Vaccine passports are an endless opportunity for tyranny, as is the entire Covid debacle.
Meanwhile, Back in Canada
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
It was politicized from day one.
It was mostly lies from day one.
It was not about the China virus. It was about control and power.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
And, they used it to rob us of our country and liberties in November 2020.
Welcome to the totalitarian idiocracy.
God Help Us.
Vaccine passports would quickly create a black market for fake vaccine cards. People giving vaccine shots have told me that the blank cards are plentiful and that they could’ve walked away with hundreds of blank cards. They didn’t. But what is the probability that someone would? 100%
The mandates have already caused a black market.
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https://www.the-sun.com/news/2862758/fbi-warns-dont-buy-fake-covid-vaccine-cards/
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I saw an article that helpfully pointed out what the fake cards look like, complete with pdf so you could download the pdf to get a better look at the fake cards so as to avoid printing them. At one point someone was selling them on Etsy apparently.
The FBI and CIA have both warned against carrying your original vaccine card, much less showing it to people– that invites identity theft.
A much better way to show the card would be a photograph, say on your phone, with the sensitive information blanked out.
There are two steps to the COVID restriction shuffle:
1.) “No, we’d never enact those restrictions. You’re a conspiracy theorist for even suggesting it might happen.”
2.) “If you care about public health you will accept these restrictions. They will quickly end the pandemic, as long as conspiracy theorists like you get on board.”
We’ve already went through these steps with lockdowns, lockdowns lasting more than two weeks, mask mandates, “distance learning” lasting more than a semester, and now vaccination requirements.
If nothing else can be gleaned from this it, it is that most people literally will only repeat what the news tells them. The news can tell them that it is insane to think that we would have vaccine passports one day and then tell them that only lunatics would object to vaccine passports the next, and the majority of the audience will believe them both times.
Corollary: The single most important long term goal for the right is to gain control of the media.
It will soon be “unvaccinated = not human”.
Of course the new “not human” will not have the rights and protections that society requires for common animals and pets.
Paper vaccine cards. There’s the problem right there. It won’t be paper, it will be a cell phone digital pass with a QR code connected to your social security or online medical health account.
But policing it will be a dogs breakfast. You really think a concierge is going to refuse entry to a hotel or restaurant and turn away business because people haven’t had the jab…practically unrealistic particular after lockdown have caused havoc on businesses.
Also how long does the vaccine protection allegedly last for..? Europeans are already receiving booster shots. Whose going to police ongoing booster shots…? Don’t see this working in real time.
Guys,
As you know, I invariably agree with most of you. COVID-19 is being used as a scare tactic to enact tyrannical measures. But COVID-19 apparently is more communicative and worse in its effects than either the common cold or the flu. Here is a good video by David Ruzic, Professor of Engineering, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also Professor of Medicine at the Carle College of Medicine, so he gets to talk about this issue with some credibility.
Now I am opposed to shutting down the country because of COVD-19. I am also opposed to NOT taking appropriate precautions. Not everyone may wish or need to use use every precaution (e.g., vaccine, masks, hand washing, social distancing, quarantine when sick, vitamin and zinc supplements, etc.). However, this is a serious disease (and yes, I do think it was genetically engineered by the Chinese communists, but I can’t prove that). At my place of work a senior leader got COVID even though he was vaccinated (the Pfizer one). Pfizer and Moderna are 95% effective, and J&J’s is 70%. That means that some people (5% in the case of Pfizer and Moderna, and 30% in the case of J&J) will get the virus anyways. I am not surprised. I get the flu vaccine every September and with rarely a failure get some nasty contagion in February. Vaccines are no guarantee of 100% immunity (but getting one generally – not always – decreases likelihood of infection and increases ability to recover if infected). Likewise, masks do help to prevent contaminated water droplet inhalation, but I agree: they are far from perfect and I avoid them, using them only when I absolutely must. BTW, recently one person in the office got COVID (aside from the senior leader above), and several people had symptoms but tested negative (thank God), so the company shutdown the office to sterilize affected areas and will mandate face masks next Monday. Again, thank God I can work from home. I hate masks and I really don’t want to be around large gatherings of people whose status is unknown (I minimize time when I am in such situations that cannot be avoided). Equally, I oppose COVID passports. Really? ID cards to certify immunization (well, vaccination – we know it doesn’t immunize) but no ID cards to vote in an election? That’s Bu11 $h1t.
