The term "anti-vax" has expanded so widely that even vaccine advocates, such as Corbyn and trade unions, are now included by virtue of defending bodily autonomy.
But seeing these vaccines rushed to market, conflated as classical vaccines (they aren't); seeing them become extraordinarily leaky, requiring constant boosters for the rest of eternity; seeing them pushed on children (who have nearly zero risk from the virus); seeing the very real issues around cardiomyopathy being brushed away; seeing otherwise perfectly reasonable (and vaccinated) people demand that others vaccinated to protect their own health (if you're vaccinated, why do you care?); and seeing any opposition squashed and vilified... Yeah, call me whatever names, but the "science" I'm seeing applied has nothing to do with what I was trained in as actual science.
Malicious labeling is how authoritarians dismiss any and all opposition. They test their terminology in focus groups and then march out in lockstep using their new talking points to demean and dismiss all intelligent discussions. Anti-vaxxers is just another example of how they use words to create war.
They worked to paint anyone who failed to deeply genuflect and bow down to their version of weather as “Climate Deniers”. They maliciously associated those of us who know that there is very little science that’s ‘settled’ as ‘deniers’. They are openly equating our insistence on simply seeing climate evidence as being no different than being in favor of loading Jews into boxcars. The more heinous the accusation, the more emphatic they become.
Their language has a singular intent; sit down and shut up. The Left’s idea of a new normal is easily understood. They want all the power and they want it now. Because that’s what authoritarians do.
I am astonished and encouraged to discover a politician on the left speaking out against these authoritarian, discriminatory measures. Despite my disagreements with many of Corbyn’s past stances, I believe defeating totalitarianism transcends all other issues and am proud to join with open-minded individuals across the political spectrum to resist the authoritarian measures spreading around the world like an infectious disease.
Love and appreciate your work. A clarification though. The term antivaxxer has been weaponized for years. This is not new. The irrational, cultish worship of the Covid vaccines, obliteration of dissent and exaggerated hysteria has simply made more people aware of a campaign that has been going on for a long time.
Most of us who are called that a term/have been called that term want a nuanced discussion about vaccines. For example, one that includes the recognition that a disease like mumps is an extremely mild childhood illness that confers lifelong immunity and, as some studies indicate, protection against ovarian cancer, and the vaccine offers notoriously short-lived protection that wears off right at the moment when young men are most vulnerable to complications that could impair their fertility. So, perhaps we should rethink including it in the mandatory vaccine program and save it only for those rare children with co-morbidities who would be vulnerable to complications of the disease. In medicine we always consider the severity of the disease, the risks both known and unknown of the treatment and whether there are better known, lower risk treatments. In the case of mumps the better treatment is called bed rest and liquids.
Most of us who are called that term were dutifully getting our vaccines when we or our children experienced an adverse event that irrevocably changed our lives. When we tried to bring it forward we were ridiculed, rejected and silenced. We've experienced doctors admitting in private that they think we were harmed by the vaccines but due to the weaponization of the language and the culture of retaliation when it comes to any critical thought about the vaccine program, they would never say so publicly.
Most of us have asked repeatedly for studies to determine who is genetically or metabolically vulnerable to vaccine injury so that we could create a screening program. The Institute of Medicine, despite the recommendation to do so by then head of the NIH, Bernadine Healy, decided against such investigation.
Covid hysteria has simply amplified and accelerated what was already a totalitarian medical culture wrapped in a spiral of silence when it comes to the shadows of vaccines and the vaccine program. All medical interventions have a shadow. It should signal a problem when discussion of that is verboten.
This was never about public health because 1:2 men 1:3 women get cancer and there is no move to stop production and dumping of millions of tons of known carcinogenic chemicals yearly. There is no concern for how many may be homeless or starve with loss of income from lockdowns. There is a single focus which is vaccines, pitched as the way back to normal, now obviously a subscription service for quarterly jabs and enrollment in a government tracking system that turns freedoms into privileges tied to ongoing compliance.
I’m willing to meet the half way. I’m anti-STUPID-vax.
I tried everything to get my youngest infected with chickenpox before he entered school. The risks of his catching chickenpox at age 30 due to waning effectiveness far, FAR outweigh the minor inconvenience of his getting the disease and recovering. Unfortunately I wasn’t successful in getting him infected and was forced to give him a completely unnecessary vaccine that puts his life in greater danger as he ages.
If that makes me “anti-vax” so be it.
At this point any time a liberal shrieks some intended insult at me I just smile and say “ok.” They all boil down to the same definition: someone who doesn’t agree with them.
