COVID VACCINE - The Megathread

Would you get the Pfizer vaccine if it were available to you?


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ffemt8978

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from the article:
Sounds serious
oh wait...
that means, you have a 0.00076923076% chance of being affected by this, with 0.0000076923076% having a fatal reaction.

To put this in perspective, 150 people die every year from Tylenol, and research found that there were 12.7 events per 1,000 person-years among those who took aspirin. but I don't see anyone advocating for the removal of tylenol and aspirin from the shelves.
You're right, but are we going to ignore the cumulative risks as more and more are discovered? Each individual issue with the vaccines so far has had a very low risk associated with it, but we're ignoring the fact that quantity has a quality of its own. Or do we keep dismissing each individual issue as a minor low risk problem until it's too late?

As far as your Tylenol and aspirin analogy goes, I'm not aware of any employers mandating that you take them or lose your job, nor am I aware of any restrictions in public that apply to those who don't take them and those who do. If we're going to treat Covid and it's vaccines as different than other vaccines, then we need to stick with it being different than other meds.
 

DrParasite

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You're right, but are we going to ignore the cumulative risks as more and more are discovered? Each individual issue with the vaccines so far has had a very low risk associated with it, but we're ignoring the fact that quantity has a quality of its own. Or do we keep dismissing each individual issue as a minor low risk problem until it's too late?
absolutely not... every drug has risks and side effects, with the vast majority being minor.

but the number of lives saved by the vaccine does outweigh those that died.
As far as your Tylenol and aspirin analogy goes, I'm not aware of any employers mandating that you take them or lose your job, nor am I aware of any restrictions in public that apply to those who don't take them and those who do. If we're going to treat Covid and it's vaccines as different than other vaccines, then we need to stick with it being different than other meds.
That's a fair point... know any hospitals that mandate flu shots?

But I do think the benefits do outweigh the risks
 

ffemt8978

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absolutely not... every drug has risks and side effects, with the vast majority being minor.

but the number of lives saved by the vaccine does outweigh those that died.

That's a fair point... know any hospitals that mandate flu shots?

But I do think the benefits do outweigh the risks
I agree that *at this time* the benefits outweigh the risks. I'm concerned about what we're going to do when and if that balance shifts the other way. I'm concerned that these particular vaccines haven't been around long enough to determine if they have more serious long term effects. How many drugs have gone through the full length testing and approval process and years later they are connected to previously unknown side effects? I'm concerned that we're ignoring that possibility in an effort to push this vaccine.

What I'm most concerned about is what we'll do when the next pandemic inevitably hits, now that we've established a new base line in our response.
 

mgr22

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I agree that *at this time* the benefits outweigh the risks. I'm concerned about what we're going to do when and if that balance shifts the other way. I'm concerned that these particular vaccines haven't been around long enough to determine if they have more serious long term effects. How many drugs have gone through the full length testing and approval process and years later they are connected to previously unknown side effects? I'm concerned that we're ignoring that possibility in an effort to push this vaccine.

What I'm most concerned about is what we'll do when the next pandemic inevitably hits, now that we've established a new base line in our response.
Since the mid-50s, there haven't been many issues with vaccines. Here's a link to an article with specifics:

 

ffemt8978

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MackTheKnife

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from the article:
Sounds serious
oh wait...
that means, you have a 0.00076923076% chance of being affected by this, with 0.0000076923076% having a fatal reaction.

To put this in perspective, 150 people die every year from Tylenol, and research found that there were 12.7 events per 1,000 person-years among those who took aspirin. but I don't see anyone advocating for the removal of tylenol and aspirin from the shelves.

To put this into perspective, the incidence of Guillian-Barre Syndrome in J&J-vaccinated patients is FIVE TIMES HIGHER than in the normal population. And yes, all drugs and vaccines have risks to varying degrees. BTW, I'm not saying J&J shouldn't be used. Just a point in deciding which of the 3 vaccines to choose. Such as Pfizer has a 30mcg dose while Moderna uses a 100mcg dose. Should one choose the higher dose despite relatively equal efficacy versus the lower dose? Or vice versa?
 

mgr22

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How many of those vaccines had a shortened testing and approval process like the Covid vaccines?
I don't know, but does it matter? We're talking about lots of time and lots of recipients -- i.e., actual use of those vaccines and the opportunity to observe side effects over many years would have been pretty much the same as extensive testing.
 

