Getting the COVID vaccine – My Thoughts

vaccine
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Getting the COVID vaccine - My Thoughts

I wrote this on the day that I was scheduled to get the first shot.
 
I’m being forced to do something against my will, I’m being forced to have something injected into my body against my will. I’m being forced by the Federal Government to get the COVID-19 vaccine. When I was in the Marine Corps, I was forced several times to get injected with unknown chemicals (vaccines) and I had no recourse as I was a Marine and I had to do what I was told or face discipline. And the discipline for refusing something like a vaccine was most like some jail time and being discharged from the Armed Forces. Thanks to President Biden’s Executive Order 14042, which requires federal employees and contractors to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. And the punishment for not getting the jab is….. Wait for it……Employees who fail to comply with the requirement to be fully vaccinated or provide proof of vaccination and have neither received an exception nor have an exception request under consideration, are in violation of a lawful order. Employees who violate lawful orders are subject to discipline, up to and including termination or removal from federal service.
 
Now, I’m forced to make a choice! Do I get the jab or quit my job and look for a new one? What makes it worse, is that I’m less than 5 years from retirement and if I leave the Federal Government, then all that time I put in is lost and there goes my retirement. Right now, I’m going through a ton of personal issues and sadly I just don’t have the energy to fight, so, I broke down and scheduled the vaccine.
 
I don’t have aichmophobia or trypanophobia, in fact, needles don’t bother me at all, and I will even watch the injection. Hell, I have to give myself a weekly injection.
 
I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I believe that vaccines work, I just don’t believe that this one has been tested properly. A quick search will show that it usually takes 4-6 years to make an effective vaccine, but here we are, three companies in the US (dozens of others around the world), all managed to make an “effective” vaccine in under a year, but I move on, at least hear me out here.
 
This truly scares me on several levels. First I do not honestly believe that it is effective. You can show me any study you want, but the numbers just don’t support that. It is looking like 60% of those that are hospitalized are not fully vaccinated and 40% are fully vaccinated, so the vaccine just isn’t working as well as it should be. Sure maybe it is giving me a slight advantage, but for me, I feel that gambling on not getting exposed is just as effective. Let me explain my thought process here.
 
First, getting the vaccine is a personal choice and I will not knock you for getting it or not getting it, that is your choice. I’m being forced to get it in order to keep my job. If I wasn’t so close to retirement, I would quit and find a new place of employment, but I’m not in the right place in my life to do that. You can tell me that it is about public health and I will argue that with facts like, if it is about health, then why are we not requiring the illegals who came across the border to get it.? Why are we turning away organ transplants because the recipient isn’t vaccinated?
 
Second, I do agree that COVID-19, or SARS-CoV-2 is real, but it is not the worst thing we have encountered, and at least in its current mutations, it is not that deadly. Yes, people have died from COVID-19, but then again people have died from the vaccine. But the same argument could be made for influenza, where in the U.S. anywhere between 12,000-61,000 die annually. Looking at the 2017-2018 flu season, an estimated 45,000,000 U.S. residents caught the flu with 61,000 deaths. Those numbers are staggering. Now compare those numbers to COVID-19 in the U.S., where 44,505,919 cases (as of Oct 12, at 1600 – that 4:00 p.m.) were diagnosed with 714,808 deaths in the 2019-2021 (2-year) season.
 
You can argue all you want that those numbers are accurate, but we can also argue that the numbers of people actually dying from COVID are not accurate either. Most of the world’s tracking systems have reported that their numbers are not accurate and that there are many cases where someone was recorded as dying from COVID when they had other conditions which contributed to their death.  This type of reporting isn’t new, I have a moderate to severe case of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) along with some other health conditions, and when I die, it will likely be ruled as “from complications related to rheumatoid arthritis”. What that means is if I die from pneumonia, that will be related to my RA. But the problem with COVID is if you have COVID and you die in a car crash, there is a great likelihood that your death certificate will read that you died from complications related to SARS-CoV-2. Why is that you ask? The most logical reason is that you were admitted to the hospital because of the car accident, but you didn’t recover well and needed to be intubated, you developed pneumonia as a result of the COVID-19 infection and you died. But if you didn’t have the car accident, you would have likely survived your bout with COVID-19.
 
