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The vaccine does not stop the spread. There is no reason for naturally immune persons to get vaccinated. The end.

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Interesting. It takes very little research to discover that the vaccines have been rushed to production without the safeguards that have been in place for many decades. Now we are seeing a slew of side effects, some of which are fatal or turn young adults into cardiac cripples for life. If these "vaccines" were under the same scrutiny as other drugs, they would have been discontinued long ago. Think thalidomide.

I have a 20-something son who is in his senior year at a local college. They are refusing to allow him to continue his education in the spring term unless he gets the jab - something I, as a retired doctor, have counseled him against. I hope he listens.

In addition, almost by serendipity, I treated three relatives early last spring by use of ivermectin. I had seen Dr. Pierre Kory's testimony before Congress - now long-deleted by YouTube's parent company, Google - and at that time there were no sanctions against its use. After forty years of practice, I would have to characterize their response as remarkable. The wife's oxygen levels were in the 'eighties; clearly she was on her way to hospital, and we know how that often ends. They recovered immediately and completely. I sent a gentle letter about it to the editor of my local paper and he refused to print it. Now I see several doctors have been suspended by their hospitals for using their clinical judgment and prescribing ivermectin for their patients. Personal freedom in America is under attack in a way I have never seen in my 68 years. This nonsense HAS TO STOP.

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Since the vaccines are not effective in preventing the contraction or spread of Covid, the only rational approach for health care workers is an appropriately structured testing regime. Mandating vaccines, at this point, is a mindless bureaucratic response that lacks both nuance and effectiveness.

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As a physician I have always had to show proof of vaccination to a litany of various diseases ( MMR, hep B, flu shots annually) - why is covid different? It is especially our responsibility as HCW to protect patients with compromised immune systems from communicable disease. This individual is not excluded from that. It is one important aspect of the job and if they do not agree then this is not the right profession.

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I'm an Intensive Care Nurse in Australia and am triple-vaxxed Pfizer. I received the vaccine because I felt a sense of responsibility not only to my patients to protect them but also to my wife - who is also a Nurse, is triple vaxxed herself *and* has Multiple Sclerosis - for which she receives treatment that renders her immunocompromised. It is about protecting those in the community who are more vulnerable - something which seems to escape most people in their pig headedness to voice 'their rights'.

None of the subjects interviewed seem to have given compelling reasons for not wanting to be vaccinated. The science behind mRNA vaccines is voluminous and they have not presented any significant side effects since their rollout last year. They are the most monitored vaccines ever distributed so that if any of the known side effects evolved into something previously unseen, recipients can be assessed and treated accordingly.

Vaccine mandates are necessary occurance in the situation we find ourselves. I have little sympathy for anyone who refuses to receive the vaccination.

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If vaccines stop spread of covid-19, then it matters whether the person sitting next to you has one. If they don't stop spread, it doesn't matter whether everyone in a room of a hundred has one--you can still catch covid in that room.

What is the purpose of mandates? Presumably, it is to stop spread, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to force vaccination on people who have low, or no, risk from covid themselves. But the currently available covid-19 vaccines do not stop spread. So why do we mandate them?

I can think of no reason other than more money in the hands of corporations and more power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.

Since the Follow The Science crowd seem to love facts so much, here are some for you:

1. Healthy children are not at risk of death from covid. Same goes for healthy young adults.

2. Typically, we mandate vaccinating children for childhood diseases that killed or harmed a lot of children in the past. The covid-19 vaccine is the first case in which a vaccine mandate has been imposed upon children in order to--supposedly, but not actually--protect the old and the infirm. Up until recently, any doctor versed in medical ethics would have told you that performing a new medical procedure with unknown long-term side effects on healthy children and young adults in order to protect the old and the infirm was medically unethical.

3. The average age of death from covid is by some measures higher than the average age of death, period.

4. Hospitalization rates for covid among vaccinated populations are currently rising while hospitalization rates among the unvaccinated are falling. Israel, one of the world's most vaccinated countries, also has some of the worst outcomes from covid. Japan, which has a comparatively low vaccination rate, is seeing its numbers fall.

