Here are easy answers to Jonathan Leroux’s disingenuous ‘vaccine questions’

To the Editor:

In response to Jonathan Leroux’s very disingenuous “vaccine questions to consider” letter, I suspect he meant to make statements since most of his questions are easily answered, and while telling us to do research, he has done none himself. He seems to want us to think we will never be immune or safe from evil big pharma and our government who just want to make money by putting our children in danger. I have done some quick research.

1. Will we need yearly shots? Yes, we may need shots every year much like we get yearly flu shots. Since this is a new virus that we haven’t seen before in humans we are still learning and only know for sure how long immunity lasts as we go along.

2. Why are cases spiking in highly vaccinated countries like Singapore? Singapore has had spikes of cases. The issue seems to be preschools and daycare where the children are too young to be vaccinated, migrant workers, and two recent clusters at nursing homes. The important thing to note with rising cases is, because of their vaccination rate, 98.7 percent of the cases are mild or asymptomatic thanks to the vaccine.

3. Why are your fears more important than mine? This question seems to be more Jonathan’s opinion is more important than anything else. My whole immediate family is vaccinated. We want to be safe ourselves but even if I don’t personally know vulnerable people I don’t want them to die. There are people who are in high-risk groups. the elderly, diabetic, HIV positive, immunocompromised, pregnant, I could go on but my point is my being vaccinated also protects them. I think saving lives should get priority.

4. Why are pharmaceutical companies not liable for adverse reactions? We asked pharmaceutical companies to come up with a vaccine as quickly as possible. They did that, and we are now giving it free to everyone. In exchange we have given them immunity as kind of an incentive for doing something good that we threw a lot of money at and begged them to do.

5. Concern about politicians holding pharmaceutical stock and pharma making money from the vaccine: this seems to be more of an opinion than something that can be researched. I am not going to research everyone’s stock holdings. Some people are probably making money off pharmaceutical stock. I’d be more worried about our representatives who invested in body bags and coffins than the ones who bet on vaccine success.

Pharmaceutical companies could be making much more money if they did this on their own and charged everyone for it. we are getting it for free. I’m going to go with maybe both. Here in America we live in a capitalist society. I know I expect to be paid for my work. Most people if they had worked around the clock for months to make a life saving vaccine might want some money for it. The vaccine has proven it’s safety.

6. Why are these specific groups exempt from the vaccine mandate? Biden’s mandate was issued in executive order form which only has jurisdiction over the executive branch. Congress is the legislative branch and he doesn’t have authority over them. Also the White House staff, health and human services, CDC and FDA are included in the mandate.

7. Why did Eric Rubin say we won’t know the vaccine is safe until we give it to children? Eric Rubin said that in relation to authorizing the emergency use of the vaccine for children 5-11. He also said it was a tougher decision than he expected and that the data shows the vaccine works and is pretty safe. He seemed a bit concerned about an unforeseen side effect but in the end voted to authorize it. He said if he had a child with certain conditions he would want the vaccine.

8. Why are we still studying the safety of the vaccine in children? Probably the same reason we examine statistics on a lot of things. As stated this is a brand new virus which we have never seen in humans before, we are learning as we go and probably want to make sure we are handling it as best we can and can tweak the response if something better comes along. We do this by doing studies and looking at the results.

There, I did my research.

Laura Rust

Sparta