Covid uptick .

[Mortblanc]

Much of this hype is a matter of perception also. And people are reacting insanely to ideas that have been considered general public health processes for the past 100 years.

In general it is a knee jerk rebellion to being told what to do, from wearing a mask to getting the vaccine. We don't want our government, or anyone's government telling us what to do.

My own attitude is "What is the big deal with getting a vaccine or making it mandatory?"

Back in around 1963-64 I remember going to a mass vaccination center at a local public school and getting a sugar cube with the Sabine Polio vaccine applied to it. They processed thousands of people through that center in one day and in two weeks the whole town was immunized, by law.

When I started school, back in the dark ages of the 1950s, and when my own children started school, we had to present a "shot record" to prove we, and they had been immunized for a host of diseases. Measles, typhoid, polio, rubella, diphtheria...the list went on and on. There is still a mandate for admission to university requiring an immunization record for measles and meningitis and almost everyone there is 18 or over.

In the past decade the goal of immunizing every child of 12 for the HPV virus has been widely recommended in order to bring cervical cancer under control through prevention rather than reaction.

As a teacher I was required to have a TB screening annually as were all food service workers and most people working in public. The community considered it part of a common sense approach to public health.

This was not voluntary, it was the law!

I now carry a vaccination card in my wallet, just like I had to present a TB screening to my boss for 50 years.

The only time I have been asked to present that card has been due to several hospital visits in the past few weeks, and the hospital staff took a very thankful attitude when proof of immunization for COVID was presented.

I suppose I have a different attitude about immunization as compared to taking ones chances. I was shown the train depot where coffins were stacked three tall in two rows that spanned 100 yards during the Spanish flu epidemic, by my grandfather who lived through it. Bodies waiting for shipping to burial. I also knew dozens of people crippled by polio which was still a threat during my childhood. People with withered limbs clattering about with braces and crutches allowing them to stand and move artificially.

As a historian I have done grave surveys in the cemeteries of my area, counting how old the persons in those graves were when they died, and I have been shocked at the short life spans right up to the mid-1900s.

I know the arguments, does it work? Does it do more harm than good? What are the long term affects?

I am not a gambler, never have been, but I can study the odds. Millions of people in GB play the lottery anticipating billions in payback for much worse odds than presented by COVID vaccine.

Has it been properly tested? Come on people! That is like a starving man refusing to eat a tin of beans because they are past the sell by date! Until the present day the cry I have constantly heard is that good meds are with held so they can be "over tested" to insure their absolute safety. There are people dying of chronic diseases right now while effective meds are in the "test phase" waiting for approval.

If a vaccine is 30%-60% effective, that is a 30%-60% chance of survival I now have that before I was vaccinated I did not have.

If it only weakens the disease that is a chance for survival I did not have before being vaccinated. I am in the high risk group and my survival chances once infected were about zero in 2019.

Does it alter my genes? Why should I care? I'm 72, I am not going to pass a gene defect to my next child! My youngest just turned 43 this week! Even my kids are too old to have kids!

If the long term results end in death ten years down the road how will anyone know? I'll be 82! That is 10 years I would not have had if I had died of COVID in 2021.

Will it make me a mindless zombie? What damage can a 72 year old zombie do anyway? And as for the general population being mindless zombies,,, have you looked around yourself lately? How would you know the difference?