I’m submitting this letter to make a different point of view available in our local paper because three of four letters in Friday’s paper are over-the-top scare-mongering nonsense.
They say China, Russia and Iran are behind the bipartisan infrastructure spending bill to ruin our economy; Biden is sending millions of COVID-infected “illegal aliens” throughout the country to ... it’s not clear what, but it must be bad, and somehow COVID is a socialist plot; and then the third says COVID is a Chinese bioweapon but don’t take the vaccine because God doesn’t expect us to be safe and the vaccine isn’t safe (no, that didn’t make logical sense to me either), and “Everyone who has had the vaccine will die within two years ...” Are you serious?
Here is another point of view. Biden has been a senator and vice president and has been known as a person of integrity his entire career. He is a centrist Democrat, not a socialist. (Unless you can define socialism and give examples, you shouldn’t make such accusations.) The bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed because every corner of our country needs the transportation and broadband improvements it will bring us, and we have ignored necessary maintenance for years. Even Mitch McConnell voted for the bill because he knows a critical bridge between Kentucky and Ohio must be replaced. Immigration is a serious problem, but it is not immigrants spreading COVID. It is unvaccinated Americans.
COVID is not safe. Whether or not it turns out that the virus escaped from a lab or was spread from bats, the result is the same. Over 600,000 Americans have died from it and many survivors have lingering serious symptoms such as heart damage. The millions of unvaccinated Americans are the virus’ happy place where it can live, spread and continue to mutate into more variants that could possibly be worse.
The vaccine is as safe as modern medicine can make it. Nothing is guaranteed, but vaccine development is a mature science. Researchers like Dr. Fauci know how viruses work and how the immune system works. Some of the COVID vaccines are made by a novel technique, but we should celebrate the ingenuity of scientists that allowed a safe and effective life-saving vaccine to be deployed in record time. Some people thank God for this life-saving innovation of mRNA vaccines. And we can thank former President Trump for Operation Warp Speed that organized the collaborative group that fast-tracked the vaccines.
Drug makers have decades of experience in the complex job of manufacture, storage and distribution of vaccines. The Pfizer vaccine was tested in over 44,000 people before the FDA gave it Emergency Use Authorization, which they did because we ARE in an emergency. Permanent authorization is coming as soon as next week.
I can provide documentation for all of my assertions and request that other writers offer the same. And, to Mr. Letter Writer #3, who thinks “Everyone who has had the vaccine will die within two years ...,” I’ll bet instead that nearly everyone who has been vaccinated will still be alive in two years or will have died of something other than COVID. Not so the unvaccinated among us.
