WHY I DID NOT TAKE THE COVID-19 VACCINE
by a U.S. Medical Doctor – Anesthesiologist
October 13, 2021
I am confident in my decision to not receive the vaccine. Every individual should make the decision for themselves unless the vaccine is proved to provide sterile immunity. If it provides sterile immunity there is a moral argument to take the vaccine to allow the community to get to herd immunity. I wonder why just days before the September 9th speech where President Biden discussed mandating the vaccine, the CDC changed the definition of vaccine, eliminating the word immunity. Now that we know that those that are vaccinated can still get the virus and still transmit the virus, we know that herd immunity will not be aided by the vaccine.
I have made contrarian medical decisions in both my medical career and my personal health decisions. I place this vaccination decision in the same category. I am doing something contrary to popular advice, opinion, or practice. That is what I cherish about America, we have Liberty to make these types of decisions.
In the early 1990s, anesthesiologists were asked to give every general anesthesia patient a beta blocker in hopes that this would decrease adverse effects of general anesthesia. I refused to give every patient the required beta blocker. I did not think it made sense to ablate the body’s natural response to increase the heart rate in response to various events including acute blood loss. More than a decade later the long-term studies proved me to be prescient. The ubiquitous use of beta blockers led to more patient deaths in cases where large blood loss occurred.
I witnessed throughout my 30-year career the increasing administration and prescription of opioids in the operating room, the hospital, and the home, leading to horrifying unwanted short- and long-term side effects. An explosion in their use surrounded a government mandate regarding pain in 2000. The medical industry’s response, embedded with education directly from the pharmaceutical industry, led to a still increasing opioid crisis. One of the things we were taught in that “education” was that one cannot become addicted to opioids if they are taken for pain. This patently false information came from a one paragraph letter to the editor to the New England Journal of medicine which did not provide any such evidence. Over the years I decreased the doses of opioids but did not eliminate them as my anesthesia training was that they were an integral component. I finally eliminated them in the final years of my practice with impressive immediate results (the near elimination of postoperative nausea). The risk of opioids outweighs the benefits. The final six years of my career were dedicated to convincing my colleagues to also remove opioids from their usual anesthetic. While I had pockets of success, the great majority of anesthesiologists and anesthesia nurses did not agree to try a non-opioid technique.
As a patient with diabetes, I was prescribed both an ACE inhibitor and a statin to decrease my risk of kidney and cardiac disease. I chose not to take either one; my decision was based on a risk/benefit analysis. I felt the risk of these chronic drugs outweighed any potential benefit. It remains to be seen whether that choice was wise, but I do get great comfort in not taking these two drugs for the past 25 years. I did choose to take another daily medication, insulin. By the same risk/benefit analysis, I felt that the benefit more than outweighed any potential adverse result.
I am pro-vaccine. I believe the fact that the vaccine was developed, manufactured, and administered in months is a credit to all the scientists, along with the politicians that helped make this happen. This is a powerful example of the American way.
My belief is that the many hysterical responses to COVID, including lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates are due to the early numbers coming out of China, which relayed a case fatality rate of 3%. We now know that the case fatality is much less; closer to <0.2%. The survival rate is greater than 99.9% for most Americans under seventy, which should lead to comfort, not the hysteria that many Americans still feel.
My advice, for those that ask me, is that anyone in a high-risk group (e.g., elderly, obese, chronic disease), should get the vaccine. Some would argue that my diabetes puts me in the high-risk group. My belief is that the diabetes that places one in a high-risk group is type 2 diabetes which has a high association with obesity.
I “caught” my diabetes from an AIDs patient I was caring for as a medical intern. The unusual virus I caught, which gave me severe pharyngitis, led to my immune system attacking the cells in my pancreas which produce insulin. I have diabetes from an auto-immune cause. I also had an auto-immune loss of hair after receiving allergy shots. The concern I have with the COVID vaccine is that it too could lead to an auto-immune response in my body.
I believe it will take five years to study the potential COVID vaccine complications. I plan on waiting. Of course, the same could occur from getting COVID. To boost my immune system, I am taking vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C, magnesium, and quercetin. I would welcome a study comparing these vitamins vs. the vaccine for covid prevention and outcome.
My prescription for all Americans is to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, walk daily, take a deep breath three times a day, laugh twice a day, dance, be grateful daily, healthful eating daily, and take your vitamins daily. This will lead to happiness and improved health.
As an American, I am now in the habit of quoting Patrick Henry. The first quote summarizes why I wrote the above; the second expresses my feeling today with respect to the vaccine mandates:
“. . . different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve.”
“I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”