’t raise a stink about childhood vaccinations back in the day; witness the ‘No exemptions’ school requirements and excellent MMR uptake in Mississippi for example — are into this Trumpy, grievance, ‘Freedom!’ tribalism schtick at the center, and vax refusal is just a badge of that — virtue signaling, like threatening the families of any school-board members who might support a mask mandate. If Biden/Pelosi/Schumer/AOC at al had a collective epiphany and came out against the COVID vaccines, the MAGAs wouldn’t embrace them, and would probably start lining up to get the jab, assuming Tucker and Hannity told them it was OK, and now only the Sheeple were refusing the shots.
My point then, alas, is that these folks indeed do NOT care about getting beyond this pandemic. They’re willing to watch thousands more die from Delta every day to “own the libs”, to continue telling themselves that the libs don’t own them.
The radio personalities do a “get vaccinated” wink. It was only a couple months ago that one of them told the cohost (m 36 yo) that if he got vaccinated he would get fired. wink.
Maybe the whole thing is fake. I do not see it at the store where the maskless kids run around playing tag while their maskless mothers decide if they want the bag of chips they just squeezed or the one behind it. But something is going on with the hospitals. My own mother has some very painful butt stuff going on (this veiny-looking egg coming out of her butt hole I don’t see how she can even take a crap) and needs surgery. But she just sits in the emergency room 8 hours every day to get sent home because she can’t get a bed.
A friend called the other day and happened to mention that a 20 yo coworker is on a ventilator.
A local icon, fully vaccinated, has died because he had a heart condition and 43 hospitals in the area did not have a cardiac ICU bed available.
https://www.newsweek.com/man-dies-heart-failure-after-43-hospitals-icus-filled-covid-patients-turn-him-away-1628262
He was an antique dealer and auctioneer. He died three days shy of his 73’rd birthday.
Follow the money………
REVEALED: 26 out of the 27 Lancet scientists who trashed theory that Covid leaked from a Chinese lab have links to Wuhan researchers.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9980015/26-Lancet-scientists-trashed-theory-Covid-leaked-Chinese-lab-links-Wuhan.html
don’t like the daily mail try the telegraph
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/10/revealed-scientists-dismissed-wuhan-lab-theory-linked-chinese/
You know follow the science…….. but only if it pays well.
The Lancet failed to due diligence on the ‘Letter’ just like they failed to due diligence on Wakefield.
Both the Daily Fail and the Torygraph are thoroughly unreliable. Why do you bother coming here to spread lies?
“Why do you bother coming here to spread lies?”
Other than issues ? I would guess that the intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.
“Of the 27 scientists who wrote a letter in The Lancet medical journal dismissing the possibility that Covid-19 originated from a Wuhan lab, 26 have links to its Chinese researchers, their colleagues or its benefactors, a new investigation has revealed.”
You notice that this is about “links”, not money (even if you believe Daily Fail). Links are quite indirect, too
There are other papers about this matter, too, Read more widely.
Well, “links” are always suspicious. Real scientists don’t belong to “institutes” or “associations.” They don’t “collaborate” or “confer.” They are brave mavericks sailing bravely alone, unburdened by “links” to anyone in their field, always striving to throw off “links” until they are unlinked to anyone or anything in reality. That’s how real science is done.
Not now mother. God. Are you drinking Flemmingway? You are hardly (phrasing) competent to comment on such matters at the moment.
Real scientist do not collaborate or confer with other scientists ? Seriously, how would science possibel without. Scientists get paid by institutions, otherwise only very rich people with curious hobbies could do science,
Check real COIs, but check the argument, too. Read real astroturf sites, and learn to recognise them.
I’m fairly sure that Archer has major tongue in cheek.
Again for the people in the cheap seats:
IT COULD HAVE COME FROM A LAB
Got it? Message received? Now what godd*mn difference does that make with regard to the VACCINE? Get your shot, stop being a child, stop making this worse than it has to be.
