The Plain Truth About Vaccines

By Michael J. Talmo September 28, 2025 (Published in Transcend Media Service)

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? This has been the contentious and controversial question for over three hundred years. Since COVID-19, that question has intensified. In my case, I’m not anti-vaccine. I’m anti-unnecessary vaccine. I’m anti-compulsory vaccine. I’m anti-toxic and deadly vaccine.

That said, it’s important to understand that I’m not stating my opinion in the area of vaccines. What I’m doing is reporting on what the actual scientific data shows. It’s the data that matters, not opinion. I’m not looking to get an emotional reaction. My purpose is to educate and inform. Corrupt politicians and other dishonest types appeal to people’s emotional reactions, which are influenced by social conditioning. This type of con job is known as the appeal to emotion fallacy, which is designed to win an argument by “eliciting an emotional reaction rather than presenting factual evidence or logical reasoning to support the conclusion.”

Most people don’t research a topic; they just react emotionally instead of looking at the data. That’s mainly what we have in government: people reacting emotionally. The vast majority of Politicians don’t know the science behind vaccines. They just spout rhetoric. Each side, Democrat and Republican, has its talking points. But science isn’t a talking point.

What the consensus says

The overwhelming majority of scientists state that vaccines are safe and effective. That’s the medical consensus. But exactly who or what is this consensus? As explained here, “it’s what the weight of the evidence in a field suggests is most likely true” and “is essential for progress and informed decision- making. Public health authorities draw on scientific consensus to make decisions about how to prevent people from getting sick and how to treat diseases.”

In other words, a scientific consensus isn’t doctors, nurses, politicians, or government bureaucrats. These are the people who follow the consensus. The consensus is the scientists (some are also medical doctors) who do the actual research and provide the results or data. But here’s the problem. A consensus is only reliable if it’s honest and objective. What if it’s a corrupt consensus? The academic and scientific literature has long been reporting on how unreliable and corrupt medical science has become.

Here are but a few examples:

The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2013, Abstract:

“The pharmaceutical industry has corrupted the practice of medicine through its influence over what drugs are developed, how they are tested, and how medical knowledge is created. Since 1906, heavy commercial influence has compromised congressional legislation to protect the public from unsafe drugs…increased hospitalizations and deaths have resulted.”

BMJ (British Medical Journal) 2008 report:

The proliferating connections between doctors and the drug industry have brought the credibility of clinical medicine to an unprecedented crisis…the game is clear: to get as close as possible to universal prescribing of a drug by manipulating evidence and withholding data.”

Emory Law (Emory University School of Law) 2018 essay:

Pages 123-124: “Today, the pharmaceutical industry contributes heavily to the FDA’s annual budget…With huge profits and thousands of paid lobbyists, Big Pharma often gains leverage in how legislation is crafted and/or abandoned.” Page 128: “Given its mega profits, Big Pharma has become known for its ability to wield political and social influence over its stakeholders, including the federal government and its agencies, healthcare systems, insurance firms, medical practitioners and administrators, hospitals, and consumers.”

Kamran Abbassi, MD, Executive Editor of the BMJ 2020:

“Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health…The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency…Globally, people, policies, and procurement are being corrupted by political and commercial agendas…Politicization of science was enthusiastically deployed by some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators, and is now regrettably commonplace in democracies. The medical-political complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandize and enrich those in power…When good science is suppressed, people die.”

As a result, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, reported in 2015:

“Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analysis, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”

Since meta-analyses and systematic reviews that include poor, untrue, inaccurate studies aren’t reliable, we can’t trust a lot of what is being said about vaccines. And as reported in the peer-reviewed journal Science, fraud isn’t just a problem in the area of vaccines. However, don’t misunderstand me. Science still works. The scientific method works. Peer review works. Even in a corrupt environment, all of these things still work.

Where do we go from here?

If we can’t trust the medical consensus, we can still apply some logic and critical thinking skills even if we aren’t experts. What I’ve learned is that if a medical agenda is being promoted by the government and the scientific community and anyone who disagrees with them is branded a crank, a science denier, or a conspiracy theorist, see if the other side of the issue was published in the academic and scientific literature. If it isn’t, then the probability is very high that their denunciations are justified because there are quacks, cranks, science deniers, and deluded people who believe shit that just isn’t true. But if there is any truth in what the other side is saying, it will be in the scientific literature somewhere.

