What is going on in this country where other people have the right to say what medical interventions an individual must have? Who will be responsible for the medical costs in the event of side effects (there is no such thing as an intervention without risks)? Will these costs fall on the parents who force their child’s teacher to be vaccinated, the doctors that indiscriminately vaccinate all patients, the managers at the grocery store that requires this for their employees to work, or our government who disregards the requirement for informed consent? The vaccine makers cannot be sued for the injuries caused by their own vaccine products and this technology has never been widely used in human beings until now. In addition, there is lack of long-term data on cancer, pregnancy, breastfeeding, fertility, autoimmunity, ADE, etc., and we do not yet know the complete ingredients in the covid vaccine. How can any person make a risk-benefit analysis without this information and why are we so narrowly focused on only one option out of this pandemic?  

Vaccine technology was developed to mimic natural immunity. If someone has been infected, we generally assume they are protected, because this is how immunity works. Israel’s population is 80%+ immune from both vaccination and natural infection. Based on studies from all over the world, natural immunity provides more diverse coverage. The vaccines that were developed last year contain a very specific message for the spike protein and does not contain the virus. Any meaningful mutation in the spike protein can render the vaccines useless. In addition, are we making this pandemic worst by potentially contributing to escape mutants from waning vaccine immunity (like antibiotic resistant superbugs)? Even with such high levels of immunity through vaccination and post-exposure, Israel is currently experiencing a similar surge, if not higher, than the original peak. The CDC even admits that vaccination does NOT prevent infection OR transmission and a reasonable assumption for anyone reviewing the actual data is that we cannot and will NOT vaccinate ourselves out this pandemic.

Using this vaccine as a therapeutic will not provide herd immunity because these covid vaccines do not highly prevent transmission.  In addition, this is a global pandemic and it is virtually impossible to isolate a nation. Even if the covid vaccines were highly preventative and we are able to vaccinated every human and some animals (some can get infected) in the US, herd immunity will not work with leaky borders. There is the good news though: If a vaccine does not completely prevent but offers benefit by reducing disease severity, it will provide “protection” to the person choosing to get vaccinated so there is no need to force anyone to take the vaccine for a vaccinated person’s vaccine to work. 

We need to approach this pandemic more broadly to truly contain it. Using early aggressive treatments in combination with vaccinations globally, in the appropriate patient populations, is a better approach. Our current treatment protocol only treat when oxygen saturation is so low, it can be very difficult to reverse and lead to poor outcomes and crowd our hospitals unnecessarily. Data clearly shows that early outpatient treatment with oral repurposed drugs with decades of safety data can be helpful in reducing mortality and yet, here we are over a year in the pandemic and the protocols has not been revised to reflect the science.

The pandemic response has become so politicized that it has eroded the trust in our healthcare providers and institutions. I work in this system and believe that vaccines are the cornerstone of a healthy society. To group this highly politicize and NEW vaccine technology with the success of the older more traditional vaccines is doing a disservice by reducing confidence in ALL vaccines. Please stop continuing to degrade the trust in our health institutions by coercing people to take a new medical intervention by injection into their bodies if they feel the risk outweighs the benefit. Bodily autonomy and informed consent is the cornerstone of all liberties and a mandate for a vaccine that does not highly prevent transmission is clearly not about health.