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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

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The day after President Biden declared the end of the “pandemic,” we learned that in another illogical move, the administration still kept the vax requirement for travelers. And I had dinner with some neighborhood friends who made it through without vaccination, which came with plenty of challenges for us, but we made it. This is an account of three very different perspectives.

I was a bit taken aback at first, but once I had some time to reflect, I was not too concerned, knowing that I practice Whole Foods, Plant-based nutrition, and my immune system should be pretty robust. I have never taken a flu vaccine either, for I realized they are completely futile. By the time the lockdowns hit, I became somewhat concerned but remained skeptical. My first emotional reaction was the analogy with the German occupation of my native Holland in World War 2, flashbacks almost, although I was not there. I was born right after the war, but I grew up with endless stories of living under occupation, and books and movies were starting to be made, so there was imagery galore. It was a lockdown scenario, with curfews, windows blacked out against air raids, etc. Plus, my own father lived several years in hiding in the attic of my grandparents on my mother’s side.

Some friends were very concerned, and I recall discussions with one friend in particular, where I took a stab at some back-of-the-envelope actuarial analysis based on the reports from the Diamond Princess. My first observation was that I was more interested in the 83% who did not get infected than the 17% who did. I also took note of the fact that the average age among the passengers was quite high. In short, I intuited fairly quickly that there was a strong age-dependent aspect to the whole thing.

Soon after, the first report from John Ioannidis came to my attention, and I remember that reasoning it out this way calmed my friend down quite a bit. Soon I began to use the subway again, and the battlefront now became about the masks. Early on, I learned that if there even was an airborne virus, it was too small to be hindered by the masks, so once the initial shock wore off, I started to leave the mask off whenever I could. I noticed on the street being greeted by people, and I did not know who they were sometimes, and I had to really look twice to recognize them with their masks on.

In fairness, my skepticism about the vaccines was immediate, as I was raised by an MD father who was a vaccine skeptic, and I only ever took one childhood vaccine. Granted, a few years ago, I went to Angola, and the Yellow Fever was mandatory; plus, at that time, I followed my doctor’s recommendation on some other vaccinations that seemed reasonable. With what I know about vaccines today, I would either not take the trip, or I would at least avoid any vaccines other than the strictly mandatory ones.

Gradually, with intensive reading, I came to realize that there probably was no “novel coronavirus” anyway. The 83% on the Diamond Princess were the tipoff that this supposed virus could not be all that novel if 83% did not catch the infection in a confined environment. Even people sharing cabins where one got it, and the other did not, underline the notion that there was some level of immunity already.

In early ’21, I very deliberately decided to rely on my natural immunity, and overall good health. In March, I did contract “Covid,” and I memorialized it here. Mostly a nonevent, really. Just take care of yourself in a common sense way. Since then, my focus has been more on supporting people emotionally who decided to stay unvaxxed, for it was not easy. Curiously, in the large family of my girlfriend, we saw over the holidays that it was the medical people who refused, including retiring prematurely, but the vaccinated people had the most health problems. Meanwhile, the unvaccinated were fine. Even her own daughter accused her mother of throwing away her medical education. I have become fascinated by how different people came to their decision.

One of my friends wrote this:

The last three years weirdly feel like a blur.

Physically I am good, but mentally I have utilized so much energy trying to understand what happened.

The censorship and fear tactics that were used are historic.

I knew from the beginning I didn’t want to participate in taking any government-made substance. I prefer to stay away from drugs and utilize more natural products and herbs as preventive medicine.

I prayed every day, and every day, I knew I was doing the right thing for me.

What I learned from this historical event is sometimes you have to look evil in the eye and smile.

I smile every day now, knowing I did what was best for me.

And the other person reported it to me as follows:

He had a sort of a one-day flu in early 2020, and did not worry about it too much, for he was fine the next day. Months later, he learned of a loss of smell and taste as a presumed symptom of Covid-19, and this was confirmed with an antibody test. He did not have work commitments at the time that forced him to get vaccinated though somewhere along the way in ’21, he had an argument with his doctor, and declined the vaccine, because he figured he had natural immunity anyway, and he was on guard because it was all too rushed, and all the incentives and promotional efforts just did not sit right with him. There was also little or no health information, only crazy incentives, or mandates. He also began to see how there were such stark differences in testing policies from one jurisdiction to the next. It all did not add up to him.

