Take live-and-let-live approach on COVID shots

In response to a response from Dr. Lawrence Krabill (“Reject COVID conspiracy theories on vaccines, masks,” Oct. 10), I cannot attach an M.D. to my name, but I can lay out some information that may be disputed and some that cannot. 

The FDA certainly does approve treatments that have not undergone “extensive research” “before medications and procedures are approved,” the various vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 being foremost in our minds. They came out very quickly, so extensive testing was not carried out. The injections were given emergency use authorization after the FDA determined no other viable treatments were available. 

Many nations did use ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat people infected with COVID-19 and had positive results. These safe and helpful drugs have been around for decades. But there was no profit to be made for the pharmaceutical companies, so treatments that improved the bottom line were given EUA status after ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were deemed dangerous. Just recently, the FDA has said that ivermectin is OK as a COVID treatment. Flip-flop much? 

 A revealing article by Aaron Siri, a lawyer with an interest in vaccine efficacy, “Clinical Trial to License RotaTeq, Like Almost All Childhood Vaccines, Did Not Use a Placebo Control” lays out the case, based on FDA data, that most childhood vaccines now in use were not subject to “extensive research” before being authorized. Who knew that companies would place profits before safety? And that public servants at the FDA and other agencies funded to a degree by those same companies would green-light treatments that haven’t gone through placebo double-blind protocols.

A response to all the pronouncements dealing with climate change, dead whales from wind turbines in the ocean and chopped-up birds from turbines on land is to ask, “What is the ideal temperature for Earth? How is it that climate models, when fed historical data, never ‘predict’ what really occurred? Why are clouds not factored into climate prediction models? Why is the most powerful greenhouse gas, water vapor, ignored while carbon dioxide has been chosen as the villain in the natural phenomena known as climate change?”

There will have to be an agreement to disagree, but when one side or the other imposes its policy decisions on people, they should be able to say “No, thanks” to unproven treatments or silliness like masks.  People who are vaccine-hesitant have never wanted to forbid consenting adults from getting jabbed if they wished, although the same cannot be said about those on the other side.

Henry Whitley

Wilson