Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Roald Dahl’s Message to Anti-vaccination Groups
“Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ I asked her.
‘I feel all sleepy,’ she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was…in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her. On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles.
…I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG’, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.”
– Roald Dahl, 1986
Published in General
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.
The FDA is clearly a joke.
I thought this was a center right site. Anti vaxx is a thing of the left.
Was Trump a bad guy in this?
I think it’s been explained to you, more than once, why people who may be wary/skeptical/whatever of the covid “jab” in particular, aren’t the same as “anti-vaxx.”
You got to that quickly!
They just listen to voices from the same source and repeat lies like it experimental.
Well, maybe if you had an explanation for how a “vaccine” that has existed for less than a year is not “experimental,” you might convince some people.
That the technology may have existed for longer, isn’t the point. That would be like claiming that random-mushroom soup can’t be dangerous, because soup has existed for centuries or millennia.
You are wrong. You don’t know what you are talking about.
I have talked to experts I trust. They actually know.
We’ll see. Maybe they know less than you – and they – think. Either way though, nobody has any business expecting government to require that people get any kind of medical treatment they don’t want.
Gosh. Have I argued for that with this vax?
Please show where I have. I’ll wait.
Reading problems again? Did I claim that YOU believe that? No, I didn’t.
To me this statement sounds like tacit approval of gain of function research. Also, there may be compelling health reasons for some to take the vaccine, but Good Samaritan viewpoints shared by others on this thread as a motivating factor for taking the jab(s) is misguided in my view.
I was unaware that I had to swear to agree with the CDC in order to join this site. Toby Young and James Dellingpole may not be to everyone’s taste, but James is not getting the jab and Toby is anti lockdowns. Both are conservatives who are against vaccine passports.
Neither my wife nor I are getting the jab. I’ve gotten flu shots in the past, but the jab has more risks than rewards in my situation. You may disagree. As a guest on the Delingpod said a few months ago, people with high risk profiles should be encouraged to get it. There should be no pressure put on people with low risk profiles. And they’re a lot of people with low risk profiles including children and young adults.
I have no idea how you interpreted my comment as approval of GOFR. I believe what the CCP did/does is wicked. Neither do I think people should get vaccinated for the sake of others. Don’t do it for me, that’s for sure.
mRNA immunology has been studied for decades as a potential treatment for cancer. It happens to work for vaccines too. I believe to our benefit, but you should absolutely be free to reject the vaccine for whatever reasons you deem fit.
James and Toby have both already had WuFlu. Reason enough to reject the vaccine (although I think James is kind of nutty about it), but obviously everyone’s situation is unique. I agree, almost no one under 40 should bother getting vaccinated. My own kids are exceptions because of their health conditions and both have been vaccinated. Again, everyone needs to do their own assessment on risks/benefits.
People who have cancer obviously have one heckuva “co-morbidity.” They can and do often receive treatments that nobody would begin to suggest for a person who doesn’t have cancer. They can be almost as bad as the cancer itself. Plenty of reason to suspect that such treatments are “overkill” in less-serious situations.
That’s definitely true of chemotherapy, which my daughter has had twice (for non-cancerous tumors). But, mRNA technology is not like chemotherapy.
Ricochet member, Mendel, was on the development team I believe (and has been absent from R> for a while as far as I know, probably due to the hostility exhibited to the vaccine developers here). He once explained they believe mRNA vaccines to be safer than live- or attenuated-virus vaccines. But, he doesn’t seem to be around to explain it to the skeptics anymore and I’m certainly not qualified.
I don’t think anyone has been criticizing the developers, at least it doesn’t seem that way to me. I don’t think anyone criticizes developers of chemotherapy either, but if someone suggested that children should be given preventive/prophylactic chemotherapy I would be in favor of them being “tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail.”
Oh, AND “the horse they rode in on.”
Little story I did not want to tell. A close relative’s kids were having trouble with allergies and she couldn’t figure it out. My wife suggested a dietary change that worked for us. The relative rejected it out of hand.
Why?