All I am saying is that both sides in this debate need to use their heads instead of their feelings. There’s good moral reason to avoid the vaccine for those concerned about the moral nexus of aborted fetal stem cells (all vaccines are tested with those stem cells, but only J&J’s was made with them). There’s also good moral reason to get the vaccine (increase your chances of not being a carrier, increase your chances of not becoming sick and affecting your family’s income). And some people are as afraid of an unproven vaccine as others are of COVID itself. Therefore, none of this is a shoot-from-the-hip shotgun decision, and COVID really is more than what Donald calls “a case of the black sniffles.” And that’s why I hate what govts like that of Canada and like our current US Administration are doing –> disrespecting people’s freedom of conscience, disallowing people to do their own research and come to their own conclusions, and forcing a shoe of one size fits all on our feet. But that’s the whole point, and the resulting civil discord if not civil war will be far worse than any COVID impact on the population.
So now let me have it, however terrible I am because I said some things pro-vax as well as anti-vax. I’ve just come to realize over time that even as I want my personal decision to be respected, we got to do the same with everyone else – respect their right to conscience as well. I am trying to be less of an a$$h01e.
LQC,
You are conflating “efficacy” and “effectiveness.” (Not that I really blame you, since these terms are conflated in nearly every news stories and even by some health sites; sometimes even after they explain the difference!) “Efficacy” is the difference in infections between the control group and test group of a vaccine study while “Effectiveness” refers to the the ability of a vaccine to stop infections in the general population, and it is well known that “effectiveness” is always lower than “efficacy.” I can’t find any studies on the actual effectiveness of the Pfzier or Modern vaccines, which may have to do with the fact they no longer have control groups for those vaccines (nearly everyone in the former control groups were also vaccinated.) There are various places claiming that Johnson and Johnson has been tested for actual effectiveness but I can’t find a solid study to back this up. (For reference the effectiveness is given as somewhere in the neighborhood of the mid to low sixties.)
The issue is further compounded by two factors: first, it is not clear whether the vaccines are effective over the long term. (In contrast studies have repeatedly shown that antibodies from natural immunity are long lasting.) Even the manufacturers of the vaccines themselves claim that there is a steady drop in effectiveness over time. (You may take this with a grain of salt because they are explicitly using these claims to justify profitable booster shots. But if you don’t trust on this, why trust them on their claims about how effective the vaccines are initially?)
The second factor is of course variants, such as the Delta variant. The fact is that despite these variants being used to justify vaccine mandates, we really do not know if the current vaccines are at all effective against it. It is difficult to get any accurate data on this for a few reasons, including the lack of control groups and the fact that it is difficult to accurately identify Delta cases on the large scale as opposed to other COVID variants. Of course, if the vaccine effectiveness does drop dramatically over time generally, that could also have an effect. As such, the claims of effectiveness are all over the board; some people say that they are nearly as effective while some are pretty dismal. For example, Israel claims that the Pfizer variant is currently just 39% effective, and remember that they are calculating its general effectiveness, not effectiveness specifically against COVID. Since there are still some original strain cases in Israel, the true effectiveness against the Delta variant would be lower. Notably too the FDA requirement for effectiveness of a vaccine that has been granted emergency authorization is at least 50%.
And speaking of emergency authorization, keep in mind that these vaccines are still experimental drugs whose safety is unknown. Signs are pretty clear that they are more dangerous than normal vaccines. Nearly 80% of all deaths from vaccines reported to the CDC’s database ever (not just this year) are from COVID vaccines. Now most vaccines are so safe that this doesn’t necessarily translate to a huge death toll from vaccines, but it is certainly says we should pause and reconsider the data. It also raises questions about long term effects which we can’t know about yet (since there is no “long term” yet; though even when we do get further it will be hard to determine exactly what dangers they pose, since Modern and Pfizer don’t have control groups to compare to.) In particular given the signs of reduced effectiveness, from variants and otherwise, as well as the increased danger from the vaccines, it no longer becomes clear whether the reward outweighs the risk.
That’s of course on a personal assessment level. But that’s really the only level that we can evaluate vaccines on. While we are told that we need mass vaccination to stop the spread of the disease, and particularly the contagious variants, none of the manufacturers claim that their vaccines actually prevent people from being contagious. Furthermore organizations such as the CDC are adamant that variants like Delta can easily spread among the vaccinated. Even those that claim high effectiveness against variants are almost always talking about the effectiveness in preventing “severe” disease, not preventing you from getting infected at all. Given how much we’ve been lectured about “asymptotic spread” this is not at all the right measure of effectiveness to consider when trying to stop community spread. Once you get past the rhetoric and into actual claims and data you see that there is really no reason to trust the vaccines to help with that in any significant way, so the only remaining consideration is whether or not it is better for you personally.