DrParasite

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Since the mid-50s, there haven't been many issues with vaccines. Here's a link to an article with specifics:

yeah, but do you think we can trust the author? ;)

this is another graphic (from April) where lists risk of all the covid vaccines

 

Summit

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How many of those vaccines had a shortened testing and approval process like the Covid vaccines?
No vaccine in human history prior to COVID has had the scrutiny and close study with the best knowledge that we have placed onto COVID vaccines.

The testing was NOT rushed. Shortening is not rushing or unsafe. Why is that?

1. The parts of the testing that were cut out were not safety oriented, they were testing regimes that pharma usually does to see if the vaccine is likely to work well enough to pour in more money. In this case the gov said "here is some $ so you don't have to worry about the $."

2. The reason things went fast is most vaccine test regimes are longer than would otherwise be required because it takes that long to reach primary endpoints in the study (ie enough of the study group gets infected), and as it turns out during a pandemic, that doesn't take as long.

Vaccine hesitant folks have this idea that in the 1950s or 1960s we were doing so much more testing with vaccines that we didn't do here. Vaccine hesitant folks also usually assume we had as much understanding then as we do now, but we didn't. We knew so much less back then, had far less diagnostic capability to work up cases and AE, didn't look at things like asymptomatic infection and transmission in Phase III data, and Phase IV (we are in IV) was not technologically enabled by VAERS and VSAFE.

The RARE Adverse Effects (AE) we are now finding are NOT because the testing timeframe of safety studies was too short. It wasn't. These rare AEs are short term onset (days to weeks) which is what virtually every vaccine AE ever has ever been (and when we see delayed AE from vaccine they are related to the short term AE). The reason we are finding rare AE now is that nobody does a Phase III trial with 1 million participants needed to see a rare AE with certainty. The COVID vaccine Phase III trials were huge with 30K or 60K participants!

Now we have given 10s or 100s of millions of doses of each vaccine in the US. So we are finding AE that are occurring in the 1 in 100K or 1 in 1M ranges of AE.

Why is that enough? Because if you are trying to make a vaccine, you are making it for something that is dangerous enough that you power your Phase III to detect rates of serious AE several order of magnitude lower than the risk of the disease the vaccine targets.

You could literally kill 1 in 10K vaccine recipients and still have the vaccine be a very good idea against a disease that kills more than 1 in 100. We would have seen that signal in Phase III. Happily, it appears the vaccines kill less than 1 in 1M. Your chances of being struck by lightening are higher. (I'm going outside, how about you?)

You're right, but are we going to ignore the cumulative risks as more and more are discovered? Each individual issue with the vaccines so far has had a very low risk associated with it, but we're ignoring the fact that quantity has a quality of its own. Or do we keep dismissing each individual issue as a minor low risk problem until it's too late?
Too late for what???? Nobody dismisses that individual bad outcomes are bad for those individuals. This is risk versus benefit!

Let me tell you the quality of the quantity of cumulative rare AE discovered: SUPER LOW compared to the vaccine's benefit.

We are discovering things that happen to around 1 in 100K people or fewer. So if we discover 20 of those rare AE, then you might have enough things happening that it would have been a safety signal in the Phase III data.

And if you did discover 20 of them, would that be enough to say "vaccine bad?" Nope. Why not? Here's why:

1. The overall risk from COVID is much much higher than than for the rare AEs being identified, even in populations at lower risk for COVID complications.
2. The specific vaccine AEs identified are also caused by COVID at a rate many (many!) times higher than the vaccine (such as myocarditis, blood clots, and GBS).
Myocardial complications occur in more than 1 in 100 COVID cases. The number one cause of myocarditis is viral infection, and the same for GBS.
3. COVID is pandemic and likely to become endemic.