For example, I doubt if you will find anything in reputable, legitimate peer-reviewed scientific journals about the Earth being flat or about the theory of evolution being incorrect.

A big red flag to watch out for is if the government and the scientific community are using force to promote a medical agenda. If they have to force you to do something and claim it’s for your own good, I have found that it just about always isn’t true.

Dr. Paul Offit, MD, is a member of the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and a co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine. In this interview that was aired on The Highwire (see The Jaxen Report 30.25 minute mark), Dr. Offit explained the difference between being a scientist and being a salesman. When on TV:

“you have to have this unified front, because when you show that you’re in any sense questioning it, that it looks bad, but it’s the only way science works… To get the best data, you constantly question the quality and validity and robustness and internal consistency of data. That’s how it works… Our training as scientists is the opposite of the training for being a science communicator. I mean, to be a good scientist, you never go beyond the data in front of you…”

What the scientific data shows

A 2022 study conducted by a research team at the University of Maryland School of Medicine reported that since 2020, COVID vaccines have prevented 3 million deaths and 18 million hospitalizations in the US. Sounds impressive, but here’s the problem: this study, along with other studies like the 2024 study published in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Health Forum, is a computer model. As I reported in previous articles, computer models are highly inaccurate and don’t count as scientific evidence. They aren’t proof of anything as documented here and here.

In contrast, data from the real world paints a very different picture. Graphs published in Our World in Data (OWID) clearly show that cases and deaths for some of the infectious diseases that we vaccinate people for in the U.S. were sharply declining before the vaccines were introduced. For example, vaccination for measles began in 1963. But as these two 1919-2022 OWID graphs show, case numbers started to decline in 1959, and deaths started to dramatically decline in 1939. Vaccines for polio were developed between the mid-1950s and early 1960s. But as this 1910-2022 OWID graph shows, case numbers and deaths decreased dramatically before the vaccines were introduced (move the arrow from your computer mouse along the lines on the graphs, and each year will come up). Incidentally, a primary donor that funds Our World in Data is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

As the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) admits, by 1900 many of the infectious diseases in the U.S. that killed large numbers of people began to decline because of improvements in public sanitation, personal and medical hygiene, animal and pest control, and providing clean drinking water at the local, state, and federal levels. Some vaccines were introduced prior to and during the time these public health measures started having a beneficial effect, so it’s difficult to tell what difference, if any, some, but not all, early vaccines made.

A big problem with any vaccine can be human error. For example, in 1955, over 200,000 children received a defective Salk polio vaccine. As explained here, traditional “vaccines contain weakened inactive parts of a particular organism (antigen) that triggers an immune response within the body.” Or they “contain weakened or reconstituted virus or bacteria as a whole.” But the Salk vaccine wasn’t properly deactivated by Cutter Laboratories, so the aforementioned children were exposed to an active polio virus, which resulted in 10 deaths and 40,000 cases of polio. 200 children wound up with varying degrees of paralysis.

But even without human error, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) website declares that “no medical product is 100 percent safe or effective.” The CDC website repeatedly states under every regularly recommended vaccine: “As with any medicine, there is a very remote chance of a vaccine causing a severe allergic reaction, other serious injury, or death.”

But are the chances “remote,” as the CDC claims? A 2017 study published in eBioMedicine, a sister publication of The Lancet, reported that in 1981, 3-5-month-old children in the West African country Guinea-Bissau who received the DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis) vaccine and the OPV (oral polio) vaccine had a mortality rate that “was 5 times higher” than in young children who had not been vaccinated. The study further stated (see Conclusions):

“All currently available evidence suggests the DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis. Though a vaccine protects children against the target disease it may simultaneously increase susceptibility to unrelated infections.”

And what of the COVID shots? Is there any truth to the claim that some vaccine batches are more toxic than others? The answer is a resounding yes.

In 2023, the European Parliament reported on a study from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark that found “there may be differences between batches of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Following analysis of the 579 deaths and 14,509 severe adverse effects” between December 27, 2020, and January 11, 2022. They “concluded that some of the 52 batches distributed in Denmark seem to have had significantly more side effects than others.”

