Letter: Don’t perpetuate vaccine dogma

Graphic by Lori Deaton

Recently, I walked by a local entertainment venue (that I have supported for many years) and saw a sign announcing that admission was restricted to vaccinated people, and they would be allowed to remove masks once they were seated. I respect the venue’s authority as a private business to set rules for patrons inside their establishment, and I have no opposition to businesses asking people to wear masks. But the policy to exclude unvaccinated people makes no sense.

As we have seen with delta, vaccinated people may be less likely to get seriously ill and die from COVID-19 but are clearly able to contract and transmit the virus to others. In an indoor setting, coronavirus can spread through aerosols — regardless of whether the people sitting in the seats are vaccinated.

Excluding unvaccinated people perpetuates the false narrative that the only people contracting, transmitting and getting sick with coronavirus are the unvaccinated — and that is wildly untrue. This falsehood leads to policies that violate civil liberties, such as vaccine mandates for federal employees and contractors, health care workers and military personnel. OSHA’s regulation compelling certain employers to collect proof of vaccination from employees or absorb the cost of weekly testing — or face significant fines — is designed simply to coerce individuals into getting vaccinated — not to address the spread of coronavirus.

How do we know that with absolute certainty? If the goal of these policies truly was to prevent the spread of coronavirus, OSHA’s policy would be to test all individuals on a regular basis, in an attempt to detect both symptomatic and asymptomatic infection. And more importantly, vaccine mandates would allow an exception for individuals who test positive for antibodies, whether from a vaccine or from naturally acquired immunity, which has been proven to be stable and at least as long-lasting as antibodies from the vaccine. Likewise, if this business was concerned solely with preventing transmission of the virus, they would not be excluding customers based on their vaccination status alone.

COVID-19 is an aggressive virus, but is not deadly to more than 99.5% of people who contract it (I am one of them who has had a full recovery). Age, weight and some medical conditions may cause a person to be more severely affected by COVID-19 — but for healthy individuals and children, the risk of hospitalization and death is close to zero. We are still learning about the side effects associated with the multiple vaccines. The decision to take a vaccine should be an individual’s choice alone, based on their own cost-benefit analysis and their understanding of their own vulnerability to serious illness — not a response to political pressure.

This local business is among many private and public institutions that are perpetuating vaccine dogma — pretending the shot provides a different kind of protection than it actually does.

— Anne Lancaster
Leicester

Editor’s note: Johns Hopkins University reports a U.S. observed case-fatality ratio of 1.6%. (avl.mx/aqk)

SHARE

Thanks for reading through to the end…

We share your inclination to get the whole story. For the past 25 years, Xpress has been committed to in-depth, balanced reporting about the greater Asheville area. We want everyone to have access to our stories. That’s a big part of why we've never charged for the paper or put up a paywall.

We’re pretty sure that you know journalism faces big challenges these days. Advertising no longer pays the whole cost. Media outlets around the country are asking their readers to chip in. Xpress needs help, too. We hope you’ll consider signing up to be a member of Xpress. For as little as $5 a month — the cost of a craft beer or kombucha — you can help keep local journalism strong. It only takes a moment.

About Letters
We want to hear from you! Send your letters and commentary to letters@mountainx.com

Before you comment

The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.

21 thoughts on “Letter: Don’t perpetuate vaccine dogma

  1. C-Law

    @Anne

    Huzzah! Well said!

    The gene therapy treatments conveniently redefined on-the-fly as “vaccine” :

    -They are at best an experimental phase 3 clinical trial and have zero longitudinal data to support their medical use.

    -They provide no lasting, sterilizing immunity.

    -They don’t even prevent transmission of the virus.

    -They have serious and potentially fatal short term side effects. We have no idea what the long-term side effects may be because we decided to skip that step in the scientific process. There are zero longitudinal studies done or datum to answer those questions. This was intentional.

    -They changed the definition of pandemic from “kills many” to “infects many” and changed the definition of vaccine from “provides lasting sterilizing immunity” to “provides protection.”

    So you’re 100% correct Anne. Problem is, none of this has anything to do with health, but is 100% about Compliance Control and Politico-Medical Fascism.

    9th Amendment:

    The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

    We retain the right to control our own bodies. Period. My body, my choice.

    • Michael Hopping

      It is your right to refuse COVID vaccination. The rest of us have the right to choose how to respond to your unvaccinated status, including the placing of limitations on interactions with us.

    • Peter Robbins

      “We retain the right to control our own bodies. Period.”

      Is that equally true if she misses a period?

  2. MV

    WTF? Businesses have long been able to refuse service to anyone who does not follow certain rules: no shirts, no shoes, for example. Get a clue, woman.

  3. Michael Hopping

    Although this letter superficially appears to take a reasonable approach to a serious public policy question, the conclusions reached are based in misleading and/or incomplete readings of the scientific evidence. We’re told that “vaccinated people may be less likely to get seriously ill and die from COVID-19 but are clearly able to contract and transmit the virus to others.” There is no “may” about the risk of serious illness. Scientific literature and hospital experience from multiple countries consistently show that unvaccinated people are at much higher risk of hospitalization and death from COVID infection.

    The letter writer accurately states that vaccinated people can contract and transmit delta variant COVID to others. A recent study of in-home transmission published by the Lancet confirmed this. An overview of its findings and a link to the original paper can be found on Healthline.com (https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vaccinated-people-can-transmit-the-coronavirus-but-its-still-more-likely-if-youre-unvaccinated#Vaccines-protect-against-Delta-infection). Delta variant positive persons, vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, infected household contacts at a similar frequency, 25% vs 23% respectively.