Apparently I didn’t close the last a href tag. I’ve closed it here just in case it tries to continue to the next comment, and if anyone can edit my previous comment to close it I’d appreciate it.
Rudolph,
Thank you for the clarification. I am NOT an expert in any of this. Therefore, I asked my priest and my doctor what I should do. Theirs are the only opinions that ultimately counted with me. And, yes, I followed their direction, which for me as a pridefully independent person is a difficult thing to do. After all my researching and wading through all the arguments and data and medical theory, I was so confused that I simply asked the two individuals (one spiritual and the other medical) whom I trust most in matters like this.
But again, everything you wrote about is useful and should be digested slowly for full understanding.
LCQ-
The problem with officials who should be able to speak reasonably on the topic is that they routinely are using known bad information, while ignoring much higher quality information. For example, using data out of China– which looked really bad when it first came out, I was spooked silly, because they had suppressed how long it had been going on. The early data out of Korea looked horrifying, because they had month’s worth of spread but thought they were dealing with days, and then mere weeks.
As opposed to looking at the Diamond Princess– which should have been a blood-bath, mostly elderly people, tight quarters, etc–if the objective evidence supported the fear, rather than “but what if we’re wrong”… well, the assumptions simply don’t hold up. Looking at the responses in different locations, especially with more normal standards for identifying cases and fatalities shows that most of the mitigation and transmission theories don’t hold up.
When information is given that can be checked by the same standards we use on other diseases, it is simplynot that terrifying. The flu kills people every year– even healthy people! As folks pointed out of Italy– they overflow every flu season. And yes, when you refuse treatment to someone because they are disabled and live with two elderly parents, they have a much higher risk of dying. (Infamously, the Italian officials initially refused to pick up her body for fear of it being COVID.) Even healthy young people die of the flu! Infections are weird, and when you get a big enough sample, you do find cases of otherwise healthy kids who died because they got the flu. There was a case that only hit the newspapers because some idiots decided that not giving the kid theraflu meant the mother was an “antivaxxer.” (a half hour after returning from the hospital, where his brother was being treated, the boy collapsed and died; possibly a cytokine storm, that is, haywire immune response)
People die every year from the flu, especially if they were already sick. What is terrifying is the cost of so many of the “just in case” actions.
Two weeks to flatten the curve: year two, now it’s wipe out a cold virus. Up until we were suddenly allowed to be worried about the kung flu, that was the go-to example of an impossible challenge, used in teaching to illustrate the limitations of our tools.
Keep hospitals from being over-run: result, deny all care that does not involve the emergency room– in several cases that included denying dialysis, canceling emergency surgery because if it’s scheduled it’s not emergency, etc– and put known infected people into nursing homes, thus infecting a larger population of highly vulnerable people who are also being isolated for their “safety.” Known infected OK, seeing people that you know, not.
I don’t want to get started on the depression, drug-abuse, blanket DNRs and poverty related problems from the response, because if I get into the part of counting overdose deaths as COVID I may pop a fuse.
Bacterial pneumonia and strokes from oxygen deprivation, because “masking isn’t asking that much.” (If it was just asking, it would be less of an issue. Problem with asking, you have to accept “no”.)
In a normal situation, those would be counted as deaths from the response.
Does the infection suck?
Yes, especially if you’ve already got major weaknesses such that you would be worried during flu season– it is very likely that the “flu” my family had the Christmas before the WHO couldn’t cover for China any longer was COVID19. Unusually for the kung flu, it did actually hit everyone in the house, and it did wipe us out for weeks.
That was a very early variant.
We know that viruses tend to mutate to be easier to catch, but less lethal– the “Spanish Flu” is still around, but it, too, mutated.
There is information out there to be found, and weighed; it is perfectly fine if you don’t choose to pour efforts into that, time is a limited resource. You SHOULD be able to trust folks on this, and you seem satisfied with the sources you chose.
However, you are really coming across as assuming that nobody else can, will and has put the time to properly inform themselves, check the self-appointed authorities, and come to a conclusion based on the evidence.
We quite literally have formerly respectable organizations saying that applying critical thinking and scientific standards to pronouncements is a bad thing. Multiple newspapers have said so, and a college actually put out a study that found those who opposed the “COVID measures” were more likely to be informed, well read, read those they opposed and able to make rational, supported arguments for their views.