In 2023, the BMJ investigated the US’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) regarding the mRNA COVID vaccines and found it to be understaffed and dysfunctional. The BMJ further reported that while “other countries have acknowledged deaths ‘likely’ or ‘probably’ related to mRNA vaccination, whereas the CDC, which says it has reviewed nearly 20,000 reports (far more than other countries) hasn’t acknowledged a single death linked to mRNA vaccine.”

And keep in mind that in spite of the VAERS statistics for COVID vaccines as of 8/29/25: 38,241 deaths, 72,839 permanent disabilities, and 1,405 birth defects, a 2007-2010 study by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute found (see page 6) that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.”

Unlike standard vaccines, mRNA COVID vaccines instruct your cells to make a protein they call a “spike protein” that’s supposedly found on the outside of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Your body’s immune system, seeing this spike protein as a threat, will create antibodies and other defenses to neutralize it.

mRNA research goes back decades. But the first mRNA vaccine tested on humans in a clinical trial didn’t occur until 2013. It wasn’t until December 2019 that mRNA vaccines were allowed to be used on the general public due to COVID-19. But as the BMJ reported, the clinical trials for the COVID shots were poorly done. The sample groups were too small, and not enough elderly people (the most at risk) and minorities were included. The trials only assessed how effective the vaccines would be for mild symptoms rather than severe illness and death and didn’t evaluate if they prevented someone from getting COVID-19, which they don’t, including the other types of COVID vaccines.

Former White House COVID response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx admitted in this 2022 interview that she knew “these vaccines were not going to protect against infection” and further stated, “I think we overplayed the vaccines.” Nevertheless, talking heads in the media and government officials, including then-President Biden, assured us that the vaccines would prevent people from getting COVID-19. These assertions turned out to be wrong, and a lot of them, including President Biden, wound up getting COVID-19 after being vaccinated, as reported in this compilation. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the pandemic czar himself, got COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated and boosted twice.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the mRNA COVID shots, the first and most widely used vaccines, are gene therapy, which can alter a person’s genes. Despite years of denial and articles like this one, a 2023 study published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences clearly states (see Abstract):

“The mode of action of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines should classify them as gene therapy products…incompletely studied due to their classification as vaccines, raises safety issues. Post marketing studies have shown that mRNA passes into breast milk and could have adverse effects on breast-fed babies…passage into sperm, embryo/fetal and perinatal toxicity, genotoxicity and tumorigenicity should be studied in light of the adverse events reported…”

Pay particular attention to the word “genotoxicity” in the aforementioned quote. As explained in this 2017 review published in the Journal of Translational Medicine:

“Genotoxicity refers to the ability of harmful substances to damage genetic information in cells. Being exposed to chemical and biological agents can result in biologic instabilities and/or epigenetic alterations, which translate into a variety of diseases, cancer included.”

“Moderna, Inc. acknowledged (section 2.3) in its Q2 2020 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that ‘currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA.”

If the COVID shots were properly classified as gene therapy, they would be subject to stricter approval requirements. The public would also be a whole lot less willing to take them. Stefan Oelrich, president of Bayer AG Pharmaceuticals Division in Berlin, Germany, admitted this at the World Health Summit in October 2021:

“Ultimately, the mRNA vaccines are an example for that cell and gene therapy. I always like to say, if we had surveyed two years ago in the public, would you be willing to take gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body? We would have probably had a 95% refusal rate.”

Does forcing people to get vaccinated violate The Nuremberg Code, which prohibits medically experimenting on people without their consent? In my opinion, yes. But no nation has ever signed onto it. However, “informed consent” is universally accepted and has been codified under international law via Article 7 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It has been binding on the US via ratified treaty since 1992, which, under Article VI of the US Constitution, makes it, like all ratified treaties, “the supreme Law of the Land.”

Article 7 states:

“In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.”

However, Article 12, section 3, provides a way for governments to weasel out of Article 7:

“The above mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others.”

On a similar note, the FDA website on EUAs (Emergency Use Authorization) declares:

“FDA must ensure that recipients of the vaccine under an EUA are informed…of the known and potential benefits and risks, the extent to which such benefits and risks are unknown, that they have the option to accept or refuse the vaccine, and of any available alternatives to the product.”