Vaccines are never zero risk. We do stop giving them though when the risk outweighs the benefits. When have we seen that?

1. Smallpox!
That vaccine gave people myocarditis, even killed people. But Smallpox was horrible. We eradicated it (except for some samples at CDC Atlanta and Biopreparat Kolstovo (and whoever the Soviets slipped it to?). So, we stopped giving Smallpox vaccine to the public because the benefit was zero and the risk remained.

2. Polio!
Polio is horrible. We have riskier Oral Attenuated Vaccine OAV that works better and longer but with higher AE, and we Inactivated (injected) Polio Vaccine IPV with lower AE. In countries where Polio is endemic or importation risk is high, they give OAV because the benefit is worth the risk. In countries where Polio is eradicated (USA) and importation risk is low, we give IPV.
 
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ffemt8978

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No vaccine in human history prior to COVID has had the scrutiny and close study with the best knowledge that we have placed onto COVID vaccines.

The testing was NOT rushed. Shortening is not rushing or unsafe. Why is that?

1. The parts of the testing that were cut out were not safety oriented, they were testing regimes that pharma usually does to see if the vaccine is likely to work well enough to pour in more money. In this case the gov said "here is some $ so you don't have to worry about the $."

2. The reason things went fast is most vaccine test regimes are longer than would otherwise be required because it takes that long to reach primary endpoints in the study (ie enough of the study group gets infected), and as it turns out during a pandemic, that doesn't take as long.

Vaccine hesitant folks have this idea that in the 1950s or 1960s we were doing so much more testing with vaccines that we didn't do here. Vaccine hesitant folks also usually assume we had as much understanding then as we do now, but we didn't. We knew so much less back then, had far less diagnostic capability to work up cases and AE, didn't look at things like asymptomatic infection and transmission in Phase III data, and Phase IV (we are in IV) was not technologically enabled by VAERS and VSAFE.

The RARE Adverse Effects (AE) we are now finding are NOT because the testing timeframe of safety studies was too short. It wasn't. These rare AEs are short term onset (days to weeks) which is what virtually every vaccine AE ever has ever been (and when we see delayed AE from vaccine they are related to the short term AE). The reason we are finding rare AE now is that nobody does a Phase III trial with 1 million participants needed to see a rare AE with certainty. The COVID vaccine Phase III trials were huge with 30K or 60K participants!

Now we have given 10s or 100s of millions of doses of each vaccine in the US. So we are finding AE that are occurring in the 1 in 100K or 1 in 1M ranges of AE.

Why is that enough? Because if you are trying to make a vaccine, you are making it for something that is dangerous enough that you power your Phase III to detect rates of serious AE several order of magnitude lower than the risk of the disease the vaccine targets.

You could literally kill 1 in 10K vaccine recipients and still have the vaccine be a very good idea against a disease that kills more than 1 in 100. We would have seen that signal in Phase III. Happily, it appears the vaccines kill less than 1 in 1M. Your chances of being struck by lightening are higher. (I'm going outside, how about you?)


Too late for what???? Nobody dismisses that individual bad outcomes are bad for those individuals. This is risk versus benefit!

Let me tell you the quality of the quantity of cumulative rare AE discovered: SUPER LOW compared to the vaccine's benefit.

We are discovering things that happen to around 1 in 100K people or fewer. So if we discover 20 of those rare AE, then you might have enough things happening that it would have been a safety signal in the Phase III data.

And if you did discover 20 of them, would that be enough to say "vaccine bad?" Nope. Why not? Here's why:

1. The overall risk from COVID is much much higher than than for the rare AEs being identified, even in populations at lower risk for COVID complications.
2. The specific vaccine AEs identified are also caused by COVID at a rate many (many!) times higher than the vaccine (such as myocarditis, blood clots, and GBS).
Myocardial complications occur in more than 1 in 100 COVID cases. The number one cause of myocarditis is viral infection, and the same for GBS.
3. COVID is pandemic and likely to become endemic.

Vaccines are never zero risk. We do stop giving them though when the risk outweighs the benefits. When have we seen that?

