To the Editor:
I would like to address the man from Franklin. The point of my previous letter was not to wade into the vaccine debate and do everyone’s research, but to point out that Jonathan Leroux was disingenuous in his easily answered questions. He told us to do the research while repeating tweets and talking points without fact checking. I did not do an impressive amount of research. I actually did very little, which was my point.
Question #4 seemed to concern Franklin man the most. At the beginning of the pandemic our government created Operation Warp Speed. This distributed $10 billion to various companies with the specific intent to fast-track a vaccine for Covid. It was acknowledged that this was not going to be done through normal procedures and companies were given immunity in this special emergency case. I am not giving an opinion on this. The question was asked why they have immunity. This is the answer.
Franklin man seems to think I somehow have decided this means everyone should have immunity for anything they do. His straw man bungee jumping example bears no resemblance to the reality of the Covid situation but, using his scenario, let’s say the only reason the bungee chords are there is because the school was on fire and the administration gave various bungee chord companies money to make chords to save the children, then determined that once a year they would practice in case of fire, and schools (lets say with a student body of 80,000) that did this lost one child in the next fire, while schools that bet on their kids being fireproof lost 13,000 in the next fire. And because they were asked to do this on an emergency basis they were not held liable for the one death.
In regards to vaccine safety over 477 million shots have been given in the U.S. and the highest fatality number I could find is in Sue C. Speck’s response of 17,604. VAERS reports 14,506, but health care providers are required to report a death after a vaccine whether or not it was related to the vaccine so the number is actually much lower than that. Consider also, if you are vaccinated and get Covid your chances of dying are one in 80,000 versus one in 68 if you’re unvaccinated. Do you know what has killed more people? At the moment 49.8 million Americans have had Covid and 795,000 have died.
As for the FOIA request, that did not hit the news until after my letter, so if you want my opinion now, yes it seems dubious.
He then lists a bunch of whataboutisms he won’t get into. I will not address all of them but as to questions #2 and #7 my intent was not to give a comprehensive analysis. I found where the Covid spikes were coming from in Singapore and I gave more context for Dr. Rubin’s remarks. Anyone can look up his full response which is too long to print here but is more nuanced than Mr. Leroux indicated.
Lastly I want to point out how averages work. Franklin man states the average death age of Covid is the average life span of a human. My favorite example is: If five nuns are feeding a roomful of 130 homeless people and Bill Gates walks into the room the average net worth of the people in the room is one billion dollars. Covid disproportionately kills older people, that doesn’t mean it only kills older people and even if it did I’m sure there are many people who think sacrificing their parents and grandparents is not a good strategy.
I only answered Mr. Leroux’s questions because it was very simple and took little time. I am not going to address Sue C. Speck’s letter. It is so full of misinformation I can’t even. I know people will want to now ask what about this and what about that but I am now done answering questions.
Laura Rust
Sparta