I reckon your apparent and consistent state of confusion is actually deliberate, a refusal to acknowledge that your politics colours and taints your perceptions to the degree that they’re simply useless and compromised. Republicans are very consistent. They (we?) are absolutely vaxxed, but like me they do not support the right of the government to force vaccinations. or use status as a passport. In many (most) cases this is because covid survival creates just as many (if not superior) antibodies — meaning the survivor is just as immune as a vaxx recipient — hence vaccination isn’t the only answer. Oh, and how and when did such an assessment of personal need become your right?
For once, look at things correctly. The right is against the constant slippage of rights to leftist predation using “we’re just being reasonable” argumentation. No, you’re not being reasonable. You’re demanding a one-size-fits-nobody answer that can be co-opted and used later (for tyrannical purpose) by people even more evil and stupid than the mewling and mindless hordes we see now. Sure, there’s no guarantee that this rights slippage is permanent (wink wink) but being real, we all know that yes, it is. But of course it is. The erosion of rights is what drives republican response. Oh, but it’s easier for you to couch this as anti-science. Because the idiotic claim works best for your crowd who already believes this to be true and hungers for more. You feed them more garbage thinking and venom, which is what they come for. It’s worse than a bungled netflix “for you” algorithm.
“The erosion of rights is what drives republican response.”
Like with the new Texas abortion law?
Republicans are highly selective when it comes to deciding what, when and where individual rights should be protected.
Our right not to be infected or endlessly restricted by the actions of unvaccinated dimwits doesn’t matter to the Grand Obsolete Party.
Orac says, “The Republican Party is now undeniably the antivaccine party.”
sadmar says: Antivax is now undeniably a tool of rising fascism.
https://youtu.be/JxQODOjBRtA?t=14
It’s interesting how my liberal friends are quick to point out dem nuance such that there’s distinguishing markers between antifa progressives vs the rank and file more conservative democrats. Not all democrats want to defund the police sort of thing. Except of course this same recognition of factions somehow completely disappears when looking at the right wing. As in, most rank and file republicans want nothing to do with the abortion idiocy of the social conservative minority,
But, no, someone mentions “republican” and like a parrot you slam into equating all republicans with social conservatives. But you being oh so clever are already well aware of the factions, or ought to be. That means you’re either malicious or clueless, and either way, you’re not contributing anything. Sod off.
“Not all democrats want to defund the police”
Fuck the poLICE #ACAB
You people made your bed. Lie in it. You have miscalculated. You have killed off the olds faster than generating frindge edge um, yeah, new votes that will actually go vote. Dumbasses.
2016 – no more oversea adventures, let’s get out of Afghanistan (and actually started in 2020)
2021 – Joe Biden has betrayed our country and will make fighting oversea wars more difficult for the USA.
Minority?
They are passing laws pertaining to their “faction” ideals.
And I don’t see many “moderate” Republicans jumping out to combat that “idiocy”.
But if you like to talk about erosion of rights supported by the vast majority of Republicans, maybe the Patriot Act would be more to your liking?
But we digress.
According to official numbers, nope. The antivaxer core is currently on the Right.
Heck, just look at the media. Left-wing (moderate-wing?) says vaccinate, Right-wing “entertainment” media says it’s a cabal by leftists.
Remember Ebola ? Then Republicans called for strictest quarantine measures, But yes, there is something like a consistency here. In this case, quarantines does not help, there are no asymptomatic carriers
Sigh. https://xkcd.com/297
“meaning the survivor is just as immune”
Yes. The survivor.
So much wrong.
The government absolutely has a right to demand people be vaccinated. See Jacobsen vs. Massachusetts for more. Also, some countries mandate certain vaccines as a precondition of entry.
This is not about your rights. This is about taking actions to prevent the spread of a disease that has already killed millions.
I’ve written this many times before. Catching a disease to gain immunity to it is like burning something to fireproof it. The news has been full of stories of people who were convinced that they were healthy enough to fight off COVID without getting vaccinated, only to wind up in hospital, or even dead.
