Editor,

I have so many questions and concerns about what is going on in the world with COVID.  It is one big mess in the world, and a mess in my head, and I thought maybe somebody might feel the same out there, so I just wanted to share my thoughts so you know you are not alone.  Follow me on this journey of my thoughts, hold on, you might get a little dizzy. 
 
In one of my incarnations in this life I was a Medical Assistant, and people would come in all the time screaming, “What is my provider doing to me, are they trying to kill me, just look at this list of side effects!”  Question 1: Where exactly did those people go?  The patients actually had conditions requiring the use of medications to keep the condition manageable.  Some of these same people, not all, are fighting FOR vaccine mandates and now they are saying, “Don’t question the science!!!!”.  How can people swing to such extremes?  Now riddle me this Batman: 2) If one is not willing to take medications, change their diet, and exercise for conditions like Type II Diabetes, Obesity, Hypertension, & High Cholesterol (basically Metabolic Syndrome, which is a lifestyle choice leading to chronic diseases), then why and how exactly do you think you can mandate a vaccine?  3) If you start mandating vaccines now, what are you gonna mandate later after you have already set the precedent for medical mandates?  4) If Israel is leading the world in COVID vaccinations, then how is it the COVID capital of the world?  5) What science data points are you using to mandate vaccinations, and why ignore Israel (that’s a significant data point)?  6) Why Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, what about people who have AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, Sinopharm, or people who want the US based Novavax vaccinations which are supposed to drop in the 4th Quarter 2021?

I had to take a step back and actually look at the science, because I am feeling a bit like I am living in Animal Farm.  I was taught back in the day (it was just after the dinosaurs, right when mammals started to roam, old but not that old) to always look it up, verify, find it for yourself.  Just because someone says, “Follow the science”, or “Science is Real” doesn’t mean they are to be blindly believed.  I was taught you should not just indiscriminately accept what they are saying, to go look it up, verify. and, what they (the infamous they, oooooh they really know how to mess things up) are saying now does not jive with my memories of high school biology, and my college biology.  Again like I said Animal Farm.

I digress, I was talking about science.  Let’s build a small case for the mighty might of the tiny microbe.  Bacteria have been growing steadily virulent, we as a society have been using and abusing penicillin since 1928.  This has been a recognized problem in the field of healthcare for a long time, as is discussed in the 2015 Pharmacy & Therapeutics (P&T) journal article The Antibiotic Crisis by C. Lee Ventola, MS (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/pdf/ptj4004277.pdf).  When penicillin is over prescribed, or you do not take all of your penicillin as prescribed the bacteria that survives mutates and becomes more virulent.  This leads to things like penicillin resistant Gonorrhea, MRSA, &/or penicillin resistant Tuberculosis, just to name a few.  Now let’s examine virulent viruses.  Oh…………. let’s take AIDS/HIV since Gen X, the Boomers, the Silent Generation, and the Great Generation will definitely remember the panic that swept the nation in the 1980’s and 1990’s.  This is a virus that at the time was considered a death sentence.  A patient with HIV now in 2021 takes an antiviral medication cocktail of like four or five medications which disrupts the replication of the virus in different areas of the replication process, it’s not something you want but it is manageable if you contract it.  This cocktail stops the virus from replicating in the body, it needs to be taken consistently and in the manner prescribed to prevent the virus from replicating.  If the patient does not take the antiviral medication cocktail as prescribed the virus mutates and becomes resistant to that particular medication cocktail.  This means the virus begins to replicate in their body and the virus was able to adapt/evolve/mutate in order to survive and replicate, destroying the usefulness of the medication cocktail used to stop it.  But don’t take my word for it read it for yourself at hiv.gov, Taking Your Medication Everyday (https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/staying-in-hiv-care/hiv-treatment/taking-your-hiv-medications-every-day). 

While not all microbes are considered to be alive, they all adapt/evolve/mutate so that they can proliferate and continue to exist.  So, when you get a vaccine for a virus that does not stop the disease it just slows it down, you are in effect giving the virus the opportunity to adapt/evolve/mutate into a more virulent/new strain because it was not stopped/neutralized.  Have a look at the CDC’s own information Antibiotic/Antimicrobial Resistance (AR/AMR) (https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/about.html).  Or read The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases article Causes of Antimicrobial (Drug) Resistance (https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/antimicrobial-resistance-causes).  Yes, I understand these pages are on drug resistance, but as the NIAID information displays selective pressure, mutation, and gene transfer leads to resistance and adaption to new environments when microbes are not stopped/neutralized.  This is surface information, this isn’t even digging into journals.  This is information at anyone’s fingertips, you don’t have to have a subscription to a fancy medical journal, or have a prestigious credential attached to your name, no alphabet soup indicative of lofty achievements is necessary.  You can Google it, or go to your handy-dandy neighborhood library.

LastAquestions: 7) IF a vaccination is supposed to build up your immunity so you DO NOT acquire the disease, THEN why is it again are we mandating these particular vaccines that don’t stop/neutralize the disease?  8) IF vaccinated are silent carriers, having no symptoms but can still spread the disease (as seen on Carnival Cruises 13 Aug https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/27-vaccinated-people-test-positive-for-covid-on-a-carnival-cruise-ship.html), then does it really matter if someone is vaccinated or not?

Dee Cruz-Murphy