Notice that the aforementioned declaration says nothing about what will happen if you refuse. And we know what happened. Many people were punished for refusing, as in losing their jobs, not being allowed to travel, not being allowed to go to restaurants and other public places, etc. But the Nuremberg Code is crystal clear about the right to refuse:

“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.”

A 1997 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine was equally clear:

“researchers must refuse to conduct experiments on human beings when ordered by the state in order ‘to save lives,’ because in such cases subjects would not be volunteers.”

And what of the belief/claim that MMR (Measles-Mumps-Rubella) vaccines cause autism? This began with a study led by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that was published in The Lancet in 1998. Twelve years later, The Lancet retracted the study. There were a number of reasons why the retraction took so long: widespread media attention and public concerns about the MMR vaccine, validating the claims in the study took time, and legal and ethical complications regarding Wakefield, to name some. But in this case, I think The Lancet made the correct decision for the following reasons.

First, by no stretch of the imagination do I have the expertise to evaluate linking the MMR vaccine to autism. That’s way above my pay grade. All I can do is look at some general facts that make me strongly doubt the connection. For starters, there were only 12 children in the Wakefield study. That’s just too small a sample to draw any strong conclusions from.

Another reason is, as explained by Johns Hopkins University, the definition of autism, or more accurately, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), has greatly expanded since the early 2000s, and it now includes separate conditions like Asperger’s Syndrome. Increased awareness and screenings for it have also led to the explosion in cases.

Another factor to consider is that while children get two doses of the MMR vaccine between one and six years of age, which is the same age range they are diagnosed with autism, correlation doesn’t prove causation. You have to prove causation with definitive studies. And oddly enough, no such studies have appeared in a reputable peer-reviewed journal since the Wakefield study. If there was such a connection, it would have appeared elsewhere in the scientific literature by now. Instead, all we have are numerous studies showing that the MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism. Unfortunately, the scientific literature does show that vaccines in general can cause a whole lot of other problems.

As reported in this comprehensive history of vaccinations, the number of vaccines given to children over the years increased from four in the late 1940s to five in the 1950s, part of my childhood time era, to eight in the late 1960s. Since the mid-1980s, the number of vaccines has skyrocketed. Children can now “receive as many as 27 shots by 2 years of age and up to six shots in a single visit.” And while “Historically, vaccines were deemed to be ‘only for children.’ However, vaccines for adults are becoming increasingly common.” But is turning all of us into human pincushions really a good thing?

A 1999 study published in the BMJ warned that the “public should be told that vaccines may have long term adverse effects.” Diabetes is among those adverse effects. Quote:

“diabetes induced by vaccine should not be considered a rare potential adverse event. The incidence of many other chronic immunological diseases, including asthma, allergies, and immune mediated cancers, has risen rapidly and may also be linked to immunisation.”

A 2017 study in the Journal of Translational Science compared the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated US children between the ages of six and twelve.

Page 1: “U.S. children receive up to 48 doses of vaccines for 14 diseases from birth to age six years, a figure that has steadily increased since the 1950s.”

Page 8: “vaccinated children were significantly less likely than the unvaccinated to have had chickenpox and pertussis but, contrary to expectation, were significantly more likely to have been diagnosed with otitis media, pneumonia, allergic rhinitis, eczema, and NDD. The vaccinated were also more likely to have used antibiotics, allergy and fever medications; to have been fitted with ventilation ear tubes; visited a doctor for a health issue in the previous year, and been hospitalized.”

Bottom line: vaccines are a multi-bladed sword. Some might save your life. Some might not harm you at all, and some could injure you, permanently disable you, and even kill you. Therefore, no one should ever be forced to take them. And to those naive souls who think President Donald Trump is going to drain this medical swamp, my advice is: don’t hold your breath.

MAHA won’t make America healthy again

In 2024 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ran for president. Realizing he couldn’t win, he abandoned this ambition and endorsed Donald Trump in exchange for a job in his administration if he won the election. Unfortunately for all of us, Trump did win and made RFK Jr. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Trump and RFK Jr. claim that they want to “make America healthy again,” MAHA for short. Yet, all they have done is talk, as reported here. Talk is cheap, and bullshit walks, folks. And talk about hypocrisy, the hatchet job to the federal government by DOGE, the non-agency headed by Trump’s former crony Elon Musk, plus the enactment of his One Big Horrible Bill will cut healthcare and food programs for millions of Americans. The University of Pennsylvania reported this could lead to 51,000 unnecessary deaths each year. Doesn’t sound very healthy for America to me.

