Describing people who decline the Covid-19 vaccines as anti-vaxxers is, at best, a misnomer or, at its worst, bigotry. It draws no distinction between those opposed to vaccines in general and those opposed to Covid vaccines.

Nevertheless, governments and the media use this descriptor to villainize those who suspect that these actors have less than good motives to justify destroying businesses, wiping out jobs, crippling the global supply chain, overseeing mounting collateral deaths, and suppressing civil, legal, and human rights—among other fallout from the effort to combat a bronchial virus with astonishingly high recovery rates and low mortality rates. Moreover, let’s not forget how these same efforts have led to massively expanding the command-and-control government.

Politics aside, vaccines are not equal. There are lots of important questions:

• How do the various coronavirus vaccines compare to other vaccines?
• How do these mRNA vaccines work and what is their impact on the body chemistry of those injected?
• Did these vaccines undergo the same testing procedures, protocols, animal testing, etc., that we’ve come to expect for drugs newly on the market?
• Did the vaccines receive standard FDA approval or approval under the Emergency Authorization Act?
• Are any other vaccines routinely given broad legal immunity as their financial incentives?
• What are the similarities or differences between the coronavirus and other viruses for which vaccines are designed to protect people from contagion?
• Can those vaccinated still contract Covid-19 or spread it to others?

Those that question or decline the Covid vaccine are, at the least, are told to ‘adult up’ or be fired. Perhaps the ‘adult up’ reprimand should apply to subjecting the Covid vaccine, or any medical treatment, to due diligence akin to the criteria mentioned above.

Make no mistake—people die from/with Covid. Regrettably, the distinction between dying from Covid versus with Covid is regrettably given scant consideration. In any case, death is death. Data from the World Life Expectancy website reports that almost 4.8 million people have died worldwide from Covid-19 (and over 212.5 million recovered) The world population is 7,734,093,280.

For context, if the global fatality was 1% that would mean around 77 million deaths.

Is the fact that deaths are substantially lower than 77 million suggest that it’s the Covid-19 vaccines’ efficacy at work or other factors?

Do complex issues such as this pandemic intertwined as it is politics, economics, civil/legal rights, mobility, etc. deserve thoughtful scrutiny?

To both questions, I would answer yes.

UPDATE: There was a typo listing the number of people who have recovered. We've since corrected it.

Image: Injecting the virus by Ivan Diaz. Unsplash license.

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