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An Aug. 2 op-ed by the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board suggested we ought to âmake vaccination the price of admission to society.â One way to evaluate the reasonableness of such a proposition is to replace COVID âvaccinationâ with anything else.
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Story at-a-glance:
- In June, the U.S. National Security Council released a new National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism document. While itâs being largely framed as a tool to fight extremism, the definition of what constitutes a âdomestic terroristâ is incredibly vague and based on ideologies rather than specific behaviors.
- This policy can easily be used to silence political opposition simply by labeling anyone who disagrees with the government as a domestic terrorist and charging them with a hate crime, and weâre already seeing signs of this.
- Dr. Peter Hotez recently published a paper in PLOS Biology, in which he suggests criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists ought to be labeled a âhate crime.â
- Former assistant secretary for Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem is urging the U.S. government to put unvaccinated citizens on a no-fly list.
- The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board believes we ought to âmake vaccination the price of admission to society.â
In June, the U.S. National Security Council released a new âNational Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorismâ document. While itâs being largely framed as a tool to fight white supremacy and political extremism, the definition of what constitutes a âdomestic terroristâ is incredibly vague and based on ideologies rather than specific behaviors.
Itâs not difficult to imagine this policy being used to silence political opposition simply by labeling anyone who disagrees with the government as a domestic terrorist and charging them with a hate crime.
Weâre already seeing signs suggesting that this is the path weâre on. July 28, Dr. Peter Hotez published a paper in PLOS Biology titled âMounting Antiscience Aggression in the U.S.,â in which he suggests criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists ought to be labeled a âhate crime.â Commenting on the paper, Paul Joseph Watson at Summit News writes:
âThis is yet another transparent effort to dehumanize anti-lockdown protesters and demonize people who merely want to exercise bodily autonomy while elevating Fauci and his ilk to Pope-like status. Science isnât supposed to be a religious dogma that is set in stone, itâs an ever-evolving knowledge base that changes and improves thanks to dissent and skepticism.â
Science depends on questioning and challenging assumptions
Attorney Jonathan Turley also responded to Hotezâs paper in an Aug. 4 blog post, saying:
ââReligion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.â Feynmanâs statement captures how science depends upon constant questioning and challenging of assumptions âŠ
â[T]here remain important debates over not just the underlying science relation to Covid-19 but the implications for such science for public policies. Criminalizing aspects of that debate would ratchet up the threats against those with dissenting views, including some scientists. That would harm not just free speech but science in the long run.â
Should we have protected classes that cannot be questioned?
Turley also points out how making scientists a protected class (and one would assume only those with specific political leanings) is a slippery slope that will likely have unwieldy ramifications:
âThe federal hate crime laws focus on the basis of a personâs characteristics of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We have seen calls for adding professions like police officers, which I also opposed.
âAs with police officers, the inclusion of such professions would have a direct and inimical impact on free speech in our society. Indeed, it would create a slippery slope as other professions demand inclusion from reporters to ministers to physicians. Hate crimes would quickly apply to a wide array of people due to their occupations.â
Will America accept no-fly list for unvaccinated?
Writing for The Atlantic, former assistant secretary for Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem posits that people who do not want to be part of the COVID injection experiment âneed to bear the burdenâ when it comes to preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
âThe number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available,â Kayyem writes. âMany public agencies are responding by reimposing masking rules on everyone.
âBut at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people.
âThe White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate ⊠but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take.
âIt will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel â and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.â
Travel ban identified as effective coercion strategy
According to Kayyem, traveling in general and flying in particular is not a human right, and putting unvaccinated individuals on a no-fly list is a matter of national security, in the sense that the country needs to protect itself from people capable of spreading this dangerous virus.
She makes no mention of the scientifically confirmed fact that none of the COVID shots actually prevent you from getting infected, and that âvaccinatedâ individuals carry the same viral load as the unvaccinated, which means theyâre just as infectious. The main difference is that vaccinated individuals might not realize that theyâre carriers, as the primary effect when the injections do work is lessening symptoms of infection.
Kayyem also cites a New York Times and Kaiser Family Foundation poll in which 41% of unvaccinated respondents had said prohibition on airline travel would sway their decision, including 11% of those âadamantly opposedâ to vaccination. In other words, where free doughnuts and million-dollar lotteries have failed to coerce people to get the shot, an airline travel ban might do the trick.
Despite her former position within government, she makes no mention of laws forbidding coercion of medical volunteers, such as the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46 (subpart A, the Belmont report), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty, the Declaration of Helsinki or the Nuremberg Code. Supreme court rulings have also clarified that Americans have the right to choose their own health care in general.
Reframing to confuse the issue
Kayyem suggests circumventing such basic human rights by reframing the issue. She writes:
âThe public debate about making vaccination a precondition for travel, employment, and other activities has described this approach as vaccine mandates, a term that ⊠suggests that unvaccinated people are being ordered around arbitrarily.
âWhat is actually going on, mostly, is that institutions are shifting burdens to unvaccinated people ⊠rather than imposing greater burdens on everyone.