I just watched a movie titled "The Forgotten Battle" about the battle in WW II in Zeeland, part of the Arnhem offensive. Several times in the movie characters are stopped at checkpoints in one of the towns occupied by the Nazis and they have to present their "papers" before proceeding. And it struck me immediately: This must be what it's like in New York City. We don't have to do that . . . yet . . . down here in Texas. Anyhoo, Seig Heil, ya'll and Happy Holidays to all you Greenwald readers from us down here in Austin, Texas (aka: San FranAustin, Texafornia)
Anti-vaxxer is a term coined by pharma, so we can start with that. I think your conception of the people raising concerns about vaccines could use some more nuance. There are people who believe most of the diseases we v against were going away before their v came into being. There are people who believe there's no way we need to jab babies twice as much as we did just a couple decades ago (and more than many other nations do). There are people whose babies and kids have been injured by v's sometimes permanently (many who've been paid compensation for these harms by the govt). There are people (and all of us should be in this category) who are concerned that the FDA, as a captured agency, is serving as a pharma promoter (just as they served as a biotech/GMO promoter) rather than a protector of public health. Finally, there are people (many of them) who had all other v's done for their kids, but looked at the fact that we're out of our depth on this technology, c doesn't pose an elevated risk to the young and healthy, the v doesn't do one of the main things it's supposed to, and have decided against it, for themselves and/or for their kids. All of these people, some of them overlapping and some of them not, fall into what pharma encourages us to call "anti-vaxxers." It's a convenient way to dispense with anyone who raises any question at all about the safety or prudence of individual v's or the v schedule as a whole (it must be the envy of every other industry that pharma was able to pull this off). This more nuanced reality has been well hidden, but every person who wakes up in the morning to find out they have been earned the anti-vaxxer label has an opportunity to say "Aha, so THIS is how this works." Like it or not, there are people who have labored for decades in the "health freedom" movement to ensure that the v's we give our kids are safe and necessary, and all they've received in return is a seemingly inexhaustible stream of contempt. That's on us.
The whole situation resembles a ticking time bomb. Is it possible the people pushing this agenda are unaware of how wrong this this? Threatening people with their livelihoods to coerce them into taking an experimental drug that goes against the Nuremberg Code. I'm attempting to find another word for this but, have to settle for ghastly. Will be interesting to see where this goes when the proverbial shit hits the fan.
Glenn, in addition to being great journalism every time you post another piece it illustrates just how few genuine journalists - as opposed to propagandists - are out there.
I never thought I would ever say this, but I agree with Jeremy Corbyn. I am that person who was vaccinated, at 64 years old, as soon I was eligible. And I'd encourage anyone over 60, or with higher risk factors, to get vaxed. But I strongly opposed mandates for all the reasons discussed in this article.
I especially agree that it is just plain wrong to force front line health care workers to be vaxed or be fired. These people risked their lives to care for the legions of serious Covid cases in the early days of the pandemic. To fire them now is immoral.
This essay also points to one of my pet peeves, the constantly shifting and twisting definitions of perfectly good English words from the mouths of the Woke and Left. To them I say: Get your own damned dictionary, and leave conventional dictionaries alone!
As an adult, I have a hard time understanding why any other adult would not take the vax for Covid. I did as soon as it was available to me. Got the 2nd dose on schedule. Got the booster as soon as soon as available.
All that said, my lack of understanding of someone else's decisions, particularly regarding bodily autonomy, is not only zero, it is irrelevant. I feel pretty comfortable in my vaxxed state. I do not suspect that some un-vaxxed person is going to expose me to a so-called breakthrough infection. But if I get a breakthrough, I am neither going to blame some anonymous - or even known - unvaxxed (or vaxxed) person for it nor am i going to piss and moan about the percentage of vaccines in the population at large. I will deal with it. I've protected myself as much as I think I can. I hate the masks, don't think they work unless you use surgical masks and toss them out every hour. But, yes, I tend to wear a cloth mask if asked.
It is a virus. A special kind of virus. It is entirely different from the things that cause a host of diseases we are all familiar with and for which vaccines are ACTUALLY EFFECTIVE. Small pox, polio, MMR, etc. SARS-CoV-2 is going to be - it already is - endemic. It is in the air, it is in the soil, it is in animals (call you local zoo). It is in deer, for god sake and those damn varmints eat my landscape. It will be around me for a long while. s
I have my own risk management approach. I can live with other folks having a different approach.
The newest word game is "fully vaccinated". When the vaccine first came out everyone needed 2 shots to be considered "fully vaxxed". Fauci is now hinting that soon "fully vaccinated" will mean 3 shots. The Pfizer CEO is already saying a 4th shot will be needed to protect against Omicron.
I was very pro vaccination before the pandemic.