1. Smallpox!
That vaccine gave people myocarditis, even killed people. But Smallpox was horrible. We eradicated it (except for some samples at CDC Atlanta and Biopreparat Kolstovo (and whoever the Soviets slipped it to?). So, we stopped giving Smallpox vaccine to the public because the benefit was zero and the risk remained.

2. Polio!
Polio is horrible. We have riskier Oral Attenuated Vaccine OAV that works better and longer but with higher AE, and we Inactivated (injected) Polio Vaccine IPV with lower AE. In countries where Polio is endemic or importation risk is high, they give OAV because the benefit is worth the risk. In countries where Polio is eradicated (USA) and importation risk is low, we give IPV.
Thank you for proving my point about dismissing each individual risk as a low probability while ignoring the question of how each low risk adds to the total. I never said the vaccine wasn't worth the risk compared to the benefits it provides, but at the same time I am not dismissing those risks with tropes about being struck by lightning. I am asking what do we do if the vaccine risks become more than the benefit and where do we draw the line? Especially considering mRNA vaccines are now being tested for use against other diseases like Alzheimer's.
 

DrParasite

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Thank you for proving my point about dismissing each individual risk as a low probability while ignoring the question of how each low risk adds to the total. I never said the vaccine wasn't worth the risk compared to the benefits it provides, but at the same time I am not dismissing those risks with tropes about being struck by lightning. I am asking what do we do if the vaccine risks become more than the benefit and where do we draw the line? Especially considering mRNA vaccines are now being tested for use against other diseases like Alzheimer's.
You know what? I see your point, but you have an issue seeing the forest for the trees.

Every year, 32,000 people are killed in MVAs. That works out to about 87 per day. along with 2 million injuries.

your article says "100 people developing the syndrome after receiving the one-dose vaccine. Almost all of were hospitalized and one person died, the FDA said." even if the issues you reported were 10 times as bad, you wouldn't even come close to the effects of MVAs, yet, I don't hear anyone saying we should ban cars, nor does anyone take a person seriously who refuses to get into a vehicle because of the risk of death or injuries.

Everything has risk. life has risk. eating food has risks, and every 5 days a child dies from choking on food. You can't avoid it, but you can manage it, and take steps to mitigate it.

Does it suck when you happen to be the unlucky person that gets the 1 in a million fatal side effect? sure, but that doesn't mean you were wrong to get the vaccine. the risk, even the cumulative risk of all the side effects, of taking the vaccine is still better than dealing with catching an infectious virus that has permanent and long term side effects for those who are infected.
 

ffemt8978

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You know what? I see your point, but you have an issue seeing the forest for the trees.

Every year, 32,000 people are killed in MVAs. That works out to about 87 per day. along with 2 million injuries.

your article says "100 people developing the syndrome after receiving the one-dose vaccine. Almost all of were hospitalized and one person died, the FDA said." even if the issues you reported were 10 times as bad, you wouldn't even come close to the effects of MVAs, yet, I don't hear anyone saying we should ban cars, nor does anyone take a person seriously who refuses to get into a vehicle because of the risk of death or injuries.

Everything has risk. life has risk. eating food has risks, and every 5 days a child dies from choking on food. You can't avoid it, but you can manage it, and take steps to mitigate it.

Does it suck when you happen to be the unlucky person that gets the 1 in a million fatal side effect? sure, but that doesn't mean you were wrong to get the vaccine. the risk, even the cumulative risk of all the side effects, of taking the vaccine is still better than dealing with catching an infectious virus that has permanent and long term side effects for those who are infected.
Have I said anything about what I believe about this vaccine, or have I been asking questions to get us thinking about how to answer some of these issues before they become a problem? Too often I see people dismiss concerns with the vaccine with the response of Covid is worse and the side effects are very low risk.

But here you go:

Yes, it sucks if you are one of the people who develop an adverse side effect from the vaccine. Yes, people should still get vaccinated. Yes, there are risks associated with everything in life.

If we're going to use the reward is greater than the risks arguments to convince people to get vaccinated, we need to do a better job of explaining why and not dismiss them with generic responses. Especially when it comes to a vaccine where not getting it may cost someone their job because their employer has decided everyone must be vaccinated.