    But the letter writer omits or is unaware of other important findings from the Lancet study. Vaccinated people were significantly less likely than unvaccinated household contacts to contract delta variant COVID, 25% v 38%. In other words, vaccination had protective value against transmission. You can’t transmit an infection you don’t have.

    Another finding suggests that a vaccinated person with delta variant COVID might be less likely to transmit the illness in settings not as socially intense as households. Transmission frequency increases with higher “viral load”, the amount of virus in the body of an infected person. The Lancet study tells us that peak viral loads were similar in delta variant cases regardless of vaccination status. However, vaccinated people had a high viral load for a shorter period of time than unvaccinated people. This difference could well translate to a lower risk of catching COVID from a vaccinated person at the next table in a restaurant.

    COVID infections have already killed more than 750,000 Americans, more per capita (0.23%) than either WW I (0.11%) or the Vietnam War (0.03%). Given that single sobering fact, responsible public policy and personal behavior do well to heed the overwhelming evidence supportive of mandates that treat vaccinated and unvaccinated people differently in public spaces.

    • Lesko Brandon

      There is a vast difference between dying “with” Covid versus dying “from” Covid, statistically. The numbers being presented include people dying from other causes that just happened to test “positive” with a test that was withdrawn for having a very high rate of false positives. Perhaps those were the “asymptomatic infections”, people that were not sick, but very high amplification cycles of the PCR showed a false positive.

      • Michael Hopping

        If Lesko B. is asserting that a percentage of the 750,000+ American deaths attributed to COVID/COVID complications were in fact people who merely happened to die with a positive test, we’re owed some supporting documentation. Let’s assess the legitimacy of that evidence.

          • Michael Hopping

            Yep. Your claim belongs on the heap of malignant misinformation that has cost far too many gullible Americans their lives.

            1
            1
  4. Lesko Brandon

    Yep, typical demunist, call for censoring any information you don’t agree with, while being willfully blind to seeing it. Go take your unending shots, for the collective. Don’t look at VAERS showing more adverse reactions than for every vaccine combined for the last 20 years, you’ll be fine, just ask Dr Falsi. Don’t forget to wear your mask, even while driving alone, despite 47 studies world wide showing limited to no effect. Whatever you do, don’t move to Florida, where this foolishness is not followed, resulting in the lowest infection rate in the country.

    • Michael Hopping

      According to today’s Johns Hopkins data as reported in The Guardian, Florida does have a very low infection rate over the past 7 days, 0.28%, possibly the lowest in the nation. But that wasn’t true as recently as a weeks ago, was it? Today’s data set also shows that Florida has had 17,233 cases/100,000 residents over the course of the pandemic. Only 7 states have done worse–Texas not among them. COVID deaths in Florida are fractionally more depressing yet. The state is tied with Arkansas for 7th worst at 281 deaths per 100,000, again outcompeting Texas in the race for the bottom of the barrel. North Carolina is no paragon of COVID virtue, but we’ve lost “only” 174/100,000 to COVID since the pandemic began.

    • luther blissett

      Nobody can stop you lying to yourself, but nobody has to believe the lies you tell yourself in your own weird gibberish, or treat you as acting in good faith.

      The pro-covid minority has essentially won its pathetic battle and made things worse for everyone who wants to get back to normal. That was a collective, self-reinforcing choice. They could have chosen to let their dogs poop in the park without cleaning it up and it would have given them the same feeling of satisfaction. They chose instead to take this path, and now acres of space in the “serious” mainstream media is devoted to some kind of deep analysis of their motivations and supposed beliefs, when it is little more than a grown-up temper tantrum. They may find lawmakers and courts willing to strike down restrictions, but no judge can order everyone else to treat them with respect, because they deserve no respect.

      Can’t reason people out of things they didn’t reason themselves into. Just have to protect yourself from them.

      Who’s Brandon?

      1
      1
      • Lesko Brandon

        Cute that you think I have the slightest care about you or your opinion…

        • luther blissett

          Cool. You apparently want an audience, though. Maybe get a megaphone and stand in front of the Vance Non-ument.

          • Lou

            @luther blissett…thanks, I needed a chuckle. Poor Lesko (“Let’s Go Brandon” is supposed to be “FU Biden”. Why? Because half an entire nation consists of toddlers dressed up in military gear, pretending they are relevant).

  5. KW

    First, I wonder if the author is aware that both healthcare organizations and the military have long had vaccine mandates to prevent other communicable diseases, and employees are required to comply or they lose their jobs. This is not a new concept that was enacted in response to COVID. The only difference is that the topic has now become politicized by people who do not understand (or do not care about) the underlying scientific evidence.

    Second, to the author’s medically inaccurate assertion that antibody testing would be an effective way to permit exceptions to vaccine mandates:
    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785530

    There are several other points that contradict the medical literature in this article, but pointing out each and providing citations would be too time consuming when it is unlikely to sway those whose minds are made up, regardless of that the data actually shows.

    1
    1
  6. Jason Williams

    I bet y’all would raise a fuss if someone was smoking in these venues against the rules.

    • kw

      Anyone seen smoking in places where smoking is prohibited will get their cig shoved down their throat by my good friend (and enforcer) Hiram J. Goldfinger. Thank you for your compliance in this matter.

  7. indy499

    Weird letter. Writer starts with this

    “I respect the venue’s authority as a private business to set rules for patrons inside their establishment”

    Then she changes her mind and accuses the establishment of perpetuating vaccine dogma, whatever that is.

    Stick with your first view. If don’t agree with this establishment, gpo somewhere else.

Leave a Reply

To leave a reply you may Login with your Mountain Xpress account, connect socially or enter your name and e-mail. Your e-mail address will not be published. All fields are required.