5. There has been a sudden rise in heart attacks in the UK according to recent studies. I wonder why.

6. Children and young adults appear to be at higher risk of experiencing adverse events from covid-19 vaccination than older adults. People who are far too young and have no prior risk factors are experiencing sudden heart-related and other illnesses after vaccination that will potentially or definitely remain chronic throughout their lives, barring the invention of some new miracle treatment.

7. Obesity is one of the biggest risk factors when it comes to having a serious or deadly case of covid-19, yet this goes undiscussed in the mainstream media--along with the benefits of Vitamin D and Ivermectin (except when false rumors are being spread about the latter, which is in fact one of the safest and most effective covid-19 treatments--India has used it to great effect. Nevertheless, its use has been systemically suppressed elsewhere and doctors in my country, Canada, are subject to invasive questions and restrictions when they try to prescribe it.)

8. Women's reproductive systems are negatively impacted by covid-19 vaccines which has led to a host of bad effects including infertility. Birth rates are rapidly dropping, an acceleration of what had already been a trend in the West for decades. Population is likely to fall off a cliff in this generation.

9. Vaccination has in the recent past been used as a guise to sterilize Black people and perform other clandestine medical experiments on marginalized and third-world populations without their consent. Is it any wonder these populations remain hesitant not just about vaccines but the medical-industrial complex at large?

10. Medical doctors today are not taught about things like basic nutrition, the microbiome or how to look after one's health. They are taught how to manage symptoms by prescribing pills that produce side effects which then require more pills. I know several people who have left medical school or the medical profession for this reason.

Most of the above can be found by a DuckDuckGo search. I don't have time to cite everything right now but I have two doctors in my immediate family and I am not an ignorant anti-vaxxer--I had every vaccine in my life before this one. Look the information up, if you choose.

I am going to leave off facts now and enter into the nebulous realm of speculation. Where do we go from here? I see it playing out one of several ways:

1. Things continue on pretty much as they are for a while until the next global crisis eclipses covid-19. People continue to argue about mandates. They continue to be a thing in some places and not a thing in other places; a partisan or country-specific issue, basically. This scenario, while not great, is probably better than the next one.

2. The power grab by Big Pharma and Big Tech that has played out through this pandemic via mandates and lockdowns accelerates and people living in democratic societies lose any meaningful human rights or ability to affect their futures or have control even of their own bodies. This is already happening in Australia and here in Canada. For example, in my part of Canada there are different number caps on gathering sizes depending on whether the gathering is hosted by a "recognized business or organization". I hope people reading this, even pro-vaxxers, can see why such a rule has nothing to do with science and is a problem.

Many people are already leaving these countries to settle elsewhere. In Australia, even people with well-documented medical reasons not to get the vax are being systemically denied exemptions; seems like if we cared about protecting these "vulnerable" we would do so instead of harassing them and putting them out of work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qA0wZD0iPw

3. In the third scenario, we wake up and demand to be treated with basic human rights and dignity. We put a muzzle on Big Tech and reign in Big Pharma, embrace a more all-encompassing view of what health means rather than expecting a shot or a pill to protect us, and look at early treatment options for the vulnerable, which are highly effective and available if we allow doctors to access them. Also, we grow up and stop asking the very young to put themselves at risk for our sake.

All right, I'm done. Thanks for reading.

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Every healthcare worker has to have a tuberculosis test yearly. If they test positive, they have to be treated with a very powerful and sometimes toxic drugs, fir many months. Drugs that in certain cases a real side effects. Do you think it’s acceptable to go into a hospital and contract tuberculosis from one of the healthcare workers there? How about contracting polio when you go into the hospital and you’re immunocompromise with cancer because the nurse caring for you refuses to get vaccinated. The mRNA vaccines are safer than all of the other previous life vaccines. That is way more than 96% of doctors who understand the science of gotten vaccinated. We in healthcare and an education have a civic responsibility to protect those who come near us. And to protect those around us.

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Completely disagree. The disease spreads by people catching it. If you give it a chance to spread you are part of the problem.

The vaccines cut down the spread and the deaths.