One of my colleagues has a patient in his panel whose path to “natural immunity” landed her on the transplant list with severely pulmonary sclerosis. She’s in her 40s and her lungs were stone-cold normal pre covid.
You’re twisting and spinning, and deliberately. I’ll draw slower this time. What I said was that people who have already had covid are now immune, that the government has no possible business forcing them to vaccinate. They’re already immune. What part of THEY’RE ALREADY IMMUNE is tripping you up? The part where they might be republicans, I suspect.
I suppose they could carry a card that identifies that they have had Covid and therefore don’t need to be vaccinated. Assuming that different variants don’t need modified vaccines. In which case they’d have to catch the new variant and recover and have this added to their card so everyone knows. Bit of a risk but it takes all sorts.
Which is more important? Not being required to get vaccinated or not having to prove your status?
I wonder if the US medical insurance companies will put up premiums for the unvaccinated?
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”
-RWE
As a side note, the natural immunity vs vaccination “debate” truly boggles my mind. Who cares if natural immunity is “better”? You have to actually get an infection to acquire it. If/when you do get an infection the first time, why would you not want some baseline protection against serious disease and death as is provided by vaccination?
@random-whatever
I have seen and treated and continue to see and treat dozens of covid sequelae patients. I’ve even had one die of a stroke from the coagulopathy weeks after she got over covid. I’ve treated covid in every age bracket from the clinic to the ICU and back out again in some cases. Been doing it from the start of this thing.
Your problem is you’ve never been up against someone who was truly “On the front lines.” Ignore what FLCCC or whatever baloney you stream tell you-this virus does real, measurable, LASTING damage. Anyone who says otherwise has never taken care of covid patients or is intentionally fos.
The only tool in our arsenal is prevention; decadron barring that. Stop being a part of the problem. I don’t give a frog’s fat a** what political party someone is a member of. I find them equally odious for similar reasons. I take care of patients. More and more with covid now than anytime since last year. Stop making it worse.
Let me get this straight… you’re replying to DB? Just dropped by?
With a pearl of ornithological wisdom?
Can I send a SASE? Sadly, all the S&H Green Stamps got tossed in the last move.
@Random Engineer You mention natural immunity. Do you mean that people should get sick and possibly die because of it ? If so you do not care much about COVID
There is people’s right to healthy. Is your right not to get vaccinated more important ?
I do not think much about domino theory, every argument for intervention should stand ojn its own.
Reading is hard? Really?
I did not mention natural immunity.
People who have had the virus don’t require a vaccination because they gained immunity that way.
I thought this was a discussion about how republicans advocate against poorly considered blunt policy therefore are cast as science denying, anti-vaxx neanderthals.
It is true. Many republicans have gained natural immunity. Especially the ones that are still alive.
Your profound medical insight is duly noted. It did happen to have some indirect interest for me, though. I went poking through fairly recent news that might bear on the Commerce Clause angle and came upon this.
The highlight isn’t really that Zywicki prevailed (“medical exemption”; good one ∗koff∗), nor is it that “Zywicki’s immunologist” was, yes, Hooman Noorchashm. It’s that the whole thing was put together by the “New Civil Liberties Alliance,” with which I was previously unfamiliar.
So why did you not say that vaccine mandates should have exemption ? It was like mandates are bad in all cases,
@narad “Your profound medical insight is duly noted.”
Good for you. Duly note then that experts with real names seem to think that a case of covid confers immunity as well.
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101
@aarno “It was like mandates are bad in all cases”
They ARE. One can be pro-vaxx and be steadfast against governmental overreach and/or terrible policy. One can be pro-vaxx and completely against the notion that random unelected individuals can arrogate broad powers, such as telling landlords when they can collect rents.
Jennifer Block is a freelance journalist and former editor at Ms. Magazine.
What she wrote for the BMJ is essentially a news article.
Her Bio doesn’t list any scientific credentials.
The protection from getting the disease may be better than naive vaccination, but you risk death and long-term side effects to get that. And the data also show that getting vaccinated in addition to the disease gives even better protection.