And what about the COVID shots? For years Trump bragged about launching Operation Warp Speed, which got the shots out in record time. A lot of people naively thought he was walking back on that position by bringing RFK, Jr. into his administration. Not so. Neither Trump nor RFK Jr. is taking them off the market. People can still get them as reported here. Trump’s administration, which includes RFK, Jr., “has quietly endorsed research into mRNA treatments for cancer and genetic disorders.”

Florida pulled a similar stunt when the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, announced an end to mandatory vaccinations for schoolchildren. We later found out that the measure won’t take effect for 90 days and only applies to some, not all, vaccine mandates.

In my opinion, Trump doesn’t care about people’s health. He doesn’t care if the COVID shots work or if they are harmful. And there is no evidence for his claim that Tylenol causes autism, as reported in the peer-reviewed journal Nature. All Trump cares about is staying in power. He knows that his popularity is in the toilet and getting worse, so he’s telling his base what they want to hear. Trump is part of the deep state and won’t take on the huge pharmaceutical companies. And since RFK, Jr., is now also part of the deep state, he won’t either. Don’t be fooled by his new vaccine advisory panel, ACIP, and other manifestations of saber-rattling. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Nothing will come of it. In fact, right after the September ACIP meeting, Trump told reporters that “he was a proponent of Covid vaccination,” that he “had the vaccine” and “was very happy with it,” and that he made Kennedy Jr. HHS secretary because he wanted someone in his administration that had “opposite views.” (NOTE: on October 10, 2025, Trump got a COVID booster shot during his second annual check-up at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, reported by NBC News)

Bottom line: RFK Jr. will do whatever Trump wants him to do. He will be whatever Trump wants him to be. For example, as reported by Time Magazine, prior to working for Trump, RFK Jr. had long been for legalized abortion. But now he’s against legalized abortion even though pregnant women in states that enacted abortion bans are twice as likely to die. But it doesn’t matter to RFK Jr., who declared, “I serve at the pleasure of the President.” Apparently, making America healthy again doesn’t apply to pregnant women.

And let us also not forget that Kennedy Jr. has now endorsed the MMR vaccine, which he has spoken out against for years. This, of course, angered a huge number of his supporters. To quote RFK Jr., “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” Get the picture? Need I say more?

Simply stated: don’t confuse the past with the present. For years RFK Jr. was a powerful liberal voice of reason on a lot of issues. As a lawyer and environmental activist, he has done some great work over the years, as reported here and here. And many of the things he’s saying as the head of HHS are true: his opposition to fluoride in our drinking water due to its toxicity and damage to human health is correct as reported in the scientific literature here and here, while it has only a modest, if any, effect on tooth decay; numerous double-blind, placebo-controlled studies on nutritional supplements and alternative “therapies have shown remarkable success in treating diseases.” That’s the tragedy of it all. In selling his soul to the devil of right-wing Fascism, it will no longer matter what he says because he will forever be associated with Trump.

An even worse possibility is that anyone who promotes and practices alternative healthcare will be unjustly dismissed as a crank or a quack by associating them with Trump and RFK Jr. This just might be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sad legacy. And if this possibility becomes reality, which I hope it doesn’t, it will mean, in my opinion, that RFK Jr. will have done more damage to the alternative healthcare movement than anyone else in modern history.

Closing thoughts

Who am I that you should believe me? I don’t have an M.D. or a PhD, so you shouldn’t automatically believe me. But you also shouldn’t automatically believe someone even if they have an M.D. or a PhD due to the corruption I reported on earlier, but also due to personal bias because experts are human too. All of them aren’t corrupt. But they are vulnerable to the same flawed thinking patterns as the rest of us. This is why expert opinion is the weakest form of scientific evidence. As shown here, it’s at the bottom of this
evidence pyramid (by ResearchGate and J-F Roulette—no changes made).