âAmericans still have a choice to go unvaccinated, but that means giving up on certain societal benefits. Nobody has a constitutional right to attend The Lion King on Broadway or work at Disney or Walmart ⊠People who still want to wait and see about the vaccines can continue doing so. They just canât keep pushing all the costs on everyone else.â
As pointed out by Swift Headline, the owner of Atlantic magazine, Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, owns two private jets herself, giving her the freedom to fly around the world at will, regardless what vaccine mandates might be in place. Many other ultra-rich individuals would also be able to ignore the rules due to wealth alone, essentially turning them into a protected class. Swift Headline points out this projection:
âThe Atlantic went on to say unvaccinated people who are exercising their individual rights as free Americans âdo not deserveâ to be a âprotected classâ âŠ
âJobsâs wealth and class status is detailed in Breitbart Newsâ Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlowâs book, âBreaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Mediaâs Hidden Deals and Secret Corruptions,â which âexposes the hidden connections between the establishment media and the activist left.â
âAs Marlow details, Jobsâs past is a privileged one ⊠Jobs âmarried well and inherited a lot of money, and her wealth is tied up in some of the worldâs biggest companies,â Marlow continues. âShe is the establishment.ââ
The price of admission to society
Aug. 2, the San Francisco Chronicle also published an opinion piece by the Chronicle editorial board, in which they suggested we ought to âMake vaccination the price of admission to society.â One way to evaluate the reasonableness of such a proposition is to replace COVID âvaccinationâ with anything else.
How about: âMake proof of contraception use the price of admission to bars and nightclubs.â
âMake clear skin the price of admission to gyms and public swimming pools.â
âMake being taller than 5â 9â the price of admission to theme parks.â
âMake having a BMI below 25 the price of admission to airline flights.â
âMake proof of not having an illness the price of admission to in-hospital care.â
According to the Chronicle editorial board, âthe unvaccinated account for over 95% of hospitalizations and deaths.â The board does not cite where it got that data from, so letâs review the source of that data.
In an Aug. 5 video statement, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky noted that this statistic was obtained by looking at hospitalization and mortality data from January through June 2021 â a timeframe during which the vast majority of the U.S. population were unvaccinated.
The narrative that weâre in a âpandemic of the unvaccinatedâ was created by using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated. When you look at more recent data, the trend is swinging in the opposite direction.
Jan. 1 only 0.5% of the U.S. population had received a COVID shot. By mid-April, an estimated 31% had received one or more shots, and as of June 15, 48.7% were fully âvaccinated.â
The CDC has also pointed out that you are not considered âfully vaccinatedâ until two weeks after your second dose (in the case of Pfizer or Moderna), which is given six weeks after your first shot. This means that if you receive your first dose on June 1, you wonât be âfully vaccinatedâ until eight weeks later, around Aug. 1.
So, the narrative that weâre in a âpandemic of the unvaccinatedâ was created by using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated. When you look at more recent data, the trend is swinging in the opposite direction.
Vaccinated now comprise the bulk of hospitalizations
For example, Aug. 1, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, director of Israelâs Public Health Services, announced half of all COVID-19 infections were among the fully vaccinated.
A few days later, Aug. 5, Dr. Kobi Haviv, director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, appeared on Channel 13 News, reporting that 95% of severely ill COVID-19 patients are fully vaccinated, and that they make up 85% to 90% of COVID related hospitalizations overall.
In Scotland, official data on hospitalizations and deaths show 87% of those who have died from COVID-19 in the third wave that began in early July were vaccinated, and in Gibraltar, which has a 99% COVID jab compliance rate, COVID cases have risen by 2,500% since June 1, 2021.
A CDC investigation of an outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts between July 6 through July 25, found 74% of those who received a diagnosis of COVID19, and 80% of hospitalizations, were among the fully vaccinated. Most, but not all, had the Delta variant.
âWhat the breakthrough cases appear to show is that the delta variant of the coronavirus is more easily carried and transmitted by vaccinated people than its predecessors,â the Chronicle editorial board writes.
âIn any case, the greater apparent transmissibility of the variant makes it that much more important to protect as many people as possible from severe COVID by increasing inoculation rates.â
What the board appears to be saying is that unvaccinated people must be protected against severe infection, against their will, if need be, and the best way to do that is to discriminate against them and treat them like second-class citizens.
Again, a simple way to check the reasonableness of this argument is to swap out the COVID reference for something else. How about, âItâs important to protect as many people as possible from dying in car accidents by raising car prices so fewer people can get behind the wheel.â
Can âBig Brotherâ save you from a virus?
As early as April 2020, The Times in the U.K. weighed in with similar suggestions, stating âWe need Big Brother to beat this virus.â Clare Foges, the author of the piece in question, went on to say, âDonât let the civil liberties lobby blind us to the fact that greater state surveillance, including ID cards, is required.â
The argument that Big Brother can protect us from infection is ludicrous on its face, because no amount of people surveillance can prevent microscopic viruses from circulating.
The No. 1 place of viral spread is in institutions, such as nursing homes and hospitals, yet the staff within them are among the most well-trained in pathogenic control. If trained hospital staff canât prevent the spread of viruses, how can government officials do it?
Importantly, the argument that we need vaccine passports to prove weâre âcleanâ enough to participate in society immediately falls apart when you take into account the fact that the COVID shots do not provide immunity. You can still be infected, carry the virus and spread it to others.
Weâve already seen several examples of situations where 100% of people were fully âvaccinatedâ against COVID-19 yet an outbreak occurred. Weâve even seen more than 100 fully COVID injected people die from COVID in one state alone, Massachusetts, so it is likely there are now many thousands of fully âvaccinatedâ who have died from COVID.
Even a 100% vaccination rate cannot eliminate COVID
Most recently, Carnival cruise lines experienced an outbreak despite every last person on that ship having proof of COVID âvaccination.â The cruise liner had even intentionally reduced capacity from 4,000 to 2,800 to provide ample social distancing capability. None of the measures worked. People got sick anyway, which makes perfect sense if you remember that the shot doesnât provide immunity, only symptom reduction.
Cases such as these clearly reveal that even if everyone gets the shot, SARS-CoV-2 will mutate and continue to circulate, taking people out here and there. To think that giving up basic rights and freedoms is the answer simply isnât logical. Taking responsibility for your own health is, and that includes deciding if and how you want to protect yourself from SARS-CoV-2.