Southern Seminary files petition against Biden Administration to Oppose OSHA Vaccination Rules

[Ken S]

Bert Perry wrote:

According to a truckers’ trade association, 37% of truckers don’t want the jab. Small number?

As I’ve noted before, I’ve gotten the jab and would consider getting an update if my doctor recommends it. But let’s not pretend that there is little or no evidence of serious harm from this.

I’m still trying to understand what is the “serious harm”. Get tested weekly if you don’t want the vaccine. What is the serious harm?

The mandate doesn’t give that option. I know my company doesn’t, and some people are leaving rather than take the jab. So what we’re talking about is not 37% of truckers going through the hassle of weekly testing, but rather up to 37% of truckers quitting.

And really, the weekly hassle…I’ve talked with truckers, and if you want to get on their bad side in a hurry, assign them a few more weekly tasks without what they consider to be a good reason.

It’s worth noting as well that even a 1% hit hits people hard after decades of “lean” hiring. We are not in the situation like we had in the sixties anymore. There are a lot of “single point of failure” roles out there these days, so a few groups losing a person or two can be catastrophic.

[Bert Perry]

The mandate doesn’t give that option.

I just looked at it again and you’re right. I had been thinking it was vaccine or weekly testing, but I see that while employers may offer the option for weekly testing, they are not required to offer it.

I’m not personally bothered by the mandate, but I can see how others would be upset.

[Bert Perry]

According to a truckers’ trade association, 37% of truckers don’t want the jab. Small number?

As I’ve noted before, I’ve gotten the jab and would consider getting an update if my doctor recommends it. But let’s not pretend that there is little or no evidence of serious harm from this.

Don’t worry, truckers may be exempt from the mandate:

https://fortune.com/2021/11/08/truckers-exempt-osha-vaccine-mandate-lab…

Lets not pretend that there is more here than there really is.

Most long haul truckers work in teams, and hence they are reporting to a workplace where coworkers are present. Plus, they go into facilities where other people are present when they dock.

Let’s not underestimate the stupidity of the Biden order. To be sure, we might guess that faced with another debacle, OSHA may modify the order, but “may be exempt” is not something I’d rely on, especially when the government is involved.

In my area we have been greatly affected by the mandate as a large number of ferry workers have quit. The ferries are considered part of our highway system and they have had to go down to one boat service on several routes. Traffic has increased greatly and the foot ferry service has been overwhelmed. Doesn’t look like there is an improvement in sight.

I was desperate to listen to something for a few minutes.. so I turned on Brian Kilmeade and Friends. Turns out Lt Col Allen West was on. He just had COVID. Was going on and on about how bad the vaccine is… but he was promoting monoclonal antibodies and the new anti-viral drug that will soon be available. So let me get this straight, a $500 vaccine is bad, but a $20000 bag of monoclonal antibodies is peachy? And who knows anything about the new antiviral drug?

Crazy.

[Mark_Smith]

I was desperate to listen to something for a few minutes.. so I turned on Brian Kilmeade and Friends. Turns out Lt Col Allen West was on. He just had COVID. Was going on and on about how bad the vaccine is… but he was promoting monoclonal antibodies and the new anti-viral drug that will soon be available. So let me get this straight, a $500 vaccine is bad, but a $20000 bag of monoclonal antibodies is peachy? And who knows anything about the new antiviral drug?

Crazy.

So what is crazy is that people are against the vaccine, which is essentially a set of instructions for your body to naturally create antibodies. Your cells are creating spike proteins in a natural mechanism so that your body can create natural antibodies. All with no harmful chemicals or anything being retained in your body that was not created by your body.

Instead those same people are jumping on board of injecting monoclonal antibodies. These are synthetic. These are only approved through an emergency authorized use notice, they only last about 2 weeks, and they are extremely expensive.

You have people that for some reason in their brain reject vaccines, but will be all for anything else regardless of whether it conflicts with their same concerns they have vaccines or regardless of whether they work. I am not against monoclonal antibody therapy, but it is a tertiary line of defense and not a primary defense against any kind of virus, let alone COVID.

The antiviral is a typical antiviral, which means that its focus is on prohibiting the virus from replicating. It is something that you take after you have been infected. It is not something you take to prevent infection. The problem with relying on this instead of vaccination is that these have side effects, they are drugs so long term impacts to the body is not known (unlike vaccines who don’t have long term impacts), and they require a person to start having symptoms.

Mark, that’s a good question, and my take is that about 90%+ of Americans know only what they see on their favored news stations, and there are a few complicated things about how we handle vaccines that lend themselves to resistance.

For starters, the CDC and NIH, among others, have gotten used to simply saying “do it”, and they’re not seeing that ever since smallpox and polio were dealt with, adults haven’t really been subject to their mandates. So the pushback is essentially taking them by surprise, and they’re not used to doing the hard work of persuasion. A corollary factor is that health authorities have enabled the fiction that once you’re vaccinated, you’re basically bulletproof vs. a disease forever. Reality is that immunity declines over time, and it’s not absolute. If people had known this beforehand, they’d have been more willing to deal with the weaknesses of the crop of COVID vaccines.

Going further, we have two competing vaccine reporting groups in the government, VAERS and NVIC, I believe. The former collects all incidents after vaccination, and the latter is the best attempt to see which cases were actually caused by vaccines. My best guess is that the reality—what proportion of effects are actually caused—lies somewhere between the two, hopefully closer to the NVIC numbers. But popularly, the gaudy and ugly numbers of VAERS have become the face of consequences of COVID, and I don’t see public health authorities dealing with this reality.

Another issue that needs to be dealt with better (and to be sure, NIH/CDC have tried a bit) is the reality that a lot of medicines are developed using a cell line derived from fetal tissue—fetal tissue most likely from an aborted child. This includes many vaccines, and I don’t see clear notation that demonstrates that no new abortions are being committed to provide this cell line.

