Anti-vaxers like Joseph Mercola, RFK Jr, Mike “Health Ranger” Adams, Alex Jones, Simone Gold, Sherri Tenpenny, Br. Alexis Bugnolo and Jon Rappoport have a lot of innocent blood on their hands. They have been spreading the lie that the death rate from having the disease is lower than from taking the vaccine. They typically support that claim by misrepresenting VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) data.
In the United States the disease has killed 666,627 Americans, that we know of. (That’s from worldometers, yesterday.) That’s from 40,871,538 known cases (some of whom remain ill, and will also die), and probably 50-60 million unreported mild cases. That’s a fatality rate of >0.65%.
Additionally, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who are suffering from lingering (and perhaps permanent) harm, from the disease.
Now compare that to vaccination. We’ve had 185 million Americans vaccinated for Covid-19, so far, and there are a grand total of three (3) cases, so far, that we know of, in which someone died after getting vaccinated, and in which the circumstances of their death suggest that an unusual response to vaccination was the likely cause. That’s a 0.0000016% fatality rate from vaccination.
Even if there’ve been a few other deaths actually caused by vaccination, but not obviously attributable to it, that still means vaccination is around five orders of magnitude less dangerous than getting the disease while unvaccinated.
Anti-vaxers misrepresent VAERS statistics to claim vastly higher death rates from vaccination, but they are lying. This is my comment on that, which I posted on a Whiteboard Doctor video (but which YouTube censored):
{an anti-vaxer} wrote, “VAERS reflects nearly 5,000 deaths in the US just from the vaccine…”
You really need to stop listening to those lying anti-vaxers! That is one of their favorite lies.
VAERS does NOT list deaths and other adverse events “from the vaccine.” It lists deaths and other adverse events after vaccination, which is COMPLETELY different.
To understand why it’s completely different requires a little bit of math.
On average day, with no pandemic, about 7,500 Americans die, of all causes. That’s 0.0023% of the U.S. population.
Americans have gotten 361 million Covid-19 vaccine jabs, so far.
Q: How many of them should you expect to have COINCIDENTALLY died of UNRELATED causes within 24 hours of a jab?
Pause here, and see if you can work it out for yourself!
Then read on, for the answer, to see if you got it right.
.
.
.
Okay, let’s check your answer…
Q: How many Americans should you expect to have died
of UNRELATED causes within 24 hours of a jab?
A: 0.0023% of 361 million ≈ 8,300
Did you get it right?
Let’s try another.
Q: How many of them should you expect to have died
of UNRELATED causes within 7 days of a jab?
Don’t peek! You can do it!
.
.
.
Okay, let’s check your answer…
Q: How many Americans should you expect to have died
of UNRELATED causes within 7 days of a jab?
A: 7 × 0.0023% of 361 million ≈ 58,000
So, do you see why 5,000 deaths “after getting vaccinated” is NOT evidence the vaccines are killing people?
Vaccination reduces the risk of becoming infected, and reduces
the risk of lasting harm if infected. Wise up, people! Get vaccinated
now!!
In the early days of the pandemic, anti-vaxers typically claimed that Covid-19 was not very dangerous, or even that it was “no worse than flu.” With 2/3 of a million Americans dead from it that lie no longer works very well, so now they typically claim that various treatments, such as HCQ or ivermectin, are better options than vaccination.
There are several things wrong with that.
Most obviously, treatment vs. vaccination is not an “either or” proposition. Being vaccinated doesn’t preclude any treatment options if you have a breakthrough infection — and having been vaccinated greatly improves your chances of avoiding serious harm.
Additionally, even the most effective treatment of the disease could not, even in principle, significantly slow its SPREAD. That’s because most transmission occurs before the source patient is diagnosed, and so before he would be treated. Even if treatment helps him, it cannot act retroactively to prevent him from spreading the disease to others.
Vaccination prevents many infections, and thus reduces the spread of the disease, which therapeutics can never do.
The importance of that is, ironically, proven by the cases in which it fails. Because vaccination is less effective at preventing infections with the Delta variants, those variants are spreading, even as the original variants are fizzling out, and even though vaccination is still preventing most vaccinated people from getting life-threatening cases. Like partially-effective vaccination, or waning but non-zero immunity, effective therapeutics can (theoretically) prevent the disease from become life-threatening. But they can never significantly impede its spread.
That is a very big problem. The spread of Delta variants has caused a huge resurgence of the pandemic, which is killing at least 7000 people per day, in large part because only about 1/3 of the people in the world are vaccinated against Covid-19.
What’s more, the efficacy claims for treatments like HCQ and ivermectin are very dubious. Neither of them are “silver bullets.”
Ivermectin is more promising than HCQ; here’s a review:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34318930/
It says, “evidence on efficacy and safety of ivermectin for prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 treatment is conflicting.”
(OTOH, there’s nothing “conflicting” about the conclusive evidence that vaccination against Covid-19 is extremely beneficial!)
There’s a LOT of misinformation being circulated about ivermectin, much of it from a web site called “ivmmeta.” “Health Nerd” sent out an informative 39-part tweetstorm about it. Here’s the first tweet:
Here’s a compilation:
https://rattibha.com/thread/1422044335076306947?lang=en
There is some evidence (far from conclusive) that ivermectin might have some benefit for Covid-19 patients, but anyone who tells you that you should take ivermectin instead of getting vaccinated is trying to kill you.
What’s more, even if ivermectin (and/or some other therapy) were found to be very helpful for Covid-19 patients, vaccination would still be necessary, simply because immunity to the disease, by vaccination or by surviving an infection, limits its spread, and merely treating the disease cannot.
So if you don’t yet have Covid-19 antibodies (either through vaccination or “the hard way,” by surviving the disease), please get vaccinated ASAP.
Dave Burton, Sept. 8, 2021