It doesn't care what you believe. If you aren't vaccinated you are more likely, when exposed, to get it,to share it, to keep this nightmare going. And to get ill yourself.

That's what vaccines do, for goodness' sake.

You are putting all of society at risk by not getting the vaccine.

I cannot believe people are still arguing about this.

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Gomez, who lives in the South Bronx, is a registered Democrat and former de Blasio intern in the Office of Immigrant Affairs. “We’re not all psycho Republicans,” he adds.

OK, enough. It is Republicans and conservatives (not all, but most) and traditional liberals who are fighting for everyone's Constitutional Right not be coerced into receiving a medical procedure that is novel and the end results unknown. It appears to me, living in NYC that Democrats in general have total disdain for our Constitution and Bill of Rights, unless it suits them. Also, the term anti vaxxer does not apply to the majority of those who do not want the jab. These folks have no issue with vaccines, just this particular one that is not a vaccine at all but a short term therapeutic with potential long term side effects. BTW, the virus has a 99.999 (EST) survival rate, most have mild symptoms and then have natural immunity. Most likely the mandates will be officially thrown out, the Fifth Circuit already ruled on this and the 6th Circuit which was selected by lottery to review all legal challenges will also likely rule the mandates unconstitutional. The mandate for healthcare workers was already struck down in 10 states by a Federal judge so stay tuned.

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After reading the comments on this thread, I come to the conclusion that those that believe in the personal freedom of NOT taking the vaccine are WAY more educated on the subject than those that swear fealty to our authoritarian regimes.

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I'm a conservative and a Republican etc. etc. and tear-jerkers like this leave me cold. I think the state has the right to coerce behavior when lives are at stake (I'm for reversing Roe vs. Wade). People in the States forget that when the two world wars started the United States instituted universal selective service. Men didn't get asked whether they wanted to go. In Israel, where I live, there still is a universal draft. Lots of people manage to work around it and that makes most Israelis' blood boil. The principle that when lives are at stake you don't get to choose to stand aloof from the public's safety and security is valid here too.

Even if we assume that it's a person's right to risk whether to contract Covid or not, it's not that person's right to decide whether to put other people at risk. I don't object to enforcing the laws that require people to be vaccinated for the sake of promoting public health. If all that was at stake was two miserable weeks in bed I would agree that there was no compelling state interest in coercion; get your flu shot or not, it doesn't matter to me. But a significant number of people who contract Covid are going to die from it. I believe one has a moral duty to do one's share in preventing that, and that the state has a right to force you to do it.

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Are the vaccines are a net positive or net negative? I don't know, I'm not an immunologist. I suspect they're a net positive.

But here's what I DO know: the claims people make in favor of mandating this intervention are in NO WAY justified by their level of knowledge. Period. Full stop.

Immunology is SO unimaginably complex it makes almost every categorical claim a foolish conceit. If you presume the right to force someone to take this medication, you're an ignorant and/or smug fool...a DANGEROUS fool.

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There is nothing common sense about what those people are saying, though as emotional fluff pieces with a clickbait title go this was fairly interesting to read (though not all what I'd expect from a blog totled "common sense"!). If mandating vaccines is the only way to get these people vaccinated, and the numbers as you said do show that the mandates have helped significantly, then vaccine mandates are the way to go.

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Follow the science? Follow the money. There is a lot of folks making a killing…just not the dying.

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The vaccine has overwhelmingly been demonstrated to be safe--and have no effect on fertility. If you can't accept, read, or process literature from your own field and researchers--you might be in the wrong field. Maybe it's time for a shake-up? Although CNAs are hardly the minds of the field they are more the brawn and highly necessary and needed to help the thinkers.

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This is so sad and unnecessary. If you want to be protected, get vaccinated. If you don't, don't get vaccinated.

The vaccinated are tacitly arguing against themselves: If vaccines are so good, why are you scared of an unvaccinated person? Does that mean the vaccinations don't work?

It's really not an issue of stopping the spread - there are tons of people who are fully vaccinated getting Covid, and in fact I fear them more, as the symptoms tend to be light - so they spread it more easily, not realizing they have Covid.

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