Then, in the fall of ’21, someone in a black community group came to him with a notice from his employer about mandates, and the person did not want to get vaccinated. My friend googled lawyer, attorney, vaccine, job, mandate, and nothing came up, and he sensed something was rotten in the state of Denmark. He went on high alert, for normally you can find a lawyer for choking on chewing gum, or anything else.

Clearly, this friend also made it successfully to the other side of this vaccination campaign, without having to go along with the program, but the pressure in NYC has been extraordinary.

Since this dinner, I also became even more aware that the rates of vaccination in NYC are high, but that they show marked differences by borough, and if anything, Brooklyn leads the city in showing more capability for independent thought, with the Bronx only second, amazingly, Manhattan seems to have only sheep, reporting a 99% vaccination rate.

People are not going to be so happy to learn that being fully vaxxed knocks 25 years off your life expectancy, or the fact that (as per a study from the Cleveland Clinic) every booster increases your risk of infection further – negative efficacy at work. Maybe there is another ray of hope, at least as Dr. Peter McCullough reported recently on the Shannon Joy show, the national stats are 92% vaccinated, according to the CDC, but reportedly there is a lot of double counting, and in reality, some 25% of adults nationally remained unvaccinated. Who knows. Time will tell.

One thing is for sure, I had personally gotten the impression that in Brooklyn, significant numbers of people had stayed unvaccinated, so my own informal reporting lined up with the reports from the administration. All in all, the Bronx did not do too badly, but sadly, New York City overall had high vaccination rates; according to recent CDC data, Brooklyn and the Bronx were at 77% and 78%, respectively. Staten Island also, but both Manhattan and Queens had very high vax uptake. Manhattan is very high also on the boosters, at 48% as of 4/20, about double the rate of Brooklyn, Bronx, and Staten Island.

Certainly, the differences between the boroughs of New York City are pronounced enough that this should make a worthwhile study in its own rights. Nationally, it is interesting how the matter became politicized, which is the last thing we should want if this was about public health, but it seems that, in general, the blue areas have the highest vax rates. All of which aligns very well with the statistical findings of Prof. Denis Rancourt in Canada, which show that it was politics, and the differing public measures, not a virus, that determined the outcomes. In general, the worse the lockdowns, the worse the results, which only makes all the sense in the world, since the whole Covid regime was completely backward, and Sweden remains the poster child to show that less was more. At this stage, we can only hope that we will learn a lesson and that this level of mismanagement will not be repeated any time soon.

As the insane pressure wanes, you now start to hear the stories about the ones that are unvaccinated. To me, this is again comparable to the experience in Holland after the German occupation in 1945. After the liberation, first, you started finding out who was in the resistance or not, but a few years later, you knew that many of those stories were false, or at least exaggerated, for many people who had been collaborating with the German occupation now were eager to cover their tracks. If that pattern holds, soon, people will be bragging about how few shots they took, or maybe none at all. Meanwhile, for those of us who saw it coming, it is just sad that not more people listened. Much suffering could have been prevented.

  • Rogier Fentener van Vlissingen

    Rogier Fentener van Vlissingen is a Dutch native, living in America since 1979, in both Connecticut and New York. He has worked in international shipping and most recently he has mostly been involved in energy efficiency and retrofitting. He is also a co-founder of a biotech, BCM Industries, which develops autologous organ repair tissues, and also a line of revolutionary IT equipment, computers and storage appliances, running on live neurons. He is an eager student of business, literature, history and spiritual traditions. He also teaches whole foods, plant-based nutrition and cooking. He published his first book in Holland in 1973. In 2007, Rogier published the book Closing the Circle: The Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles. He blogs about energy retrofitting, energy finance, spirituality and whole-foods, plant-based nutrition and healthcare.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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Indrek Sarapuu
Indrek Sarapuu
6 months ago

Nicely written!
I too, was reticent in taking the vaccines.
In early 2020, when EUA was announced, I just said no.
At the same time I adopted Dr. Zelenko’s protocol, and have taken it daily since:
No colds/flu/Covid.
Anti-masker as well.
I guess my immune system works…

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