Long and short of it is that our reporting structure is set up to confuse us (not intentionally, but it does), we’ve got an ugly source for one of the development materials that isn’t being explained well, and there’s an almost reflexive appeal to authority instead of data that doesn’t work for American adults. Couple that with well-known mistakes and even flat out lies about the epidemic, and you’ve got a recipe for strong resistance.

[Bert Perry]

Going further, we have two competing vaccine reporting groups in the government, VAERS and NVIC, I believe. The former collects all incidents after vaccination, and the latter is the best attempt to see which cases were actually caused by vaccines. My best guess is that the reality—what proportion of effects are actually caused—lies somewhere between the two, hopefully closer to the NVIC numbers. But popularly, the gaudy and ugly numbers of VAERS have become the face of consequences of COVID, and I don’t see public health authorities dealing with this reality.

VAERS and NVIC are two different things. One is an adverse event reporting system (of which there are many more than VAERS and NVIC is an information center. NVIC is the official vaccine information center. VAERS is one of many more formal adverse event reporting systems. It was created in order to gather as much information about any kind of event as they could. The ultimate purpose of VAERS is to be a signal reporting system, more than any type of Adverse Event Reporting System. An enormous number of people who have no clue around 1) how adverse events work and 2) the purpose and use of VAERS are pushing so much ridiculous information it isn’t even funny. Even if the government clarified this (which they have done numerous times), it can’t compete with all of hte clueless epidemiologist and drug safety “experts” that use any social media platform or news organization to peddle their disinformation. VAERS is useful but it is the farthest piece of data from the truth.

….and public health authorities need to start saying that to people. I’ve started, despite not being quite a public health authority, to put it mildly. Maybe it’ll make a difference.

[Bert Perry]

….and public health authorities need to start saying that to people.

They have. It is debunked on every major fact checking site. Every major news outlet (besides FOX, Newsmax and OAN) have explained it. The VAERS site has an explanation, FDA, CDC, HHS all have clear statements about it, and other public speakers have mentioned it. It really does not matter at the end of the day. Do we really need to go around and clearly explain to people the earth is round? No, but that isn’t stopping the flat earther movement from rapidly growing.

Yes, if that discovery was only a year old, I think it would take a great deal of repeated explanation.

[G. N. Barkman]

Yes, if that discovery was only a year old, I think it would take a great deal of repeated explanation.

mRNA medicines have been around since the late 1980’s. VAERS has been around since since the very late 1980’s. The Moderna vaccine was developed 6 weeks after COVID gene sequencing was done in January of 2020. The vaccine has been in use since March of 2020.

The issue is that people 1) don’t like being told, 2) have a mistrust of government, and 3) don’t understand science and medicine very well. So they seek explanations that sound scientific to support their general mistrust. It has been proven that a percentage similiar to the amount who are unwilling to take the vaccine for any reason will not change their opinions regardless of any fact whatsoever, thus why I used the flat earth idea. It is estimated based off of survey data that between 2% and 4% of the population believes strongly that the earth is flat. Guess how many people will refuse the vaccine no matter what? 2% to 4%. About 18% don’t plan to get the vaccine and are not likely to change their mind. But evidence at large companies and the government under vaccine mandates has shown that this number is under 5% actually.

Guess how many people will refuse the vaccine no matter what? 2% to 4%. About 18% don’t plan to get the vaccine and are not likely to change their mind. But evidence at large companies and the government under vaccine mandates has shown that this number is under 5% actually.

Haven’t we been told all along that these kind of numbers will get us to a place of safety? In other words, we can achieve the goal of the mandate without the mandate. Enough people will voluntarily take it without force of government or employer. Why isn’t that good enough? It seems like another case of moving the goal posts.

This leads to the suspicion that this is about control. 90-95% of people will take it anyway. That is well above the “herd immunity” threshold. So why make a government mandate or an employer mandate since you are getting the desired result without it?

This leads to the suspicion that this is about control.

I may be at risk of naivete but I think I’d rather be naive than join the perpetually suspicious—not that I’m accusing you of “perpetually suspicious,”—just explaining how I lean. When there are multiple explanations of why I do something, I want observers to judge me generously, so I try to extend that to others, even the left.

And there’s the Hanlon’s Razor factor: humans tend to overlook/underestimate the prevalence of ordinary mistakes from moments of stupidity (often fear/anxiety induced), lapses in judgment, etc.

So, if we would have gotten to near total vaccination anyway, what could motivate a federal mandate?

• Fear of the political consequences of seeming to not be doing anything about the problem (a result of “do-somethingism”)
• Belief that reaching the inevitable goal will take too long
• Belief that the culture needs to be taught to be more civic minded (tag this ‘extra stupid,’ because you can’t teach people anything by coercion)
• Belief that you can grow your base by increasing popular resentment of the unvaccinated, a marginalization strategy…. also pretty stupid, because a mandate is more likely to do the reverse
• Belief that there is a need to establish patterns/policy for future public health emergencies.

Of course, some uglier possibilities exist also: belief that increasing the power of the enlightened officials of the left-of-center ruling class is the only pathway of societal progress. In other words, “it’s about control,” but not for control’s sake—more like because of a belief system that assumes society must continually evolve by throwing off the old and embracing the new and that an enlightened few know best how we need to evolve.

That one has plenty of evidence to back it, as far as the left goes. It’s worth noting, though, that these folks who consider themselves the enlightened few in this scenario really think their vision of progress is real progress—and what’s good for everyone.

So the short version…

• Belief that when the enlightened few are in control of government they’re entitled to tell everyone what to do because they know best… and supporting arguments are really just placatory. The enlightened decision makers simply possess superior wisdom.