Biden and vaccine shaming

OPINION:

What started as “15 days to flatten the curve” has taken a nasty turn. Government officials and high-ranking Democrat elites are now calling to “make life difficult” for anyone who has not voluntarily gotten vaccinated against COVID-19. Where and how did things become so adversarial?

In the early days of the coronavirus the CDC was scrambling for answers. One early answer was a hope to slow down the spread of the disease by closing businesses, public transportation, and virtually any event where people gathered (except BLM protests) and getting people to wear surgical type masks. 15 days would be inconvenient, but America was promised it would be worth it. 15 days to flatten the curve was the rallying cry to get public buy-in on the effort. 

Those fifteen days turned into fifteen weeks. For many parts of the country, conflicting information and media hysteria are feeding perpetual fear fifteen months later. Fear, of course, is a heck of a motivator for most humans. 

When the COVID-19 vaccinations first became available, there was plenty of self-congratulatory back-slapping. Mankind was going to beat this thing. President-elect Joe Biden encouraged people to get the jab with a mix of optimism and an appeal to what he termed “common sense.” Millions of Americans were happy to have the option available and couldn’t get the shot fast enough. Others hesitated.

The Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were both disappointed in the overall number of people availing themselves of the vaccine, so they got a little more aggressive in their efforts. Rather than simply laying out information for the public and letting folks choose their own path, Team Biden decided to add to the circus-like atmosphere with what else? Prizes. People in certain areas would be rewarded for getting the shot with gift cards, cash, and in Ohio, entrance into a $1 million lottery. Yet, some folks still weren’t convinced that $100 was enough to get them to put a rapidly developed vaccine into their body. 

That’s when President Biden’s thugs began to show their true colors. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told Fox News host Bret Baier that mandating a vaccine on a federal level was  “something that I think the administration is looking into.” She would later walk back that comment, at least in part. Since that time, it should be noted, the Pentagon has mandated all troops be vaccinated. No option. No questions. Just do it. 

The President himself, when asked why the administration is shifting to such an aggressive tact, responded bluntly, “They didn’t get vaccinated.” Notice the use of the word “they” as in “us and them.” You’re either with us or against us. Let the public shaming begin. Biden is leading the charge, encouraging private businesses to penalize workers and/or customers who aren’t vaccinated. Bar them from restaurants, airplanes, concerts, government meetings, and more. Delta Airlines has responded to the President’s suggestion, increasing health insurance premiums for their employees who have not been vaccinated by $2400 annually. 

Terry McAuliffe, former Governor of Virginia and current candidate for the same post, insisted in a public speech that we (there it is again, “we”) must “make life difficult” for the unvaccinated. McAuliffe, Biden, and many in the mainstream media believe and are actively promoting the notion that your freedoms should be limited unless you consent to their wishes for your health. 

This week, CNN’s Don Lemon joined the chorus calling for banning anyone from offices and businesses who can’t prove they’ve had the jab. Put them out of work unless they acquiesce to Don Lemon’s fears.

Let’s get crazy and toss in a little science. Teachers’ unions all over America are filing lawsuits demanding that children be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19, regardless of parental preference on the issue. One would think teachers would be more likely to follow science than many groups, but their math on this one doesn’t add up. 

If you add up all Covid related deaths in America through August 21 of this year, the total is 623,985 deaths. Of that astounding number, how many were between the ages of 0 and 17? 385. You read that right. 385. Obviously, that is an absolute tragedy for those 385 families, but as a statistic, 385 out of 623,985 is a blip on the graph. To add even more perspective, if you tally all U.S. deaths for those 17 and under since the beginning of 2020, including cancer, heart defects, gunshots, drug overdose, and child abuse, the number is 54,062. That means 385 child covid deaths and 53,677 child deaths from other causes. Perhaps the teachers’ unions should refocus their efforts on issues impacting tens of thousands of kids instead of Covid. 

Certain groups are clearly more at risk than others. Older Americans are the highest risk category. 85% of them have been vaccinated, according to government stats. Rather than celebrate that number, the powers that be have set their sights on anyone who dares question their compliance demands. Why would anyone distrust our government, specifically the CDC, you may ask when it comes to a vaccination that is clearly intended to help people? History is a funny teacher. 

In 1932 the government entity known as the U.S. Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. 600 African American men were selected to participate, 399 of them had syphilis, and the rest did not. Those with syphilis were told they were being treated in hopes of bettering their health situation. In reality, the government wanted to see what happened as the disease progressed. No actual medication was given. The men weren’t told the truth nor given any informed option to participate or not. 

Nearly thirty years later, from 1956 to 1970, mentally disabled children were taken from the Willowbrook State School in New York and given injections of experimental drugs. The claim was that they were being treated for hepatitis. Those children who didn’t already have hepatitis were intentionally infected by administrators so they could be put in the program. The kids had no choice to opt-in or out, had no adult to speak up for them, and sadly, many of them died from the treatments. 

Fast forward another thirty years from the peak of those horrible experiments to 1990 and 1991. CDC-sponsored experiments involving a vaccine for measles were conducted on thousands of babies in Africa. The director of one of the research sites warned both the CDC and the World Health Organization that mortality rates were increasing with the vaccine and there was a problem. Not only were his concerns ignored, but that director was also removed as the principal investigator and replaced with someone more compliant. By not towing the government line, the initial director was punished and shamed. Sound familiar?

There were several immune problems among Third World babies who had been injected, including infant deaths. Despite that, the U.S. government decided to perform more tests, this time on roughly 1500 African American and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles. The brakes were finally put on that study only when it was discovered that the African children were dying at alarming rates up to three years after receiving vaccinations. 

David Satcher was director of CDC from 1993 to 1998. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Satcher admitted that a National Institutes of Health (NIH) investigation of the 1990-91 Los Angeles study found that parents were not told their babies would be injected with an experimental vaccine that the FDA had never licensed for use in America. Those parents trusted the CDC and the U.S. government to have their children’s best interests and health in mind when they allowed the needle to slide into their baby’s skin. It turns out that trust was misplaced. 

Now here we are, yet another thirty years down the road. Some who are hesitant to get the jab may be familiar with the questionable history of the American government misleading people with vaccines and medical treatments “in their best interest.” Is it any wonder that in an era when politicians, news network talking heads, and even the weather channels routinely fill our ears with fear-inducing half-truths that some people are skeptical about welcoming a foreign substance into their bodies? 

It’s not strange at all. No one should be shamed or derided. No one should be forced out of their job or refused at their local school board meeting because they are independent thinkers that want to make their own decisions rather than letting the Cuomos, Bidens, and McAuliffe’s of the world make that decision for them. 

In the meantime, I encourage you to study facts, not just headlines. 

According to the most recent report by the CDC, the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines among front-line workers has declined to 66%. That’s not a great number, but it gets even worse. If you read the report’s details, you’ll find that the researchers say they have 95% confidence the effectiveness is somewhere between 26% and 84%. They literally just pegged the 66% as a guesstimate. It could be as low as 26%. The bottom line is they don’t know for sure how effective the vaccine is. 

Similarly, the bottom line is that some Americans aren’t so sure about injecting something into their body as long as the researchers aren’t sure of its efficacy. 

• Tim Constantine is a columnist for The Washington Times and hosts “The Capitol Hill Show” podcast every week from Washington, D.C.