This was framed as a bad thing. Because their conclusions were not the popular ones. This is not science….
Rudolph-
I’ll go in and close the tag if Donald hasn’t gotten it by the time this posts. 😀
@Foxfier: “However, you are really coming across as assuming that nobody else can, will and has put the time to properly inform themselves, check the self-appointed authorities, and come to a conclusion based on the evidence.”
I think most people here at TAC have put in the the time to be properly informed, check pronouncements for authorities and come to reasonable conclusions, some for vaxxes & masks, and some against. I have no argument either way. For anything that came off sounding otherwise, my apologies. But yes, I did expect some individuals to strenuously object to anything pro-vax. I have been pleasantly surprised that thus far such is not the case.
I think everything else you wrote is correct. And while I am not necessarily “satisfied,” when it comes to medicine, I do rely on my doctor (after all, he kept me alive after my recent cardiac event) and I do rely on my priest to whom I tell all my sins (PS, my wife knows all my sins too).
I think most people here at TAC have put in the the time to be properly informed, check pronouncements for authorities and come to reasonable conclusions, some for vaxxes & masks, and some against. I have no argument either way. For anything that came off sounding otherwise, my apologies.
::Whew:: I guessed, based off of e-knowing you- and no apologies needed!– but wanted to 1) be sure and 2) make sure any lurkers knew. 😉
I know what you mean about not feeling “satisfied” with it, but I don’t know a good word for “dang it I’ve hit the wall on diminishing returns and this will have to be good enough.”
If anybody is interested in that study I mentioned, it’s linked here, with enough quotes to find it again if the link goes dead. The last paragraph at my link, quoting from the study, pretty much sums it up:
Anti-maskers, unlike their political opponents, “believe that science is a process, and not an institution,” the researchers noted. “They espouse a vision of science that is radically egalitarian and individualist,” they argue. “This study forces us to see that coronavirus skeptics champion science as a personal practice that prizes rationality and autonomy: for them, it is not a body of knowledge certified by an institution of experts.”
Foxfire, your final quote is pretty terrifying and a clear indication of the dawning of a dark and brutal age of ignorance.
Would you?
A – choose to be infected by a genetically engineered virus from fetal tissue and testing.
B – choose to be vaccinated by a genetically engineered vaccine developed from fetal tissue.
C – choose to be vaccinated by a vaccine that was not developed from fetal tissue but did use fetal matter in testing,
There are no easy answers, but if these are the limitations I believe the answer is C.
These comments are exactly what many people who are intelligent human beings, using logic and reason to arrive at a decision concerning the pandemic have to grapple with. Reports and studies from experts have been posted by commenters on this blog and other blogs. Even official websites from experts are in abundance if one takes the time to search a bit. Yet, for every expert warning of a legitimate concern of Covid and the vaccines offered, there is an expert that is trotted out by another agency denying the research of the former.
Everything seems well researched and every expert cited seems to have the necessary expertise and experience needed. I am not an expert in any of these matters concerning Covid and the need or the lack of need for a vaccine. Is it any reason why people are hesitant in receiving a vaccine and why people are playing with the idea that this whole thing is really a scamdemic? The amount of conflicting “proofs” and “evidence” is astounding. It is chaotic. How to sort it all out.
I’ve made some decisions with what I know on the subject. I refuse to believe anything the media tells me about the pandemic. A close second is the government. In observing the way the government has gone to great lengths in bribing, rewarding, and veiled threatening the citizen into the getting the vaccine tells my gut that something is totally in disarray with this whole scene. It is not a good feeling.
So what does it come down to? Who to believe? Who to trust? All I can do is question what I’ve seen and learned such as:
Why are comments or talks that are contrary to what “officially” comes out of DC shut down in social media instead of debating the pros and cons of a vaccine, the use of masks etc? Why are hundreds of people in the medical profession refusing to take a vaccine as I’ve recently seen in So. California? Why are thousands medical professionals in France protesting the vaccine by refusing to take it themselves or administer the vaccine to others? Official statements from the CDC have flip flopped more times than Carter has liver pills.
These are just some examples that just don’t jive with the what we are told is a safe and needed vaccine or behaviors in society. We live in an age of lies and smoke and mirrors. If there is a sure way of knowing the truth about the virus and it’s antidotes I sure would like to know what it is.
LQC,
Thanks for the David Ruzic video above. Excellent.