She is trying to argue for a special category for people who have survived the disease, but it would require testing for titers.
Since the vaccines are very safe and give additional protection, it is simpler just to encourage everyone to get vaccinated.
@squirrel “Jennifer Block is a freelance journalist and former editor at Ms. Magazine”
Golly, a reporter? You don’t say. One whom interviews and quotes experts, aka people with opinions relevant to this discussion. Be it far from me to tell you how to read, but you could start by addressing what they have to say.
@RandoMandoBlando
“Be it far from me to tell you how to read, but you could start by addressing what they have to say.”
The ironing is palatable
@Random Rent collection and public do not have much in common, even less when when we speak about infectious diseases, They infect unvaccinated and their workmates. It is bad for business, if you think about it.
This is what happens when a political party loses the mainstream, middle of the road, public. They have no choice but to appeal to the margins in an attempt to maintain political power (that and attempt to make it that much harder for regular folks to vote). It’s a shame that the Republicans just can’t concentrate on pushing policies that people prefer, as opposed to trying to become the “big tent party of conspiracy theorists.”
This is the sort of situation where compulsory voting helps. When everyone has to vote, voter suppression strategies are meaningless and both sides have to appeal to the middle. Becoming a party of conspiracy theorists places you as a small rump.
Here in the People’s Republic of Australia* we not only have compulsory voting, but there is also socialised medicine. We also have a few rules that curtail the right to be completely stupid and put other people’s lives at risk. The USA-born Mrs P. recommends all of the above.
*For reasons, we do still have a Queen, just somebody else’s Queen.
Compulsory voting, universal health care.. and also AFL (go Doggies!) and NRL (love me some Josh Addo Carr). I would so move to Australia if I could… except for maybe all the bugs…
to rebecca
‘Both the Daily Fail and the Torygraph are thoroughly unreliable. Why do you bother coming here to spread lies?’
Even the Lancet had to issue an addendum or was that a lie too.
Are people afraid of the truth or mad they were proven wrong or mad that they were mislead. Science is about discovery of new facts not burying you head in the sand or sticking you fingers in your ears.
thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01377-5/fulltext
Oh, and hi, Clint.
If you actually read the correction, it is about Daszak. Daily Fail still errs with 25 others.
Exhibit A: FL Gov. DeSantis
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/covid-19-crisis-florida-s-desantis-starts-lose-plot-n1279135
In 1964, on the floor of the U.S. senate, Democrats held the longest filibuster in our nations history, 75 days. All trying to prevent the passing of one thing.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT.
The first 28 blacks elected to the House of Representatives were Republican.
The first black elected to the Senate was a Republican, (Hiram Rhodes Revels)
The first woman elected to the House was a Republican (Jeannette Rankin)
The President who is responsible for ‘Operation Warp Speed” and the Covid vaccine is a Republican.
So, yes Republican’s are racist, sexist and anti vaccine.
“So, yes Republican’s are racist, sexist and anti vaccine.”
I’ll be sure to quote you on that.
This is so historically ignorant, I don’t know where to start.
(And note I did not say untrue.)
Another idiot who isn’t aware of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.”
Folks, Ed almsot certainly knows that this supposed comparison of the parties is meaningless, and why. He’s trolling, spreading BS he knows is BS for the thrill of twitting the libs.
You may have noticed that the Democrats and Republicans have switched 180 degrees on civil rights. Southern states now have Republican legislatures and governors because racist Democrats became racist Republicans, and vice versa. This is not the “gotcha” that you think it is.
Vote was sectional. All southern Republicans voted against civil rights law, one soouthern Democrat (of New Deal variant) voted for.
Filibuster was done by southern Democrats. The law was proposed by Johnson, who, if memory serves. was a Democrat.
Can this blanket indictment of the unvaccinated be taken seriously or as anything other than propaganda and misinformation when not a single sentence is written to distinguish those with natural immunity from prior infection that has now been indisputably proven to be more protective than mRNA inoculation against known variants? There’s the giveaway as to the unscientific purpose behind this piece. Ignore these people.