The recent passing of former Secretary of State Colin Powell was ruled as COVID-19 complications, even though he was 84 years old, fully vaccinated, and had battled Parkinson’s disease and multiple myeloma, cancer that impairs the body’s ability to fight infections.
 
Based on those numbers then COVID is certainly more deadly than the flu, but not nearly as contagious (again just looking at the numbers). We have NEVER forced the influenza vaccine on any citizen in the U.S. like we are for COVID-19. But let’s look at other facts for a second before I tell you why it scares me. In the US on average, 650,0000 people die annually from heart disease. We aren’t forcing any type of vaccine, any pill, or any test on U.S. citizens for heart disease. Around 600,000 die annually from Cancer and we haven’t had a war on cancer, hell, we can’t even stop smoking cigarettes that are proven to cause cancer. Hell, 36,000 people die annually from car accidents, and nothing has changed to save more lives there either.  And the saddest part is of the estimated 345,000 people that died from COVID in 2020, not all of them actually died from COVID. They may have been COVID-positive when they died, but they died from other causes, some totally unrelated to COVID. But this post isn’t politically driven, this post is about my fear of getting the vaccine.
 
As I already mentioned, I have underlying health conditions that are of no fault of my own. I have rheumatoid arthritis and Fibromyalgia and I take injections for the RA and medications for the Fibro. But both cause me to be immunocompromised, making it easier for me to get infections. So I may have to stop some of my medications in order to take the vaccine, that scares me. My medications are not just for pain, I take some that slow the progression of the disease, and I know stopping it for a few weeks, what damage could it do? Well, I could ask the same question, about taking the vaccine what good will it do? But I don’t want this post to be about debating things either. This post is strictly my opinion here. In my case, the RA is attacking my lungs and now possibly my heart (I find out more this week).
 
I have been coming to work since day one of all this, I didn’t get to telework for weeks or months at a time, I was onsite doing my job. I was putting my health at risk while others were in the safety of their homes (plus those of use that are compromised develop even fewer antibodies as those that are not). My point is that I was out and about being potentially exposed, I was touching the door knobs, and I was driving through three counties every day to get to work. Others were too scared to come on-site so I met them in parking lots to fix their laptop or give them supplies (what I often refer to as drug deals). I wore my silly little mask and I did as expected. I didn’t get a bonus or a stimulus for staying at home. I still had the same fuel expenses, the same everything, nothing changed for me. So unless you were in that boat, please don’t feel you have the right to “educate” me. I lost loved ones to COVID as well, I know it is real.
 
Alright, so I was potentially exposed. In December 2020, I was sent home three times in a row for being exposed to employees who came onsite and then tested positive. So for me, my thought process is that I’m gambling daily on not getting exposed, thus not getting sick. But with the vaccine, I’m guaranteeing myself to get the injection and get sick from it. And I have to deal with the second shot side-effect and a booster shot side effects.
 
I’m not a stranger to getting sick from injections either. In the Marine Corps, they would inject you with everything but motor oil all at the same time and then send you home (the Motor Oil is a joke people, just a joke). You would be sick as hell wishing you were dead as the vaccines attacked your immune system and your immune system did everything it could to fight it off and make antibodies. You would be freezing cold, shivering uncontrollably, and running a fever, as your body did what it had to do. Then there are all the rare side effects that people are getting. I already have my share of rare medical issues, I don’t want or need to collect anymore.
 
So tonight is my first injection, ugh, I’m not very happy about being forced to get it, period.
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Average Joe

Welcome to the Average Joe Weekly blog. This is basically my place on the web where I can help spread some of the knowledge that I have accumulated over the years. I served 10+ years in the Marine Corps on Active Duty, but that was some 25 years ago.

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By Average Joe

Welcome to the Average Joe Weekly blog. This is basically my place on the web where I can help spread some of the knowledge that I have accumulated over the years. I served 10+ years in the Marine Corps on Active Duty, but that was some 25 years ago.

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