There's a reason I appreciate @Summit 's, yours and a few other members responses. They provide factual objective evidence of why this vaccine is important, and by posting those responses here I hope that somebody may find this thread on their favorite search engine and learn something...maybe even convince them to get vaccinated.
 

Summit

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I thought I addressed the exact points asked, but they are being asked again. Let me try again again a different way:
  • We care about what happens to individual if they have the vaccine.
  • We care about what happens to individuals if they have COVID.

We have to balance those:
  1. If you have serious vaccine AE that occur at a rate many times (or orders of magnitude) less often than serious outcomes of the disease targeted by the vaccine, and the disease is pandemic/endemic, then the vaccine benefit of disease prevention outweighs the risk
  2. You can analyze whole population risk/benefit and realize bonus benefit by high vaccination rates having a population benefit greater than the sum of the individual benefits due to herd immunity, prevention of breakdown of societal systems, and reduction of costly public health interventions.
  3. You can also risk/benefit stratify to subpopulations and this can be more individual focused in recommendations.

Let's look at young versus old subpopulations:
You could ignore the transmission caused by these sub-populations (secondary whole population risk) and just look at outcomes. Actually let's just look at ONE outcome, a sub-set of serious COVID, hospitalization. We won't count the folks on outpatient oxygen, dexamethasone, and monoclonal antibody therapy. Let's say you have a 14mo COVID hospitalization incidence for 18-29 yo of 226/100K vs 1703/100K for 65+ (these are actual US stats). Those are hospitalizations normalized to population (rather than all COVID cases, for simplicity's sake, though we know most of the population hasn't had COVID).

NNT vs NNH
If you wanted to do some simple ballpark math, you calc number needed to treat (NNT) vs number needed to harm (NNH). If we have 99% Ve for reduction of COVID hospitalization, you calc NNT: you need to vaccinate about 60 people in the 65+ range to prevent 1 hospitalization over that timeframe all else being equal. NNT for 18-29 y/o is 445 vaccinations to prevent one hospitalization due to COVID. If you add together to get the CUMULATIVE rate of ALL reported serious AE in vaccine recipients (minus the background rate in the population) then you get the NNH. This is simplified math only looking at a narrow set of outcomes, but you can see the point I think.

So when do we not recommend the vaccine?
I
f you only cared about serious outcomes, if you are hospitalizing significantly less than NNT of 1 in 445 18-29 year old vaccine recipients due to vaccine AE (and we are hospitalizing WAY WAY WAY less than that), then you are preventing more serious outcomes due to COVID than you are causing with the vaccine, and you keep recommending the vaccine. Discovering another 1 in a million AE sucks for that one in a million person, but it doesn't change the best recommendations to individuals unless we discern a significant identifiable risk factor for the AE.

Individuals do matter!
We care about individual bad outcomes both from COVID and vaccine, but we cannot know individuals' specific outcomes ahead of time. We have to make recommendations for the whole population, subpopulations, and individuals with the best data and consideration for each. Right now, it is clearly in favor of getting the vaccine for all but a small minority of eligible people.
 

dutemplar

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OK, it’s months late but Ive been super busy, distracted and not paying attention to some threads. Both my wife and I took the Pfizer (free). After the first one, I wanted to rip my arm off and beat the person who have the shot to me with it. Second, no problem. Mild general ache but meh. Wife had mild general malaise and general ache but meh.

i’m 50, smoked cigars since Somalia and had a mild MI in ‘18. Wife 48, HTN. Two 18 month old boys, so didn’t hesitate. I was holding an epipen, but hey….
 

CarSevenFour

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Please site you sources for this claim that is not on a anti-vax website. I’ll wait
Glad you waited. Check the VAERS stats, and add anywhere from 10 to 100% to the listed numbers. Adverse reactions to the Covid-19 (or any other vaccine) cases tend to be greatly underreported to VAERS simply because of the way it is set up and the voluntary nature of reporting. I could send you to Mike Adams' Natural News site but since it doesn't support your POV, there's nothing there for you, but the TRUTH. But do visit his extensive site and get an alternative view that contradicts the official narrative. Adams started out with Covid-19 coverage from the POV of one who really believed that Covid was real and he projected mass death based on the medical reporting he was seeing. He changed his point of view quickly when his research turned up many unanswered questions about the veracity of the federal, state, and local government Covid reports.