Thank goodness you popped out of nowhere to advocate going away.
This has already been dealt with above.
In order to gain natural immunity, you first need to catch the disease, and risk not only death but other extremely negative sequelae.
The evidence is in. People who have been vaccinated against COVID are less likely to have breakout illnesses, far less likely to need hospitalisation, and far, far less likely to die of COVID.
The supposedly “superior” immunity from the infection is pointless if you die.
Strawmen are always a better foil than the soldier in front of you. The exception taken with the blogger’s comment was the failure to distinguish among the unvaccinated. After all, a very large population of those ALREADY possessing natural immunity exists among the unvaccinated for which mRNA would be an arguably irrational, and in most cases, a poorly informed decision. The conflation of all unvaccinated into a single group of recalcitrant ignoramuses is the sleight of hand that misinforms this push for mandates. And it should be noted that the unvaccinated also includes a significant population of those under age 25 for which a reasonable risk/reward analysis can be made to disfavor mRNA inoculation. The data offers little support for those advocating vaccination of the healthy young as you would find it nearly impossible to find a death sans a very substantial underlying health issue. My point is obvious. Many if not most of those who remain unvaccinated aren’t antivaxers. They are rational and free.
Well, don’t keep everyone waiting: “make” the “analysis.”
Ideally, somewhere else.
P.S. My condolences on the loss of your commas.
Old Jewish joke. Three old Jewish men are sitting at Miami Beach cafe table having afternoon coffee.
One man sighs and says, “Oy.”
Second man also sighs and says, “Vey.”
Third man throws his hands up and says, “if you two are going to argue politics then I’m leaving.”
“indisputably proven to be more protective than mRNA inoculation”
Citation needed. I need antibody titers, memory B-cells, memory T-cells, effector T-cells, and durability of immune memory.
Also, I need this balanced against everyone who has died of COVID, and everyone who has suffered ongoing or permanent damage to their health. DALYs are an appropriate metric.
There was a paper here promoted by Robert Kennedy Jr himself. It showed 1% difference for natural immunity. Not something to die for.
Funny, because everyone I’ve met who is against the vaccine is a Democrat. Trump says get the vaccine. Ben Shapiro says get the vaccine.
In fact, I was just talking to a young woman a few hours ago who refuses to get a vaccine. She is a far leftist, pro abortion activist, with tattoos and piercings all over her.
Many (most?) Republicans are against a vaccine mandate, not the vaccine that Trump cleared the red tape through the FDA for. This is an anti-tyranny position, not an anti-vaccine position.
Pro-abortion AND tattoos? Is she single?
Did you know her previously, or do you just like to cover a lot of ground when talking to strangers? Did you shake hands and exchange first names afterward, as is pretty customary?
rs you’re a liberal, so you don’t understand sarcasm
keithb what the heck is historically ignorant but true. Is that like, the democrats voted in ‘jim crow laws’ and the KKK was their storm troopers but that information is historically ignorant. I didn’t know that truth had a point of view.
lawrence I guess Trump’s vaccine was part of the ‘southern strategy’
Not the wikipedia ‘southern strategy’ but
John Ehrlichman (maybe)
I get double plus ungood at these “conservatives” screaming rights and freedoms and we use the covid money to build jails or the pot smokers may be let go.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/apr/10/candace-owens/candace-owens-pants-fire-statement-southern-strate/
The republicans post-civil war != republicans of today
democrats (especially southern democrats) post -civil war != democrats of today
You’ve taken the bait like a good little fish Colleague Hyperlink .. your ego just could not let it go
Thank you for your business 🙂
Orac is going a bit too far. Republicans and Democrats should question the employer mandate on private businesses because Biden is crossing a Constitutional line. The federal government can mandate its employees and contractors as it sees fit.
What “line” would that be? Is the Commerce Clause looking for its keys under the nearest lamppost?
The most forthcoming whine that I’ve seen is that larger companies would have to compete for vaccinated employees once the vectors move to smaller ones.
