Why the opposition to COVID-19 precautions?

I keep trying to understand the mindset of those who refuse to vaccinate, wear masks or take other precautions against the spread of the COVID-19 virus. We have all heard numerous arguments why those people object and even rail against any directive to protect themselves and others. Those arguments seem to fall into one of the following categories:

    • The disease is not real, or if it is, it’s not really serious.
    • The vaccines are created only for the profit of the pharmaceutical companies.
    • The vaccines have not been properly tested and may be more dangerous than the disease.
    • There are other, more effective methods and medications available.
    • The vaccines are used to embed microchips in people to enable the government to control them.
    • The vaccines were created by the government and the government is not to be trusted.
    • The directive to be vaccinated and/or take other precautions takes away my freedom.

Is it real? Last year (2020) the death rate in the U.S. increased approximately 20% and COVID-19 was the third leading cause (after heart disease and cancer). In 9 months it accounted for 377,000 (11% of the total) deaths1. Is that not real and is it not serious?

Now it’s certain that the pharmaceutical companies will profit handsomely from the pandemic, but is that a good reason to ignore the disease? One could just as easily argue that food producers profit from producing food, therefore one shouldn’t eat food. The argument simply makes no sense.

As for testing, the vaccines may not have been tested as thoroughly as the FDA would normally require, but they were all extensively tested prior to their release. Since their release, over 461 million doses have been administered and over 196 million people have been fully vaccinated. So if it wasn’t tested thoroughly before its release, it certainly has been thoroughly tested now. How much testing do you need?

Now there are some adverse effects reported to the CDC2. These include:

    • Death                                                                           10,1283                         .0022%
    • Anaphylaxis                                                                       <5 per million     .0005%
    • Myocarditis and pericarditis                                     1,949                          .0004%
    • Guillain-Barré Syndrome                                               268                         .00005%
    • Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome          56                         .00001%

But the risks of experiencing these adverse effects is so small compared to the risk of dying if you get the disease (2% or 1000 times the rate of death for those who are vaccinated).

Are there better, more effective methods to treat the disease? Among those recommended are

    • Herbal medications
    • Ivermectin
    • Hydroxychloroquinine
    • Chloroquinine phosphate

But none of these have proven more effective than the vaccines. What’s more, none have been tested for efficacy with COVID, so how is it that one can accept an unapproved and untested treatment for COVID while rejecting the vaccines because “they weren’t thoroughly tested”?

As for the government using the vaccines to embed microchips in people and/or the government isn’t trustworthy, I am not going to give those claims the dignity of a response.

As for taking away one’s freedom by requiring one to vaccinate, wear masks and take other precautions, I have to ask, where was that freedom granted? It’s not in our Constitution or in our laws. In fact, that “freedom” is implicitly denied by all the laws forbidding harming other people (assault, battery, murder, etc). After all, what difference does it make if a victim dies from a gunshot wound or from a contagious disease spread by someone who refused to take proper precautions? Here, the word “freedom” is one of those overtaxed words that has lost its true meaning and is nothing more than a worn out buzzword.

The simple fact is that there is no argument against vaccination, masking and contact avoidance as precautions to infection that holds water. All of these precautions have proven effective – not 100%, but enough to substantially reduce the spread of the disease. However, there is an even more compelling argument for them. The more people who take the necessary precautions, the fewer people remain to spread the disease. Each time it spreads, it reproduces and mutates — and with each mutation comes the probability it will mutate into something worse that cannot be treated4. The longer we allow the virus to exist, the more likely we will face something worse down the road.

Given the risks of not taking precautions against spreading the disease, why are we not mandating 100% vaccinations? When I was small, it was commonplace for people to be quarantined when infected with contagious diseases like mumps, measles, diphtheria and others, and no one argued about taking away their freedom. And it was enforced. If you were caught leaving the premises, you were bodily returned to the premises and fined. If you were a repeat offender, you risked jail time. What has changed since then? Why are so many people opposed to common sense? This is what I truly don’t understand.

1 Provisional Mortality Data – United States, 2020, CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

2 CDC report on Adverse Events Reported After COVID-19 Vaccination

3 This is a very conservative estimate as physicians are required to report deaths after receiving vaccinations without having to verify that the vaccine was the cause of death.

4 In the newly discovered omicron variant, it may already have mutated to something worse.