Myths, urban legends and tin-foil hattery concerning the COVID-19 virus vaccinations. Here’s the other side of the argument against getting the shot(s) –

1. It’s “gene therapy” or a “genetically modified organism”.

No, it’s not. It doesn’t alter your genes in any way. Nor is it an organism of any sort. There is nothing living nor anything that has ever lived in the vaccine. Unlike older traditional vaccines that contain killed or weakened viruses.

It’s not “gene therapy” — it’s a synthetically created protein therapy. The mRNA in the vaccine is a protein precursor, an element of protein creation.  Sort of like a template that causes a certain protein to be built a certain way.  Proteins come in a lot of forms, from delicious steaks and chops to deadly prions that are nearly indestructible. The protein precursor in the vaccine mimics the protein attack spikes on the virus (the “corona” in corona viruses), these are the microscopic “lock picks” the virus uses to enter your cells. The vaccine triggers an immune response from your own immune system, creating a protein that stops the virus from being able to “unlock” and enter your cells to reproduce. This is exactly how your own, naturally acquired immunity works on diseases you’ve already had. Without exposing you to the toxic byproducts of weakened or killed viruses.

When you see someone spouting “gene therapy” in this situation you can be certain that they don’t really understand what they’re on about and are just repeating some scare gibberish they’ve read elsewhere. Likely because they’ve gone looking for it intentionally to bolster their own confirmation bias. This kind of person is a victim and you should feel sorry for them. This kind of thing is used a lot against people who are susceptible to such influences.

The manifestations vary but this is the kind of person who panics at the word “radiation” believing that all radiation of any sort is harmful/and or deadly. Yet doesn’t realize every time they step out in to sunshine they are bathed in radiation all across the electromagnetic spectrum.

The active part of the vaccine is a ribonucleic acid, or “RNA” for short. RNA is a component in every living organism. You eat it all the time, every day. Without it your body can build none of the structures you need to survive. The RNA in the vaccine is just a protein pre-cursor that is used to build the desired protein(s) in your body. The mRNA in the vaccine (messenger RNA) is specifically constructed to specifically build the proteins that prevent the COVID-19 or any of its variants from entering your cells.

This is actually a serious breakthrough in medical science along the same lines of penicillin and the Salk Polio Vaccine. Like those and other breakthroughs, this will lead to even more and better medical treatments. There’s even a potential for this kind of thing to eventually provide a cure for cancer.

2. The vaccine is not tested or approved by the FDA.

Both are untrue. The vaccine has gone through the same basic process with the same basic safeguards that any vaccine has to with one big exception. That exception is that the process has been accelerated and compressed. Things that caused useless time lapses were omitted, this is generally called “cutting the red tape” and we all usually approve of this kind of thing because as we all know, “red tape” isn’t useful, it just clogs up the gears.

Where once the prospective drug to be released might be passed from testing to testing to testing at various facilities for various sorts of examination in serial this time that was done in parallel. The vaccine wasn’t sent to venue after venue, it was sent to all venues at once. Then tested, the test results examined, where there were needs for further testing indicated by the results it was sent back to all venues, etc. This accomplishes the exact same result in a much accelerated time frame.

The FDA has approved this vaccine through the process of issuing an EUA, Emergency Use Authorization. That does not mean that the vaccine can only be applied to emergency cases like some seem to think. It means that the FDA has waved a lot of the proceedures that would generate more data down to a fine degree of information. The FDA EUA is not a lesser “safety” approval, the safety has already been established or an EUA would not be issued. It can take years, sometimes decades for full FDA approval and licensing of medical treatments. That lengthy process does us no good in the case of a rapidly spreading problem. That’s why there’s an EUA system in place and has been one since long before anyone ever heard of COVID-19. The COVID-19 vaccines have been tested and approved for distribution to the general public according to long standing policies and proceedures developed by the medical community itself.

That said,there are never any guarantees and no vaccine is 100% safe, ever. People have anaphylactic reactions and other problems that make them sick and sometimes they even die from vaccines that have been tested, approved and licensed for distribution for decades. This problem affects a very, very tiny percentage of the overall population that gets vaccinated with any vaccine, but it exists and it is a known issue. So bear that in mind when you read about a death or several that are attributed to this vaccine. At this point in time, as I write this right now, millions and millions have been vaccinated and so far there is not one single death directly attributable to the COVID vaccine.

3.“… there are low to zero cases of other flu this past season … etc.”

This is just silly. The CDC is publishing figures right now that are current. Yes, the incidence of reported flu cases are lower this year because the measures that inhibit the spread of COVID-19 also happen to inhibit the spread of everything else too. It’s not magic and it’s not really all that remarkable that this effect would apply to all communicable diseases. Here’s the numbers —

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/fluportaldashboard.html

So here’s the thing about this claim and similar claims. There is a definite statistical effect of anti-COVID measures. A lot of deaths that might have been reported as heart attacks, cancer etc. are being reported as COVID deaths because the person who died, died with COVID not of COVID. In once case a person who died in a motorcycle wreck was reported as a COVID death because he had the virus in his system when he crashed his bike.

One thing you can be certain of, someone making the claim in #3 and telling you to go look up the numbers, hasn’t actually gone and looked up any numbers himself, or didn’t understand what he was reading if he did. Most likely he got his information from one of the many, many conspiracy theory mongers on the internet because that is the only place you’re going to see that kind of thing advanced as reality. It’s not. Those sites are not credible. If someone wants to believe them that’s their business but don’t let that stop you from getting vaccinated.

Do I trust the FDA, CDC, and all the corporate entities involved in the creation of the vaccines?  Nope, I don’t.  No more than I trusted Harrington and Richardson to hand me a flawless M-14 or Colt/Mattel to hand me a flawless M-16,  or any of the aircraft, helicopter, parachute, harness, rope, piton, carabiner or any of the other things I’ve staked my life on in the past.  I do my due diligence, I investigate, I check and double check, I examine to the extent I’m able to so as to understand how a thing works and … I don’t listen to the factory rep telling me how much I’m going to love his new parachute etc.  Then when the light comes on I stand up and when it changes color I go out the door with full confidence that not only have I done everything reasonable to ensure my survival but that my survival is very likely.  At least until a few seconds after I hit the ground and after that it’s a different set of things, also well checked and understood, that I’m relying on for my life. 

I’m no stranger to risk, in fact I’m fairly experienced in evaluating and handling risk.  Everything is a risk, getting out of bed in the morning is a risk.   I understand the process that these vaccines were developed under as much as any non-microbiologist can, I find the process to arriving at a vaccine to be good, sound, reasonable science (Did you know that the real problem with this sort of vaccine is not the creation of it, but the scaling needed to make it deployable in an effective manner?  I do.).

I’ve done a lot of actual, real, no-shit research on this situation from credible, authoritative, genuinely canonical information sources and I’m going to get that shot the minute it becomes available to me. You can think what you want, get a shot or not, believe me or not, I don’t care. If you think I’m uniformed or naïve you’re just wrong and I won’t give you any more credit than you deserve. Which is zero. I’m putting this up so that those who don’t know one way or another have a counter argument to the people spreading nonsense about the vaccine. Suit yourself.