So, are you saying OSHA is unconstitutional and nobody noticed in the last 50 years, or are you saying the over-100-year-old precedent that mandated vaccinations is wrong?
It just is. Don’t assume that it is secure.
Just some random thoughts
Americans spent more money on taxes last year then on food,clothing, health care COMBINED.
and for you vaccine obsessed
vaccination rates
Nigeria 1.9%
Egypt 7.2 %
USA 63 %
UK 72%
Death rate per million people from Covid
Nigeria 12
Egypt 161
USA 2041
UK 1965
Two-thirds of the UK death toll occurred before we had a vaccine. Nine months later only 65% of the UK population is fully vaccinated. Deaths of vaccinated people now account for only 1.2% of the total Covid deaths each week.
If you don’t understand the circumstances surrounding a statistic, don’t use it. If you do understand it, stop lying.
Here are some of my random thoughts:
Median age per country in 2018:
Nigeria 18.6
Egypt 23.9
USA 38.1
UK 40.5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age
Kiethb interesting that you have to make up a quote and use a 1962 story to talk about 1969 Nixon’s ‘southern strategy”. and use a term from the book 1984. I am sure big brother will be happy with an extra ration of chaco, maybe you’ll get 30 grams.
You also forget that democrat Joe Biden stance on mandatory minimum sentences and his support (heck he wrote the dang thing) of the 1994 crime law that disproportionally effected blacks (you know the “predators”. but yes that was in 1994 and he changed just like the rest of the democrats did.
msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-controversial-1994-crime-law-that-joe-biden-helped-write-explained/ar-BB19xrKq
It is impossible for Britain and France to be allies in WWI and WWII, they were enemies during the Napoleanic Wars!
Somebody seems to have gotten into the glue early.
Humanity, get over yourselves. 29 raptors https://youtu.be/cN0Qv6A_z9k?t=731
slightly off topic
The top headline at the moment on the CBC website is “Disgust growing over vaccine protesters’ Holocaust comparisons”
Antivaxxers are getting a well-deserved beating in public opinion.
[…] post from Monday about how the Republican Party has now gone completely over to the Dark Side and undeniably become the antivaccine party. I didn’t plan it this way. However, in a nice bit of timing, late Monday The BMJ published […]
It is a mistake to classify everyone as either pro-vax or anti-vax. There are many of us who think some vaccines are good, but that every vaccine might not be good for everyone. We don’t agree that the more vaccines the better. And we are skeptical about the new covid vaccines, and do not necessarily trust what medical authorities and government agencies tell us about them. Their motivation is to get everyone vaccinated, not to have scientific and skeptical debates.
I agree that Republicans have become the anti-vaccine party, in general, and Democrats have become the “science” party. Those of us who believe in natural health (the “hippie dippies”) have become alienated from the Democrats. We know Democrats who have carefully avoided GMO food and prescription drugs because they are unnatural and possibly toxic, but who now have complete faith in the drug companies and their experimental genetic vaccines. So now we seem to have more in common with libertarians and conservatives than with liberals and progressives.
Democrats used to be the party of rebels, while Republicans were the party of conventional authoritarians. It has reversed 180 degrees. If you distrust government authorities and drug companies, you are now more likely to be a Republican, or an independent.
No one—I repeat, no one—here is “classifying everyone as either pro-vax or anti-vax.” That is a favorite straw man argument used by antivaxxers and those who pander to antivaxxers to attack those who refute antivaccine misinformation. ?
You don’t seem to be aware that there are rational scientific people who are skeptical about the genetic covid vaccines. You seem to think everyone is either on one side or the other, with nothing in between.
<blockquote.You don’t seem to be aware that there are rational scientific people who are skeptical about the genetic covid vaccines.
Name these people. List their qualifications so that we can judge their expertise. List their arguments so we can assess them.
“There are many of us who think some vaccines are good, but that every vaccine might not be good for everyone.”
Which vaccines do you think are “good” and recommend people get? Can you name them?
