Just Get Vaccinated

Every so often, my friend and fellow blogger, Julie of strictjuliespanks.com, writes a post expressing her political thinking. They tend to be intelligently written with close reasoning attributed to largely Fox News authorities. Her heart is in the right place. She advocates freedom and the American (Canadian in her case) way. Like most of her ilk, she suggests that those who disagree with her are against personal freedom and equates them to Chinese Communists.

Her latest rant is against requiring people to prove they have been vaccinated against COVID before being admitted to some public events. Oh, dear. The problem here is that requiring immunizations is a public health measure that’s been around for a hundred years. In the 1950s, hospitals were filled with little kids in iron lungs. Polio ran wild. Parents of people near and dear to me suffered the ravages of this disease. When kids were required to get the Salk and later, the Sabine vaccines, Polio was nearly eradicated.

I agree with her in the sense that we should be able to be the masters of our health. However, if this means supporting the propagation of a deadly disease, maybe we need to reconsider. There are only two ways to stop the spread of a communicable disease: isolate sick people or vaccinate against it. Isolation rarely works well because most diseases are “smart” enough to be communicable before symptoms develop. If they are especially sneaky, like COVID, a fair percentage of infected people are symptom-free. They can spread the disease without knowing they have it.

Another obvious point is that people who are not infected can safely interact. Sadly, it isn’t possible to be 100-percent sure that people who have been vaccinated are disease-free. But it is over 90-percent safe.

Dealing with a pandemic shouldn’t be a political issue. Republicans and Democrats get sick. Vaccinated and unvaccinated people are vulnerable. Stopping the spread of a disease is a numbers game. In the olden days, diseases like leprosy were controlled by sending sufferers to Hawaii or Australia. They didn’t want to go, but nobody had a better way to reduce the spread. Tuberculosis was treated in the same way. Sufferers were isolated. It helped, but not enough to make these diseases extinct. The reason is that the disease can spread before isolation is possible.

Vaccines were a big step forward. Healthy people could be protected. Did they work 100-percent of the time? Not always. It doesn’t matter. Remember, disease is a numbers game. One sick person can infect dozens of others. The spread is geometric. A vaccine that is 80-percent effective eliminates four out of five potential targets. Spread is slower, much slower. Vaccines can only work if enough people are immunized. We are told that 70-to-80-percent is needed to reach “herd immunity.”

So what’s the problem? People with political agendas are using immunization as a rallying point for their causes. The far-right considers any pubic mandate as an attack on freedom. It doesn’t matter what the issue is. It seems to me that death is the ultimate attack on personal freedom. There are over 600,000 Americans who would probably agree if they were still breathing. Worse, we don’t have a vaccine approved for little kids. How many of them need to die for the cause of “freedom?”

I don’t think the issue is very complicated. We have a proven technique to manage a public health crisis. Instead of digging through right-wing “authorities,” isn’t it more sensible to recognize that sometimes the common good trumps (see what I did there?) the ballyhoo of people using your health and safety as a tool to advance dubious political causes?

9 Comments

  1. It is almost always horribly painful to read her political diatribes. It’s like visiting 90 year old relatives who just sit angrily in front of their old TVs watching Fox News and yelling at the TV all day, every day. ?

    1. Author

      I don’t think it is fair to attack Julie’s posts as diatribes. I agree that her sources are from the far right. That in itself doesn’t invalidate them. The big problem is the misunderstanding that public health is political.It isn’t. My life (yours and hers too) depend on people getting vaccinated.

      1. Greetings caged lion.

        I have seen your commentary on Julie’s page regarding this very delicate subject and you are oversimplifying the issue on your page here. Of course that is your right since it is your page. So, along those lines, I’ll keep my answer at that level.

        Your decree to just get vaccinated is denied by myself, my wife and a large number of Black Americans, coast to coast, who not only have the common sense to not take somethings, it is plural, that has not been fully tested, not take somethings that has been given protection from legal action in the event of non disclosed side effects, not take somethings whose very scientific existence is not subject to scientific scrutiny, not take somethings that can only be discussed by those who are in agreement and censors those who are not, not take somethings whose long-term effects are still unknown, a fact that is being ignored, and not take somethings in which my people have been bullied, bartered, begged and with this latest attempt by Biden, passive aggressively forced to take because the Democrats don’t wish to tarnish their reputation as being the good guy.

        Not to forget the fact that none of us will ever forget Tuskegee, nor forgive it.

        With all the advertised drugs you see on TV commercials that give you full disclosure of all the potential side effects and risk there is no excuse for any of these vaccines to not have the same disclosure, unless there is something to hide. Whether that is a large factor of unknown data or just plain arrogance on the fact of the pharmaceutical companies telling the government to tell us to just take this with no question asked it doesn’t matter. The action speaks volumes.

        Historically speaking the 1918 pandemic lasted about 3 years and then the party commenced. It was 3 years of hard work but it was worth it. This attempt to force people to take something that is potentially more dangerous than this virus is borderline criminal. With all the data and information at our fingertips there is no excuse for a person to not make a judgment call based on research and not on what the media tells you to do.

        If you’re relying on this government to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong then you all are being hypocritical. Why? Because if this was a Republican government doing one quarter of the mess I’ve been watching in the past 8 months there will be a Non-Stop riot fest from coast to coast. Yet here you guys are giving the Democrats a green light to do the very thing you were afraid the Republicans were going to do.

