Is Freedom Worth the Fight?

WOW!! I should have learned my lesson from previous experience and decided not to forward the links about pushback against vaccine refusers. I will attempt to provide a dispassionate (defined as not influenced by strong emotion, and so able to be rational and impartial) evaluation of your response. You start by stating that I am a “good friend whom you love.” I must admit that your response felt–not loving–but angry, hateful and disrespectful in addition to being filled with misinformation, contradictions, and distasteful stereotypes. I’ll elaborate on some of the most egregious of those but in the interest of brevity, I’ll avoid a complete litany of the errors.

You claim you don’t know what I stand for anymore, in spite of the fact that we’ve corresponded on a variety of issues, including COVID and vaccines, for almost two years. I think I have clearly and consistently articulated my views over that timeframe. If you don’t know where I stand, you haven’t digested, or have forgotten, what I’ve written. You contrast science, reason, and God’s word to “what most in the Democratic Party stand for,” presuming that most Democrats don’t embrace science, reason, or Christianity. While I’ve been a lifelong Republican, I grew more and more disenchanted with the party during the Trump presidency. I see people of both parties that respect science, reason, and Christian ethics. This is the first of several irrational stereotypes.

You have repeatedly accused me of hating Donald Trump. In fact, I don’t hate him and have repeatedly told you that. I have very little respect for him, primarily because of his (well documented) lies, character flaws, and incompetence as President–especially in mishandling the COVID pandemic. I told you several times that I thought the first impeachment of Trump was ill advised and would damage the Democratic party. Contrary to what you stated, he was not exonerated by the Mueller investigation (read the report, not Bill Barr’s “summary”) and the trial in the Senate was a political verdict that was completely predictable and hardly objective.

You claim that the Biden “cabinet and advisor group is full of Muslim brotherhood and their sympathizers.” I challenge you to name a single Muslim in the cabinet or white house staff, much less enough of them to constitute that group being “full of” such people. You claim, without evidence, that thousands of undocumented Muslim immigrants have been admitted to the US. All of those claims are simply gross misstatements and distasteful stereotypes. I guess you would abandon the Afghans who worked with us over the last 20 years to fight the Taliban, even when they get proper documentation from the State Department.

One of the worst examples of hypocrisy relates to the vaccine deniers claiming individual liberty. They have even co-opted the slogan of abortion rights protesters: “My body, my choice.” They have no problem claiming their personal rights while denying women the right to make the choice to get an abortion. Don’t misunderstand me, I abhor abortion. Outlawing abortion is not as effective as educating women about the risks of unprotected sex, providing protective measures, and expanding options for women with unwanted pregnancies—adoption and help for single mothers who struggle to support themselves. You call abortion “murdering a child in the womb” and yet condone anti-vaxxers, who contribute to the death of thousands more people by spreading COVID and prolonging the pandemic, which contributes to more economic damage and mental health problems.

I’ll avoid commenting on your slurs (and unfair stereotypes) about the CDC, companies who developed the vaccines, and public health experts. What is inexplicable to me is how you can ignore the data on the efficacy of the vaccines, the clear correlation between infections, hospitalizations, and deaths and vaccination rates throughout the country. You advocate treatments for COVID such as ivermectin and HCQ. You embrace anecdotal “evidence” of the benefits of unproven therapies, even when scientific studies and the advice of FDA and the CDC not to use them, but ignore the proven vaccine approval process that has resulted in fully approving the Pfizer vaccine, which is likely be given to vaccines from Moderna and J&J soon.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-revokes-emergency-use-authorization-chloroquine-and

I’m a pragmatist. The cost of vaccinating someone is about $35 per dose. The cost of therapies is much higher—$2,000 or more per dose for monoclonal antibodies for example. I completely support the development of effective therapies to treat COVID patients. After surviving two bouts of throat cancer, I am thankful that there are effective treatments for cancer patients. The cost of my cancer treatments has been several hundred thousand dollars. But I’m very much aware that prevention is not only less expensive than treatment but allows us avoid serious side effects of treatment. In my case, I completely lost my sense of taste and smell, am unable to eat solid food, and cannot speak naturally after having a laryngectomy. My cancer could have been prevented by the vaccine for HPV, which is now available, but too late for me.

If there were as many antivaxxers in previous years as there are now, how many more people would have died from or been permanently damaged by polio, tetanus, influenza, Hepatitis, rubella, Hib, measles, Whooping cough, pneumococcal disease, mumps, chickenpox, diphtheria, etc.

I’ll also ignore your falsehoods about the 2020 election. It’s really beyond the scope of our present discussion about COVID and vaccines. We have argued about the election ad nauseam and I don’t care to rehash that here. We do have a friendly wager over that and I hope, unlike Mike Lindell, you don’t try to move the goalposts when you fail to provide indisputable evidence recognized in court decisions. It is interesting to me that the defendants in the Dominion defamation lawsuits are trying to have the cases dismissed (for a variety of reasons) rather than argue the merits of their election fraud claims in court.

Finally, I’ll comment on the rights of private businesses and local agencies to impose conditions on the use of their services, such as restaurants requiring patrons to be vaccinated in order to dine in their establishment. We’ve long recognized the right of businesses to enforce “no shirt, no shoes, no service” requirements, force diners to wear a jacket and tie, refuse to accept credit cards, or any number of less consequential restrictions. Businesses are certainly within their rights to limit their services to only vaccinated customers in order to protect the health of their employees as well as other customers. The “free market” economy (yes, a traditional conservative concept) will sort out whether the public will patronize them. Restaurants who have surveyed their customers have found overwhelming support for those restrictions. Likewise, companies such as Delta have the right to impose a higher health insurance premiums on employees who fail to get vaccinated.

The same can be said for school boards and municipalities. Schools have long required a whole host of vaccinations for students. I’m certainly glad we have building codes and laws to protect us from shoddy construction, reckless drivers, vandalism, arson, and many other potential risks to our health and safety. We accept restrictions on our individual liberties for all kinds of desirable outcomes. Our freedom comes with responsibilities and there are consequences to the actions we take—or refuse to take.

The readers of your blog can decide for themselves what to believe and I’m sure some of them, but maybe not all, fully embrace your views. Thanks for allowing me to present a dissenting view.

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