I've seen the aftermath of the VAX and it isn't pretty. Neighbors (2), relatives (at least 3) who are suffering serious side effects of the jab. A very close relative, a healthy vibrant woman I've known for 30 years, is suffering from a sudden onset of what sounds like pericarditis. She is healthy and showed absolutely no cardiac symptoms until after taking the jab. Another relative just died from a CVA directly attributed to the Covid-19 vaccine. Sudden onset, a healthy young individual, he was required by his job to be vaccinated. He thought he was doing the right thing and officially died of complications from the vaccine. I realize these are just personal instances, but that's an awful lot of people adversely affected by the vaccine in just one guy's life and a small circle of family, friends, and acquaintances. Just looking at people I know, or know of, negatively affected by the jab got me to thinking that never before have I seen this many people that I know having adverse effects from ANY vaccine. I've been following mass vaccination campaigns since I was a child when Polio reared its ugly head in the 1950s on our elementary school grounds. This whole thing with Covid-19 strikes me as unique and full of government and official medical-political disinformation.

So believe what you want, just inform yourself, and don't rely on the "experts" that the government fronts on the nightly news as "authorities." Look into Dr. Fauci's smarmy history, his government-granted patents, and exactly how much dough he is making off the Covid vaccines. His relationships with the Communist Chinese in gain of function research is nothing short of chilling. Check out the excellent investigative work Polly St. George (Amazing Polly) in Canada is doing to expose the serious failings of the medical industry, and it is a failure of competence and truth, a money-making enterprise that only cares about death and disability to make a buck, lots of bucks. Another researcher, and ex-Emergency Room physician, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, DO, AOBEM(95-06), AOBNMM, ABIHM, is a vaccine researcher with excellent knowledge on the subject. Finally, if you want a professional journalist's take on the subjects of vaccines, Covid, and government cover-ups, Charyl Atkisson (late of CBS News), has an excellent website with real news. Or you could go to a pro-vax site (because anti-vax is verboten to you) and simply reinforce what you already believe. Follow any of these alternative sites and researchers and you will find a rabbit hole that goes deep.

What got me to question the ethics of the medical profession was a curbside interview with a couple of NYC-EMS paramedics sitting in their rig. They were asked by the cameraman how bad it was inside the NYC hospital because the nightly news said the ER and nursing floors were inundated with Covid-19 patients and were near the breaking point. The ambulance driver stated, "Aw, it's packed in there..." The cameraman got inside and filmed a vastly different scenario than that painted by EMS, an empty hospital with no patients in the ER or on the floors. This was repeated by citizen videographer-journalists in Southern California (Los Angeles), and London, England with the same results: empty hospitals because people were advised to "stay away" so they wouldn't add to the overwhelming workload of the "Heroic Frontline Workers."

As for the paramedics' evaluation of the non-existent situation inside a hospital they were just leaving, it makes me wonder about EMS' role in the great Covid-19 untruth.

The easiest lie to believe is the Big Lie--coming from "reliable sources" Research like your life depends on the results.
Please site you sources for this claim that is not on a anti-vax website. I’ll wait
 

Fezman92

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I was talking to a guy who said he isn’t getting it because he doesn’t trust any kind of vaccine since he believes that he autism and ADHD were caused by vaccines.
 

DrParasite

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I was talking to a guy who said he isn’t getting it because he doesn’t trust any kind of vaccine since he believes that he autism and ADHD were caused by vaccines.
I would ask that guy if he would rather be dead from whatever he could be vaccinated against, or have autism and/or ADHD? My son has autism... Even though there is no proven connection between Autism / ADHD and vaccines, I would much rather me and/or my loved one be diagnosed with Autism than be dead.
 
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