        I would love to hear the explanation for that one! And before you say anything about my political affiliation, I have been voting as a Democrat for thirty-six years and have more right to speak about my displeasure with them than you do.

        Personally, I believe that all these people who are vaccinated crying for everyone to join them are more concerned with attending parties and events than any actual interest in the general health and well-being of the people of this nation. Least of all mine.

        1. Author

          Julie isn’t alone. This is an unreasoned tirade from a Trump supporter. You can read the Pfizer vaccine product sheet here. There are similar labels for others. Clearly, you are passionate. I hope you stay healthy.

          1. Unreasoned tirade.

            Now that was funny. I thought my comments were very reasonable given the circumstances. As I found your labeling me has a trump supporter very amusing given the fact that I already told you that I am black and been voting Democrat for 36 years. But don’t feel too bad. I’ve noticed that any black person who goes against the Democratic party has been labeled as a trump supporter as an attemptible shame and silence any descent in the alleged ranks.

            As a fear man I looked at what you sent me briefly. I didn’t see the description list for the ingredients but it did give me a link to another site that asked me whether or not I was a healthcare provider. That did not seem inviting. And in these days one cannot be too careful.

            Of course in the interest of fair play I also share a few bits of information from actual doctors who have not been silenced for questioning and debating the vaccines and this whole issue in general.

            I must also point out the fact that you did not bring any counter to anything I have said in my so-called tirade. I am interested to see if you can.

        2. I’ve been voting as a Democrat for 37 years. Does that make me more of an authority than you? For the record, I am vaccinated to protect myself and those around me. Personally, I believe the people who refuse to get the vaccine care less about the general health and well-being of the people of the nation. Don’t believe me? Who are the majority of the unmasked people going to parties and events?

          If Trump had won re-election, and I hope you don’t think he did, I would still have gotten vaccinated. You’ll notice that Trump himself, as well as many of his cohorts, got vaccinated first chance he got.

          I do care about your well-being. I hope you are staying well and safe.

          1. Greetings Mrs Lion.

            Well based on your reply that puts you around my age, which was the additional basis of why I mentioned how long I’ve been voting for the Democrats. And to answer your question, that is a matter of perspective. Your life and mine more than likely are radically different. Those differences would be listed on how the Democrats treat you and your people and how they treat me and my people. Which boils down to my people experiencing the very things that you ignore.

            To answer your other question. The majority of people who went around to parties and events both outside and inside the kink scenes and lifestyles, were vaccinated. Since they completely ignore the fact that vaccines are not a cure as they do not kill viruses, they completely went around taking no precautions as if the entire pandemic was over. The CDC giving the premature all clear against wearing the mask did not help matters either. As did Biden backing that mistake. I have posted a few reminders of just how “successful” that turned out. And yes. I know that Israel is not part of this country but it is still an article that is relevant to this issue.

            Now since you mentioned it, the issue with the election. One of the most irritating things I know about my people is that we are still politically naive. The Democrats come for us every 4 years to put one of their lot in office. And while every other race actually receive tangible policies and the like exclusive for them in exchange for their vote, my folk get a smile prior to election and a kick in the pants at the end of it.

            This time around they tried to sell the “Trump is so evil and if we don’t stop him he’s going to come after us!” spiel while pushing us to ignore the fact of Biden’s blatant anti-black racist record with the 1994 crime bill as the cherry on that bitter cake. Of course some of my folk knowing this still proclaimed Biden has the lesser of two evils, ignoring the fact that evil is still evil and we need to do something solely for the benefit of our community.

            It is now 8 months after Biden’s inauguration and all those folks who said Biden was the lesser two evils all of a sudden have nothing to say has they watched evil heaped upon Us in a level we have not seen since the 90s. Hopefully that part of my community will understand and learn from this bitter lesson next year at the polls.

            Yes, Trump got vaccinated. So what. Why should I care what he does to himself? My standing comparison to him and Biden is the fact that in the four years he was in office, Trump did not make any anti-black policies. Comparing the 8 months of Biden, well the news speaks for itself.

            Now regarding your shared wish for my health and well-being, you don’t need to worry about that. My concern is that you, your husband and others like you might become so scared that you push for Biden to enact some form of executive order that pretty much puts us into a dictatorship. Which will be ironic given the fact that is the same thing you expected from Trump.

            Frightened and angry people do very foolish things, usually believing that I won’t come back to them. You should learn from history about that.

            https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/07/30/1022867219/cdc-study-provincetown-delta-vaccinated-breakthrough-mask-guidance

            https://www.businessinsider.com/israels-covid-19-infection-rate-is-rising-despite-vaccine-uptake-2021-8?amp&__twitter_impression=true

            https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/07/30/cdc-study-shows-74percent-of-people-infected-in-massachusetts-covid-outbreak-were-fully-vaccinated.html?__twitter_impression=true

            https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58322882

          2. Author

            As far as I can tell, you are discussing two different things. One is your political opinion about black issues. We aren’t debating racial politics here. It’s totally off-topic.

            In terms of COVID, the Israeli study determined that vaccine effectiveness is reduced over time. That’s why boosters are being suggested. I never claimed that vaccination is a panacea. However, there is an important fact missing from your comment. Breakthrough infections rarely result in hospitalizations. Translation: if you are vaccinated and get sick, you probably won’t die or get as sick as you would if you weren’t. That’s similar to the way flu vaccines work. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than avoiding inoculation.

            Nothing you said refutes that, including the articles you cite.

  2. Whether we like it or not, vaccination is the only way to deal with an epidemic.

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