But seeing these vaccines rushed to market, conflated as classical vaccines (they aren't); seeing them become extraordinarily leaky, requiring constant boosters for the rest of eternity; seeing them pushed on children (who have nearly zero risk from the virus); seeing the very real issues around cardiomyopathy being brushed away; seeing otherwise perfectly reasonable (and vaccinated) people demand that others vaccinated to protect their own health (if you're vaccinated, why do you care?); and seeing any opposition squashed and vilified... Yeah, call me whatever names, but the "science" I'm seeing applied has nothing to do with what I was trained in as actual science.
Malicious labeling is how authoritarians dismiss any and all opposition. They test their terminology in focus groups and then march out in lockstep using their new talking points to demean and dismiss all intelligent discussions. Anti-vaxxers is just another example of how they use words to create war.
They worked to paint anyone who failed to deeply genuflect and bow down to their version of weather as “Climate Deniers”. They maliciously associated those of us who know that there is very little science that’s ‘settled’ as ‘deniers’. They are openly equating our insistence on simply seeing climate evidence as being no different than being in favor of loading Jews into boxcars. The more heinous the accusation, the more emphatic they become.
Their language has a singular intent; sit down and shut up. The Left’s idea of a new normal is easily understood. They want all the power and they want it now. Because that’s what authoritarians do.
I am astonished and encouraged to discover a politician on the left speaking out against these authoritarian, discriminatory measures. Despite my disagreements with many of Corbyn’s past stances, I believe defeating totalitarianism transcends all other issues and am proud to join with open-minded individuals across the political spectrum to resist the authoritarian measures spreading around the world like an infectious disease.
Love and appreciate your work. A clarification though. The term antivaxxer has been weaponized for years. This is not new. The irrational, cultish worship of the Covid vaccines, obliteration of dissent and exaggerated hysteria has simply made more people aware of a campaign that has been going on for a long time.
Most of us who are called that a term/have been called that term want a nuanced discussion about vaccines. For example, one that includes the recognition that a disease like mumps is an extremely mild childhood illness that confers lifelong immunity and, as some studies indicate, protection against ovarian cancer, and the vaccine offers notoriously short-lived protection that wears off right at the moment when young men are most vulnerable to complications that could impair their fertility. So, perhaps we should rethink including it in the mandatory vaccine program and save it only for those rare children with co-morbidities who would be vulnerable to complications of the disease. In medicine we always consider the severity of the disease, the risks both known and unknown of the treatment and whether there are better known, lower risk treatments. In the case of mumps the better treatment is called bed rest and liquids.
Most of us who are called that term were dutifully getting our vaccines when we or our children experienced an adverse event that irrevocably changed our lives. When we tried to bring it forward we were ridiculed, rejected and silenced. We've experienced doctors admitting in private that they think we were harmed by the vaccines but due to the weaponization of the language and the culture of retaliation when it comes to any critical thought about the vaccine program, they would never say so publicly.
Most of us have asked repeatedly for studies to determine who is genetically or metabolically vulnerable to vaccine injury so that we could create a screening program. The Institute of Medicine, despite the recommendation to do so by then head of the NIH, Bernadine Healy, decided against such investigation.
Covid hysteria has simply amplified and accelerated what was already a totalitarian medical culture wrapped in a spiral of silence when it comes to the shadows of vaccines and the vaccine program. All medical interventions have a shadow. It should signal a problem when discussion of that is verboten.
This was never about public health because 1:2 men 1:3 women get cancer and there is no move to stop production and dumping of millions of tons of known carcinogenic chemicals yearly. There is no concern for how many may be homeless or starve with loss of income from lockdowns. There is a single focus which is vaccines, pitched as the way back to normal, now obviously a subscription service for quarterly jabs and enrollment in a government tracking system that turns freedoms into privileges tied to ongoing compliance.
I’m willing to meet the half way. I’m anti-STUPID-vax.
I tried everything to get my youngest infected with chickenpox before he entered school. The risks of his catching chickenpox at age 30 due to waning effectiveness far, FAR outweigh the minor inconvenience of his getting the disease and recovering. Unfortunately I wasn’t successful in getting him infected and was forced to give him a completely unnecessary vaccine that puts his life in greater danger as he ages.
If that makes me “anti-vax” so be it.
At this point any time a liberal shrieks some intended insult at me I just smile and say “ok.” They all boil down to the same definition: someone who doesn’t agree with them.
You are either with us or you are with the terrorist, racist, fascist, white nationalist, anti-Semite, anti-vaxxers.