Obviously, none of us can be experts in everything because we can’t possibly know everything. For example, my former mechanic and close friend for almost forty years is an expert on car repair, and he’s honest, but many auto repair shops aren’t. I moved hundreds of miles away from him, so I can’t bring my car to him anymore. Back in the 1970s I used to change my own oil and even replaced a radiator and a windshield wiper motor in one of my cars. But that in no way, shape, or form makes me an expert. I’m not a mechanic, so I have no way of knowing if an auto repair shop is telling me the truth when something goes wrong with my car. So, to protect myself in this area, I go to a couple of other shops for a second and third opinion and also consult my mechanic friend.

But for things that have a huge impact on one’s life and the world in general, I think it’s important to acquire some expertise and to set certain guidelines for one’s safety. A big one for me is protecting our right to bodily autonomy. If you don’t have the right to control your own body and decide what does and doesn’t go into it, then you aren’t free. You are the property of the government, whatever company you work for, and whoever else is allowed to decide how you participate in society. This is why I’m pro-choice when it comes to abortion and when it comes to vaccination, because no one has the right to use another person’s body to keep themselves alive.

In the case of abortion, it doesn’t matter whether or not the unborn fetus is a person. I personally don’t consider it a person. But even if I did, my position would remain the same. Forcing a woman to give birth is extending special rights to a fetus by allowing it to use her body to keep itself alive. To the best of my knowledge, there is no law on the books anywhere in the world that requires a parent to donate one of their organs to save their already born child’s life, so why extend that requirement to someone who isn’t even born yet?

And if life is so precious to the womb police, why are they against welfare, school lunch programs, universal healthcare, and sex education in our schools? A lot of these characters even want to ban birth control. George Carlin (1937-2008) did an excellent job calling out the hypocrisy of the so-called pro-life crowd in this 1996 comedy monologue.

As for vaccinations, my position on bodily autonomy has nothing to do with whether or not vaccines work. For example, even if the COVID shots worked, I still wouldn’t support forcing people to take them. However, I might advise them to take them. But forcing me or anyone else to take them is an attempt to use our bodies to prevent others from getting a disease that might kill them. In other words, forced vaccination is another attempt to use other people’s bodies to keep others alive.

The core ideology for mandatory vaccination is communitarianism, the belief that the collective society is more important than the individual and that you have to give up your natural inalienable rights for some greater good or higher purpose. But let’s face reality, people. We live in a complex technological society. We have an interdependence on each other. So, it’s in my interest, and it’s my obligation via taxation, to help pay for schools, scientific research, healthcare, public services like the fire department and post office, and to help those in need in order to build and maintain our infrastructure so we can all enjoy a decent standard of living. The federal and state governments have a right to a percentage of my money in order to do the aforementioned things. But they have no right to any part of my body.

What many people don’t understand, be they liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans, religious or secular, is that our legal system is based on precedent, or stare decisis, which is Latin for “to stand by that which is decided.” When you give the government the power to do something, it will expand that power in ways you hadn’t planned on.

Example: when President Obama sold out to the for-profit health insurance industry and gave us the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) instead of a single-payer universal healthcare system. His supporters argued that since Americans are forced to buy car insurance, it’s just peachy okay to force them to buy junk health insurance.

Example: when I wrote an article on abortion rights back in 1983, I got literature from a major anti-abortion organization. Included in their literature was a list of rebuttals to common arguments in favor of legalized abortion. One of them addressed the “a woman has the right to control her own body” argument. Their rebuttal was that a woman doesn’t have the right to control her own body, such as laws against prostitution and public nudity.

Example: The overturn of Roe v. Wade led to the passage of more and more draconian laws to prohibit abortions. As reported here, here, here, and in this study, these idiotic laws have led to the deaths of scores of pregnant women and infants.

Example: Vaccination mandates for school children, for people who work in pharmacies, and for paramedics led to trying to mandate vaccination for all of us due to COVID-19.

This is how oppressive precedents work, folks. Give tyranny an inch and it will take a mile. This is why it’s
too dangerous to give governments or businesses the power to decide what we wear, what we think, who we love and who we marry, what we choose to read, see, and hear, what makes us happy, and what we choose or do not choose to put into our bodies. These choices are no one’s business but our own. This is why the inalienable right to control one’s body must apply to abortion as well as vaccination, or it means nothing. When it comes to bodily autonomy, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.