Have you think why government want get everybody vaccinated ? Perhaps it is to stop COVID. Otherwise it would a conspiracy that includes almost every medical professional, amongst others. Do you think that such a conspiracy exists ? (Fauci rules the world, with litttle backing from Gates.)
@aarno “Have you think why government want get everybody vaccinated?”
it’s obvious why. Any semi-literate child could tell you this. Could you be more condescending?
The issue that is consistently misunderstood about the right wing position here is that they reckon the federal govt doesn’t have the power to compel and assumption of such power is illegal. Kristi Noem gov of South Dakota wrote an op-ed answer to Biden mandate called “See you in court” that spells this out, that the states themselves may argue the rights to compel, but the federal level cannot.
Orac and others citing public need etc seem to have no understanding of federalism or perhaps regard it as outdated, and they cast right wing opposition as anti-vaxx and anti-science. Like many arguments in the public sphere (e.g. climate change) the legal argument is about who decides and how it is done. This is important; Biden is president, not the king. The CDC isn’t the rightful creator of law and policy, otherwise we’d not have congress. And so on.
Note that Kristi Noem is vaccinated and encourages all to do so. She does not seem to feel she has the legal power to FORCE vaccinations, and no amount of “but we really really need this” argument changes this. Repeated assertion of needs (as if republicans are too dim to grasp these) doesn’t do much other than inflame the people who would claim a right to make law based on what they personally think is the current need. This is not how laws work, and it is not how the US system works.
Now, rather than everyone ganging up on me, how about you guys address what the sitting governor of South Dakota has to say and debate that. I’m sure she deserves a great deal of derisive condescension as well, which will suffice for the liberal side of the debate. Cheers.
Why bother? She should get busy suing.
Off topic, but you may find this interesting:
Staffers Must Swear Off Tylenol, Tums To Get Religious Vaccine Exemption
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/hospital-staff-must-swear-off-tylenol-tums-to-get-religious-vaccine-exemption/
The hospital system has a larger list of drugs, but says that’s not even a full list of medications that have used fetal cell lines in their development.
In a rare show of common sense, only about 5% of the system’s workers are asking for a religious or medical exemption.
Among the larger list of drugs is … wait for it … Ivermectin. Also Hydroxychloroquine.
[…] the Republican Party has gone from just pandering to antivaxxers in 2015 to inarguably being the party of antivaxxers, and this process was nearly complete before the […]
[…] but is emphatically anti-vaccine mandate. She is a Pharm.D who admirably, considering the enormous resistance to COVID-19 vaccination in her party, made a “get vaccinated” Public Service Announcement, […]
[…] Even school vaccine mandates have always been political; they have just been nonpartisan, with a broad political consensus that they are a good thing, even as the political consensus behind them began to fray a decade ago and started to become increasingly politicized around five or six years ago, with antivaxxers succeeding more and more in making common cause with the right by opposing mandates based on “freedom,” “parental rights,” and opposition to government regulation. Unfortunately, this tactic was all too successful and even turbocharged by the pandemic, when anti-“lockdown” and antimask protesters quickly made common cause with antivaxxers based on their shared antipathy to public health, and all of them making common cause with the vilest conspiracy theorists, like QAnon, to the point that the Republican Party is now indisputably the antivaccine party. […]
[…] three months since the last time I wrote about this topic. You might recall that in September I described how Republicans and conservatives were losing their minds over President Joseph Biden’s federal […]
[…] the Republican Party is officially embracing its position as the anti-vaccine political party, advocating what they call “natural immunity” as an alternative or substitute to getting […]
[…] the Republican Party is officially embracing its position as the anti-vaccine political party, advocating what they call “natural immunity” as an alternative or substitute to getting […]
[…] the Republican Party is officially embracing its position as the anti-vaccine political party, advocating what they call “natural immunity” as an alternative or substitute to getting […]
[…] hippie-dippy crunchy lefties that, not only had the politics of antivaxxers shifted sharply to the right over the last 5-10 years, but that the antivaccine movement and fascists have found a mutually […]