OPINION
BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
I’m fully vaccinated. So is my wife and son. Everybody I work with has been vaccinated. I can’t think of a friend who hasn’t gotten the jab.
To me, the decision to get a vaccination was easy.
The path to get the vaccines to the public was sped up, which makes some people suspicious. But it was, and is, a national emergency. On the other hand, the clinical trials were huge. Here’s how many people volunteered to participate in the trials:
Pfizer — 46,333
Oxford-AstraZenica — 23,848
J&J’s (Janssen) — 44,325
Moderna — 28,207
Given the size of these trials and the insignificant number of side-effects, I wasn’t worried about getting a vaccine.
But I can understand why some people are hesitant. The media narrative is that they’re kooks. I think they have a healthy skepticism of the government, and they don’t trust people like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Early in the pandemic, Fauci told the public they didn’t need to wear masks because they didn’t work that well and could be counterproductive.
Several months later he admitted that he misled the public because there was a shortage of PPE, and he wanted to make sure hospital workers were able to get their masks first.
Another misstatement came in March 2020 when ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Fauci when we could expect our lives to return to normal.
“It’s going to be a matter of several weeks to a few months, for sure,” Fauci said.
It didn’t work out that way.
Another example? The New York Times reported in December that Fauci has been slowly raising his public estimate of the level of vaccination that will be needed to achieve herd immunity, from 60% to 70%, from 70% to 75%, from 75% to 80% — and now to 85%.
When confronted, Fauci told the Times he didn’t think people were ready to hear what he really believed.
These untruths undermine the medical profession. How do you get people to believe you when one of your leaders has misled people in the past? So of course there’s hesitancy. The unvaccinated are saying, “Are they lying again?”
If you know an unvaccinated person, perhaps the best thing you can say is, “We’ve had seven months of experience with these vaccines, and if they were harmful, you would have seen vaccinated people dying in the street. But the group that’s dying right now is the unvaccinated.”
• • •
Just one tent left
It looks like the city of Palo Alto is making progress in reclaiming its parking structures from homeless encampments. I’ve developed a fetish about checking the garages to see who is living there. Yesterday, there was just one tent in the Webster/Cowper garage at 520 Webster Street.
Such encampments aren’t unusual in San Francisco or San Jose, of course, but they’re news here. The homeless are pretty well hidden around here, except for maybe the guy who lives in the Homer Avenue tunnel.
So when the multiple encampments popped up in the Webster/Cowper garage, it caught everyone’s attention. One encampment was so elaborate it had a kitchen, a Weber barbecue and a shopping cart. The “residents” had Kurt Vonnegut novels and musical instruments including a keyboard.
Police have been posting the encampments with notices saying the city will remove the property in 48 hours — and that’s what’s happened.
The police aren’t arresting the homeless, but advising them on how they can find shelter elsewhere and get help with their problems.
“One of the things that frustrates me is that not everybody wants help,” Assistant Palo Alto Police Chief Andrew Binder told me July 8.
He said that once the garages have been cleaned up, it’s entirely possible that the campers will return. But he said the police can do some good while treating the homeless like human beings.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays. His email address is [email protected].
The creeps who want to shut down society and imprison everyone at home are using the delta variant to push for another lockdown. Next thing will be Dr Cody telling us we need to lockdown for three weeks to flatten the curve.
Thank you, Mr. Price, for your thoughtful take here absent all the vitriol and demonizing that now accompanies most articles on the subject. Unfortunately I know several people who have been severely injured by these vaccines. One experienced a major heart attack. Their stories are being actively covered up and censored. Please see http://www.vaxlonghaulers.com. Even if this issue is facing a minority rather than a majority of people, their suffering is not to be ignored. Thank you again for your evenhandedness as a journalist. Much appreciated.
David, thank you, great to see you speaking up about the mounting vaccine injuries. So much so they actually shut down the VAERAS site. There would be no need for censorship if these so-called vaccines were safe and effective. And now evidence is mounting they are not only deadly but can cause immune deficiency and give you covid! LOL
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Isaac Asimov
A big part of why people aren’t getting vaccinated is that people are tired of being told by the elites what they can and can’t do. The elites, and our town is full of them, think they’re smarter than everyone else because they have degrees from Ivy League schools or no-work BS jobs at Google. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS! If the vaccine works, it shouldn’t matter to you whether I have gotten it or not.
It does matter.You cost us money as well.
Good article. I think the health officials and government are overselling vaccinations. Any normal person would wonder why they’re offering money or prizes to get a vaccination when they’re free and easy to get. Just tell everyone that we have a limited supply of vaccinations and they need to get one now or they won’t be available later. Then they’ll line up for one. The perception of a shortage always works. shit
Remember when liberals used to say that, when it came to abortion, conservatives need to keep their hands off of women’s bodies? Now the liberals are telling everyone, men and women, what they should do with their bodies.
@Carmen:
And remember when DOCTORS told you to get the measles, mumps, whooping cough, tetanus, chickenpox, and polio vaccines?
I think it’s wrong to assert that the people refusing to get the vaccine are hard-core conservatives, Trumpers, etc. I just read how about 30% of federal employees haven’t gotten the vaccine, and that Biden is cracking down on them. Federal employees, along with government employees at other levels, are the most liberal people out there. So this isn’t a conservative-vs-liberal thing.
And now 74% of the covid cases in Massachusetts are the vaccinated. LOLOL.
Yeah, with little to no symptoms. The unvaccinated are hospitalized and may die.
Americans don’t like dictatorships. Our shared gift is the ability to determine our own individual destinies. So, forced vaccines are wrong except in the most dire circumstances (which is not now), selectively applied (not broad shutdowns) and for periods that can be justified by hard evidence. Everyone is talking about the Delta boogie man but the precise impact of this new variant is hard to find. It seems that the impact is mostly (by far) to people who didn’t get the shots – the unvaccinated – and to some groups who have specific medical histories and/or compromised immune systems. People are encouraged to worry about rising case counts – testing positive for Covid doesn’t really mean much. What we need a full picture of – in exact detail – is how many cases result in hospitalization and/or death. You can carry Covid if you are vaccinated but simply show mild symptoms while the vaccine fights off the virus. Without the vaccine, you can die. People who chose not to vaccinate make the decision to accept that risk. It’s not the vaccinated population’s obligation – despite what Newsom argues – to mask up and shut down to protect to unvaccinated. The vaccines are free – no one can claim they don’t have a chance to get one. These lockdowns exceed the Constitutionally protected rights of all Americans and should never have been applied so broadly and for so long. It severely damaged individuals and severely damaged our economy. It will be a long time before society recovers. We can let this happen again. People have an absolute right to choose not to vaccinate but unless it’s clearly demonstrated that the vaccines are not working we should go back to our jobs, our routines, our parks, our classrooms, and our responsibilities. Those who got the shots are not responsible for reducing the risks to the unvaccinated with masks and more shutdowns.
Jesus, the stupidity is strong in these comments. Facebook and Whatsapp University AREN’T valid sources, y’all!
It does matter.You cost us money as well.