Most likely because she didn’t want to feel like she’d made a wrong decision. She had let her kids consume this thing, probably encouraged it, and didn’t want to consider the possibility she’d made a wrong decision that affected her kids’ health.
Now, how would you feel if a decision you made was made out to be questionable? I would probably dig in for a while and defend the decision before giving anything else consideration.
Eight years later, the close relative made the dietary change for her kids. Their troubles quickly disappeared. Eight years of stacks of prescriptions, etc.
Folks, it is fine if you’re vaccinated, and fine if you’re not. What is most important is you have the opportunity to decide. If you’re unable to handle contradictory reasoning, well, I’d give it some thought and ask myself why.
Eventually I would, anyway. Hopefully faster than eight years.
He does have a patent relating to mRNA vaccines, which support his claim. Either way, Malone never claimed to invent either of the currently authorized Covid mRNA vaccines.
The friends I have in the field agree with this.
Right. OK. Let me be ,ore clear.
Thr FDA approval process is a shining example of government incompetence. What is amazing to me is a bevy of conservatives now being upset that Trump cut red tape to get something to market and use. He pushed against the swamp to make it happen. I thought we liked that sort of thing. It is the opposite of swearing fealty to government.
This is what you said.
If you are not making thst claim against me, what is that statement doing in your response, exactly?
Again with the comparison between the vaccine and chemo. Do you not see how this is exaggerated and someone with experience with chemo in children might see it as, um, unreasonable? If not outright irrational?
People in this thread implied that vaccine developers might have worked in someway with GOFR in China so as to enrich themselves by providing “the cure.” That Big Pharma doesn’t even mind if people get sick because they get rich from treating problems they might have in some way helped to cause. It might even have been you! But, I’m not going back through comments to find out. And I wouldn’t blame Mendel and others working in the field for throwing up their hands and walking away from such bad faith suggestions.
As someone with loads of experience with pharma and our medical system, I’m grateful for what our imperfect, but top-notch system is able to do. I’m not obsequious, though. I also know (maybe better than most) that medicine is often more art than science (“let’s try this and see if it works. . .”). But, this system has helped keep my family alive and functioning at a higher level than we otherwise would without the interventions of our medical industry.
I’m not against cutting bureaucracy. But that doesn’t mean that a product produced by cutting bureaucracy is to be used on all people. I never criticized Trump for this. There are nuances here which you’re missing.
We have data on people that were vaccinated 6 months ago, and the history of older vaccines shows that effects showing up after 2 months are extremely rare.
As with all of these anecdotal reports of side effects you have to show that this happens with the vaccine more commonly that it would by chance before you can say it’s a real concern. Restarting menstruation does happen.
How long would we have to wait, and how many more people would have to die, before such criteria were satisfied? When the vaccines came out in January we were seeing 4,000 COVID deaths a day in the US. Now we’re down to 150 or so a day. I’d say that looks like a success.
Going by antibody titers, the immunity from vaccines is actually better than that from natural infection. I’m not sure it makes a practical difference, though.
I’ve got to call bull on that one.
Going back to the earlier point. Without doing the numbers I think that even with no comorbidities people are at greater risk of a bad outcome if they get infected than they would be with vaccination. Again by orders of magnitude.
Right. I also dont recall anyone here criticizing President Trump for getting this done. Also, just because the FDA isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it doesn’t serve a useful role or that that trials and testing requirements are just so much red tape instead of legitimate concerns to be addressed.
Why is there this drive to “simplify” the issue this way? Its really unhelpful, especially since it isn’t close to an accurate summation of the arguments being made here.
Here’s an interesting Twitter thread asserting that vaccines were oversold.
Can you say more about how this occurs?
My understanding is that because of lockdowns people weren’t exposed to the usual amount of viruses etc, so when they were eventually out of lockdown and exposed, they got sicker.
My daughter in law was recently hospitalized with RSV – her doc said the amount of cases were unusually high. I don’t know if that’s true
Ironically her husband (son #3) tested positive for Covid and barely had the sniffles.
Really? How many mRNA “vaccines” have been used in the past, to have this 2- months experience from?