Dave
@David WS: welcome.
David Ruzic is a breath of fresh air when it comes to college professors whom I have seen and heard on YouTube and elsewhere (even at my own company, Neutrons ‘R Us, whose founder is such a professor – no offense intended). I do not agree with everything he says in the aforementioned video, but his arguments are reasonable & rational. And when it comes to nuclear energy, he is usually very good except that he lacks commercial & Naval nuclear power experience, so sometimes he gets a nit wrong that only a picky nuke like me would bother noticing.
LQC,
Yes,, I watched a couple of Ruzic’s videos on energy and transmission, subjects I have knowledge of.. While sometimes a bit inexact, he is on target and not blowing smoke. I think his inexactness is because he’s a “generalist”, nothing wrong with that.
Thanks again for the video. For the first time I felt like a fellow engineer (Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful….)
was explaining this and I forwarded the video to family and friends.
There’s paranoia on both sides right now. Stay sane and safe.
David WS-
There are no easy answers, but if these are the limitations I believe the answer is C.
Your framework is off; A is false.
It is “risk becoming infected”, the second two are reasonably accurate, and there would have to be a D of “wait for a moral option” (there are several in process, check the COGforlife website) and quite likely there are additional options in order to avoid the fallacy of a forced choice.
There is a significant moral difference between being infected by an immorally created bioweapon and choosing to use an at best morally questionable weapon to defend yourself against a bioweapon, and a bioweapon with such an incredibly stark contrast in risk by demographics makes it even worse.
(To help visualize this: the median age of death involving COVID, in the United States, is higher than life expectancy– after expanding the definition to include the infamous motorcycle crash type cases.)
JFK-
I am still not entirely sure the study wasn’t published as a plausibly deniable way to point out the appeal to authority issues with the “science” involved, in a manner that wouldn’t result in unjust loss of livelihood.
@Foxfier – you may be aware of this. I would prefer a less morally questionable option than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (taking the J&J vaccine was untenable). People > 60 yes old with diabetes, heart disease & high blood pressure may conclude they have no choice.
CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20201221_nota-vaccini-anticovid_en.html
LQC-
I am familiar; I’ve used the already existing documents to persuade people to vaccinate their kids against various rather more serious diseases. (Part of why I think the hysteria against “antivaxxers” is virtue signaling is that if people actually talked to the parents involved, they’d discover that the reasoning is very different than what the news pushes as their motivations.)
The problem is that the morality depends on looking at the well informed, objective risks to the individual — the same sort of moral balancing that comes into play when working through the morality of cannibalism.
Thus, “over sixty with several co-morbidities” is a very different moral equation than “mid-30s with no serious health conditions.”
That’s before the moral issues with promoting an emergency-use vaccine, or experimental forms of disease prevention, come into play.
Agree 100%, Foxfier.
David WS, if we substitute “organ tissue from a concentration camp victim” or for “fetal tissue” in your examples B&C would your answer be the same as to option C? In the eyes of God human dignity and human rights attach from the moment of conception. Human beings are not fit subjects for involuntary experimentation and murder. Most would be appalled if organs were harvested from concentration camp victims for use in development and/or testing of medical products. Such products likely would never have been conceived of let alone developed and tested. Why should products developed and/or tested on the innocent unborn be thought of any differently?
I have been told (perhaps wrongly or with an incomplete picture) that data from Nazi experimentation on freezing people alive was used to develop treatment for hypothermia victims. I am sure there are other examples. I don’t think anyone’s hands are bloodless.
PS, I don’t support use of aborted fetal stem cells to test or make vaccines. Equally, I don’t support experimentation on prisoners in concentration camps to develop medical treatments. But both have been done, and likely a great many have unwittingly benefitted from both.
LQC thanks for your thoughtful comments.
I’m sure many, like you and me, don’t support research on aborted fetal stem cells or from organs of the aborted. But many also seem content to validate that research by using products derived from it. My guess is that no one would ever support similar research done on victims of slave labor or concentration camps, nor should they. Further, no products developed from such research would ever see the light of day, and again, they shouldn’t.
I’ve heard different things on using “research” such as you described. I had thought the moral objections were so strong that the results were never used, but the truth may be more complicated than that. Certainly it would be no surprise if the Nazis used it, since the alleged purpose was to assess the risk to their pilots who ditched their planes in the North Sea. If it was used beyond that, it hasn’t been widely publicized and I don’t think anyone rushed to capitalize on it, unlike the widespread push for the covid products.