"... because I’ve already had the disease and I have natural immunity... In a free country you would think people would honor the idea that each individual would get to make the medical decision, that it wouldn’t be a big brother coming to tell me what I have to do. Are they also going to tell me I can’t have a cheeseburger for lunch? Are they going to tell me that I have to eat carrots only and cut my calories? All that would probably be good for me, but I don’t think big brother ought to tell me to do it."
From "Rand Paul: 'I'm not getting vaccinated'" (The Hill).
The most popular comment over there is: "Rand Paul's neighbor for Senate!" Celebrating violence... or at least laughing at it.
Posts
10 comments:
LA Bob says
"The most popular comment over there is: "Rand Paul's neighbor for Senate!"'
And the oldest comment is, "Maybe a lil talk with your neighbor will change your mind Rand. "
Matt says
It’s ironic that a man who hates government so much has been IN the government for the last ten years. More to the point, however, is that his stance is phony. No one is forcing him to get vaccinated. He clearly has a choice. It’s worth noting too that having had Covid does not make one immune for life. The virus mutates. It’s still here ever changing.
Ray So-Ca writes:
Nobody knows if getting the Covid Vaccine will give lifetime immunity, just as nobody knows if getting Covid gives lifetime immunity. There is already talks of a booster shot needed due to new strains.
And it seems the cdc is playing games with how they test for Covid, with one requirement for those vaccinated, and another for un vaccinated.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/18/how-the-cdc-is-manipulating-data-to-prop-up-vaccine-effectiveness/
And there is very little discussion in the media of the side effects of the vaccines. The Covid vaccines seem to have more side effects than other vaccines.
https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/cdc-death-toll-following-experimental-covid-injections-now-at-4434-more-than-21-years-of-recorded-vaccine-deaths-from-vaers/
And another area there is little discussion, is if you have had Covid, do you need to get vaccinated?
My guess is no. Another guess of mine is getting Covid provides better immunity than the vaccine. Glenn Reynolds mentioned this.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/450210/
I don’t understand why there is such a huge push on the Covid Vaccines, and ignoring, or even demonizing, other early treatments such as HCQ.
And now it’s ok to speculate they Covid may have come out of a lab?
My trust in pronouncements about Covid from the establishment experts, such as Dr. Fauci, are at an all time low. This seems to be a partisan issue, where he has lower credibility with Republicans.
https://mobile.twitter.com/WendellHusebo/status/1395712561971142656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1395712561971142656%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fnews%2Fconfidence-fauci-drops-66-percent-among-republicans-poll
I trust Dr. Rand Paul’s opinion on Covid more. Belief in Science has been used as an excuse for implementing a lot of unscientific Covid fighting tactics, using Covid fear as a motivator.
Charles writes:
Matt is right of course.
Every leading/credible medical authority suggests that persons who have been exposed to COVID should nevertheless be vaccinated. If one doubts my “leading/credible” qualifier, I suggest that detractors – including Senator Paul, and Senator Ron Johnson, and apparently a very large but unresponsive group of Republicans in the House who refuse to say whether they have been vaccinated – should be very specific and very public about the basis for their questioning the efficacy of vaccines in already-exposed patients. Paul and Johnson in particular aren’t providing any of that information. They are vaguely referring to literature they have seen, or advice from doctors they know, or even their own antibody tests. When in fact testing exposed patients to see what their antibody titres are, just to see if maybe they can skip a vaccine, is profoundly against the current standard of practice in primary care medicine.
But the weird kicker in all of this was the way that the Trumpists, and of course Trump himself, were claiming such great personal credit for “Operation Warp Speed” and the rapid development of the vaccine, and now here they are with this new TrumpCentric resistance to the vaccine. Now THAT would be worth another blog post.
"Now THAT would be worth another blog post."
Feel free to write one. The idea that I crank out that sort of political post... really... not me at all.