“ People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.” -Emma Goldman
I just watched a movie titled "The Forgotten Battle" about the battle in WW II in Zeeland, part of the Arnhem offensive. Several times in the movie characters are stopped at checkpoints in one of the towns occupied by the Nazis and they have to present their "papers" before proceeding. And it struck me immediately: This must be what it's like in New York City. We don't have to do that . . . yet . . . down here in Texas. Anyhoo, Seig Heil, ya'll and Happy Holidays to all you Greenwald readers from us down here in Austin, Texas (aka: San FranAustin, Texafornia)
Anti-vaxxer is a term coined by pharma, so we can start with that. I think your conception of the people raising concerns about vaccines could use some more nuance. There are people who believe most of the diseases we v against were going away before their v came into being. There are people who believe there's no way we need to jab babies twice as much as we did just a couple decades ago (and more than many other nations do). There are people whose babies and kids have been injured by v's sometimes permanently (many who've been paid compensation for these harms by the govt). There are people (and all of us should be in this category) who are concerned that the FDA, as a captured agency, is serving as a pharma promoter (just as they served as a biotech/GMO promoter) rather than a protector of public health. Finally, there are people (many of them) who had all other v's done for their kids, but looked at the fact that we're out of our depth on this technology, c doesn't pose an elevated risk to the young and healthy, the v doesn't do one of the main things it's supposed to, and have decided against it, for themselves and/or for their kids. All of these people, some of them overlapping and some of them not, fall into what pharma encourages us to call "anti-vaxxers." It's a convenient way to dispense with anyone who raises any question at all about the safety or prudence of individual v's or the v schedule as a whole (it must be the envy of every other industry that pharma was able to pull this off). This more nuanced reality has been well hidden, but every person who wakes up in the morning to find out they have been earned the anti-vaxxer label has an opportunity to say "Aha, so THIS is how this works." Like it or not, there are people who have labored for decades in the "health freedom" movement to ensure that the v's we give our kids are safe and necessary, and all they've received in return is a seemingly inexhaustible stream of contempt. That's on us.
The whole situation resembles a ticking time bomb. Is it possible the people pushing this agenda are unaware of how wrong this this? Threatening people with their livelihoods to coerce them into taking an experimental drug that goes against the Nuremberg Code. I'm attempting to find another word for this but, have to settle for ghastly. Will be interesting to see where this goes when the proverbial shit hits the fan.
Glenn, in addition to being great journalism every time you post another piece it illustrates just how few genuine journalists - as opposed to propagandists - are out there.
I never thought I would ever say this, but I agree with Jeremy Corbyn. I am that person who was vaccinated, at 64 years old, as soon I was eligible. And I'd encourage anyone over 60, or with higher risk factors, to get vaxed. But I strongly opposed mandates for all the reasons discussed in this article.
I especially agree that it is just plain wrong to force front line health care workers to be vaxed or be fired. These people risked their lives to care for the legions of serious Covid cases in the early days of the pandemic. To fire them now is immoral.
This essay also points to one of my pet peeves, the constantly shifting and twisting definitions of perfectly good English words from the mouths of the Woke and Left. To them I say: Get your own damned dictionary, and leave conventional dictionaries alone!
“metamorphized” is far too charitable. Metastasized is a better fit. It’s all black like cancer. And consumes everyone.
Finally Jeremy Corbyn has found his spine.
As an adult, I have a hard time understanding why any other adult would not take the vax for Covid. I did as soon as it was available to me. Got the 2nd dose on schedule. Got the booster as soon as soon as available.
All that said, my lack of understanding of someone else's decisions, particularly regarding bodily autonomy, is not only zero, it is irrelevant. I feel pretty comfortable in my vaxxed state. I do not suspect that some un-vaxxed person is going to expose me to a so-called breakthrough infection. But if I get a breakthrough, I am neither going to blame some anonymous - or even known - unvaxxed (or vaxxed) person for it nor am i going to piss and moan about the percentage of vaccines in the population at large. I will deal with it. I've protected myself as much as I think I can. I hate the masks, don't think they work unless you use surgical masks and toss them out every hour. But, yes, I tend to wear a cloth mask if asked.
It is a virus. A special kind of virus. It is entirely different from the things that cause a host of diseases we are all familiar with and for which vaccines are ACTUALLY EFFECTIVE. Small pox, polio, MMR, etc. SARS-CoV-2 is going to be - it already is - endemic. It is in the air, it is in the soil, it is in animals (call you local zoo). It is in deer, for god sake and those damn varmints eat my landscape. It will be around me for a long while. s
I have my own risk management approach. I can live with other folks having a different approach.
The newest word game is "fully vaccinated". When the vaccine first came out everyone needed 2 shots to be considered "fully vaxxed". Fauci is now hinting that soon "fully vaccinated" will mean 3 shots. The Pfizer CEO is already saying a 4th shot will be needed to protect against Omicron.