James Pascual
Special to Farmers Forum
At least 86 per cent of Canadians have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, so everybody who wanted to get vaccinated has been vaccinated. Should we force it on everyone else?
Should we force the vaccine on the woman who got violently sick from the first dose and is now terrified of the second? What about the pregnant woman who worries about unknown risks to her baby? What about people who don’t want to take a vaccine for which we will not know all the side effects for a few years.
There is no evidence that forcing vaccinations will help the already vaccinated. Yet, the unvaccinated are being demonized, threatened and ridiculed. A Huron County farmer was at a community meeting where she said a man told them with a straight face: “‘The people who don’t get the vaccination should die.’”
“Well,” she added, “it just made me sick.”
There are the unvaccinated who know people who have gotten extremely ill from the vaccine. There are also the vaccinated who know people who have gotten extremely ill from COVID. Doesn’t that tell us that people should decide for themselves if they want to get vaccinated?
Not in Canada. The unvaccinated are losing their jobs, even if they work from home on Zoom, and will not be allowed on trains, planes are even to leave the country. Is the stripping of rights justified or is this dehumanizing and cruel? One year ago, we were holding our healthcare workers in high esteem for coming to work, putting in long hours and putting themselves at risk. Now, some of the same people are being fired or placed on unpaid leave.
These are the new vulnerable who are often vilified as “selfish” by an online army of loud and aggressive vaccination fanatics. It’s time to take a deep breath. and really listen to the legitimate reasons why people do not want the COVID vaccine. For one, people don’t trust this vaccine.
This is not about anti-vaxxers who don’t trust all vaccines. This is about people who have been vaccinated for other diseases but they know that the COVID vaccines are new. That alone should be enough for any government to realize it needs to back off.
We know that Moderna should not be taken by young adults and Ontario banned the first dose of AstraZeneca in May when it was discovered that one in 60,000 people developed blood clots. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says that there is a “plausible causal relationship” between the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and blood clots. There have also been 219 cases in the United States of muscle weakness and paralysis and in some cases the J&J vaccinated have not recovered.
The CDC Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System (VAERS) website offers ballpark numbers and, as of late October, it reported 9,143 people have died in the U.S. after receiving a COVID vaccine, while noting the actual cause of those deaths is unclear.
I know physicians who recommend the vaccine and I know physicians who don’t. One physician won’t take it because he had three patients who got sick with COVID and three patients who got extremely sick after getting the jab.
Government experts — virologists and other specialists — say that the benefits of the COVID vaccines outweigh the risks, especially as you get older. But there are also independent virologists who argue that you will be at even less risk of illness or injury if you don’t get vaccinated.
Some people have health issues — such as a weak immune system or allergies — that prevent them from getting the vaccine.
People also don’t trust the vaccine because they don’t trust their governments or their experts.
We can thank our governments for that. Our governments skated all over the pond on what we needed to do to protect ourselves from COVID. They still keep changing the plan. There are government posters in community centres across the country telling us that vaccines are effective and safe. I saw one of those posters on the same day that I read a front page National Post story on how 18 to 24 year olds should not take the Moderna shot because of higher risk of heart inflammation. So, the 18-year-old who just got a Moderna shot and sees that sign and reads that newspaper story is supposed to warm up to our benevolent regime? No, he’s going to tell people that someone lied to him. Propaganda posters do not instill confidence.
Here’s another lie. Alberta’s top doctor Deena Hinshaw stated that a 14-year-old was one of 33 new COVID deaths reported over a September long weekend in Alberta. The 14-year-old’s sister Simone Spitzer set the record straight in a Facebook page, noting that her brother was dying when he tested positive to COVID. “He died from stage 4 cancer, not from COVID,” she wrote. “This is fake news.”
The doctor apologized to the family.
Here’s another strong standalone argument. No government has the authority to inject anyone with a vaccine against his will.
Governments have gone too far by mandating vaccines. Now it’s about punishing the unvaccinated. Government officials tell us that we need to ban the unvaccinated because the vaccinated can still get COVID. But in facilities where the unvaccinated are asked to submit to a COVID test, the vaccinated don’t have to. Say what? I thought the vaccinated could also get COVID.
There’s just too much B.S. too often. Time to end this hate-filled house-of-cards medical apartheid against people who have a right to their own body.