As a "Air Force Brats" (children whose parent or parents serve in the Air Force), my brother and I moved around a LOT. We also got vaccinated a LOT. I had to have several smallpox vaccination "jabs" because the expected reaction did not occur. One finally did yield the expected results: an itchy, red, skin eruption resulting in a scab that eventually fell off, leaving the ubiquitous "smallpox vaccination scar." I was told that I was now safe from a real smallpox infection "for life." Hmmm. So far, so good.
Now that I have since been "jabbed" for COVID-19 immunization, and it is in Government records that I did in fact succumb to fear, and allowed this to happen not once but twice, the CDC and the US-FDA now require my future death to be reported as "COVID related." WTF is going on?
As a child I had zero choice as to whether or not I got vaccinated. Mother was a Registered Nurse. So, I got not just the (apparently effective) smallpox vaccine, but also the Salk polio vaccine injection, and then later the Sabin polio vaccine administered as a few drop of liquid applied to a tiny sugar cube, which was then swallowed whole. My brother and I each also received the "triple threat" DTP vaccination in a single shot to ward off contracting diphtheria, tetanus, and/or pertussis... all childhood diseases that could become fatal.
In the late 1950s my father was ordered to Kadena AFB on Okinawa. Somewhat later my mother, my brother and I were allowed to join him there. But first we all had to get our immunization records up-to-date. Lots of "jabs" were required for that one, including protection from some diseases I had never heard of. And for some reason we got to fly from Knoxville TN to Atlanta GA on a Delta Air Lines DC3... yeah, the ol' reliable Gooney Bird... passports maybe? One passport for the three of us. Anyhoo, after all the T's were dotted and all the I's were crossed we all got on a four-engine, propeller-driven, three-tailed
Constellation and flew to Okinawa from California, with short stops in Hawaii and Wake Island to re-fuel. The Captain, after someone informed him that teen-aged chidlren were aboard his aircraft, invited some of us to come up to the cockpit, one or two at a time,.to see what was going on. Wonderful experience! But that will never happen again in this century. <sigh>
There wasn't one then, and AFAIK, there isn't a vaccination now against tuberculosis (TB) infection. Mother acquired it before the trip to Okinawa, which is why my brother and I had earlier been living in Tennessee with out grandparents. After mother recovered, father was transferred to Lowry AFB, Denver CO and the four of lived together in a small rented house in Aurora CO until his transfer to Okinawa. Since we were not allowed to immediately accompany Dad, the three of us moved back to Tennessee and rented a small house in Morristown, near to where grandmother and grandfather had retired.
Okinawa was fun (the United States had not yet returned the island to Japan) and none of the three of us became sick there. Dad, however, contracted TB in his kidneys, which can quickly become fatal. He was flown to Valley Forge Army Hospital near Phoenixville PA.for over a year of treatment. We eventually joined him there for the year it took modern antibiotic drugs to kill his infection. Bed rest and fresh air was then, and is now a slow albeit effective treatment for TB. My mother took daily injections of streptomycin after she was discharged from
Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Aurora CO. I don't recall that Dad had to do that and he was subsequently transferred to Sewart AFB in Smyrna TN, where he finally retired from the Air Force and moved to Dayton OH.
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I think that must be so. Natural selection would favor it.
I have often suspected that I may have inherited genes that provide my genome with a superior defense against infection. Although I did contract scarlet fever, and later rheumatic fever which damages the heart, the only consequence I remember is missing most of the first grade because my mother enforced strict bed-rest. We were living out in the country near Riverside CA at the time, so perhaps the good California weather helped "cure" me. I don't remember having to take any "pills" although I did object to being forced bedridden. Eventually I got over it, and my heart was not damaged by the disease, which is what scared the hell out of my mom. As an RN, she knew what could happen. Or maybe she was just testing Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Mom was scary smart, but I don't think she would deliberately withhold medical treatment from me or my brother. It's probably too late to ask her now since she died. Well, I could ask a medium to ask her, but I prefer to let the dead rest in peace. All questions will be answered eventually... or not.
As I hope anyone can see from what I have written, I am NOT an anti-vaxer. But I was taught that a real vaccine
prevents disease. It may somehow increase survival statistically, but it has to be proven to
prevent disease before any reasonable person can claim it is a REAL vaccine. I was commanded (i.e. forced) to take a "flu vaccine" by the Air Force in the summer of 1964 at my final duty station, Kincheloe AFB, Kinross MI. Subsequently, that winter I did contract a mild form of the "flu" and soon after that I realized that whatever "flu vaccine" I was given
was only effective for the flu variant that existed at the time the vaccine was developed. Viruses constantly mutate, but I haven't taken any flu vaccine since receiving that first "flu vaccine." AFAIK I have never had the flu since that winter of 1964, nor did I ever have the flu before then. For whatever reason, the Air Force did not force me to later take flu shots after that first one. Today annual flu shots are mandatory for armed forces personnel, but that no longer applies for me!
None of them were educated or were doctors.
What does that have to do with the sovereign right of the protesters to control what is put in their body? Being in a "free" country means you have the "right" to be wrong! Ignorance is curable with education, but stupid is forever.
I waited a long time here in The Free State of Florida before I got my two "jabs" because in the Government's rush to "do something" Phizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson (among others) created their so-called vaccines without proper clinical trials, which can take years! The populations of the world became their trial, and it was neither clinical nor a real trial. Follow the money. Social distancing works, as does isolation at home. If enough people contract COVID, and some of them die, perhaps those who got sick but didn't die contribute to herd immunity. Some researchers say, "No. Contracting COVID and surviving DOES NOT contribute anything to herd immunity." Why? Because it does not remove the virus from the population at large.
It has been reported that most of the current hospitalizations for COVID infection occur among the non-vaccinated. It is too bad that those folks decided not to become a part of the trials for the vaccine, but it doesn't prove anything. How many of those admitted actually tested positive for infection? How many of those admitted actually died? "Figures may not lie, but liars figure." Follow the money. There are more than seven billion (>7,000,000,000) people living today. What percentage of that number who contracted COVID and actually died as a result? Is it really worth the effort spent so far to reduce that percentage to zero? What if, say, 99 44/100 % died (the Ivory soap claim to purity)? That would still leave about a billion souls worldwide to somwhow run the planet...