Amadeus 48 writes:
Do those people at The Hill realize how sound Rand Paul’s thinking is? Does our friend Matt realize that his snark about Sen. Paul also applies to everyone who has been vaccinated? The question is, are people who have had the disease getting very sick or dying in substantial numbers from reinfections? If the answer is no, why should Sen. Paul get vaccinated? For fellowship? For safety? For jerks like the commenters? There is no reason for Rand Paul to get vaccinated unless there is some evidence—which there isn’t—that vaccination will do him some good.
I admire Sen. Paul. I think the commenters at The Hill are dangerous idiots.
Michael K writes:
Your commenter Matt, said, " It’s worth noting too that having had Covid does not make one immune for life. The virus mutates. It’s still here ever changing.”
I would add that neither does the vaccine. Such a dumb comment.
Michael K
Yes, I have been immunized but I am 83 and have respiratory issues.
Bob writes:
The pandemic is 17 to 19 months old. Every single person in the US has been exposed to the virus dozens of times. In every pandemic, in the beginning there is a certain fraction of the population that is susceptible to the disease. When those people have gotten it, the pandemic is over. Masks and lockdowns do not decrease the pandemic by so much as one case or death. They just spread out the rate at which the susceptibles succumb to it. Vaccinations help susceptibles, but do nothing for the nonsusceptible.
We have had almost 34 million cases and a little over 600,000 deaths. So, 10% of the population has caught the disease, and 0.2% have died from it (1.8% of the cases). All in all, it was a very bad flu, twice as deadly as the Hong Kong flu or Asian Flu, but orders of magnitude milder than the Spanish flu.
It is over.
Alex writes
Your commenter wrote, "But the weird kicker in all of this was the way that the Trumpists, and of course Trump himself, were claiming such great personal credit for “Operation Warp Speed” and the rapid development of the vaccine, and now here they are with this new TrumpCentric resistance to the vaccine." There's nothing weird about it. OWS was a major achievement, where a vaccine to a new disease was developed, mass produced, and mass distributed in under a year, despite the sneers from many "experts," journalists, and political commentators that it couldn't be done. It's a shining example of American ingenuity, the capabilities of a capitalist society, and a well-run large-scale government effort. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of unknowns. We're basically pushing out a new vaccine without the years of testing which would normally occur, and so we don't know what complications or long-term effects may arise. For some populations, such as the elderly, this may be less of a concern; a 75-year old probably isn't too worried about complications that might pop up five years down the road, but a 25-year old may be a lot more concerned about those long-term effects. So while it's great that we were able to produce the vaccines, and anyone who wants to take one should certainly do so, we can also say that people aren't crazy if they are hesitant to do so.
PatHMV writes:
Your post about Rand Paul brought to mind the recent article that acknowledged that anti-maskers, far from being "anti-science," were in fact well-versed in the techniques of science and had a sophisticated understanding of data analysis. From the article:
"Indeed, anti-maskers often reveal themselves to be more sophisticated in their understanding of how scientific knowledge is socially constructed than their ideological adversaries, who espouse naive realism about the “objective” truth of public health data. Quantitative data is culturally and historically situated; the manner in which it is collected, analyzed, and interpreted reflects a deeper narrative that is bolstered by the collective effervescence found within social media communities. Put differently, there is no such thing as dispassionate or objective data analysis. Instead, there are stories: stories shaped by cultural logics, animated by personal experience, and entrenched by collective action. This story is about how a public health crisis—refracted through seemingly objective numbers and data visualizations—is part of a broader battleground about scientific epistemology and democracy in modern American life."
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3411764.3445211
It's fascinating that Paul puts forth objective, rational arguments, and the "pro-science" liberal community responds with celebrations of violence. Paul may be wrong, people may want to make an argument that vaccines provide MORE protection than simple infection, or that more people need to get COVID vaccinations in order to better protect the immuno-compromised (like the organ recipient you posted about). But they're not making that argument, just resorting to intimidation.
By the way, did you previously post about the article I link above? I thought you had, but I may have seen it elsewhere. I had a devil of a time finding it when I went searching for it. "Anti-maskers attitudes about science" on Google sent me to a whole bunch of sites about how stupid the anti-maskers are... all dressed up as promoting the "scientific consensus" of course.
No, I hadn't blogged that. I've had very little to say on the subject of mask effectiveness.
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