{"id":34621,"date":"2021-10-21T13:47:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T17:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=34621"},"modified":"2021-10-21T12:36:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T16:36:23","slug":"the-former-soviet-explains-his-decision-to-vaccinate-his-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/21\/the-former-soviet-explains-his-decision-to-vaccinate-his-children\/","title":{"rendered":"The former Soviet explains his decision to vaccinate his children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An immigrant friend has slender athletic children in high school. Their statistical risk from COVID-19 is negligible, possibly smaller than the risk of being injured or dying in a car accident on the way to the vaccine clinic (a handful of children are harmed by COVID-19, of course, but most were vulnerable due to obesity or previously identified disease). He vaccinated his children, despite his belief that they were not at risk and that the vaccine had no value to them. They live in Maskachusetts so they still have to wear masks at school. If they want to travel internationally, they’re still subject to testing hassles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about altruism? Maybe the former Soviet wants to help Joe Biden shut down coronavirus as promised during his election campaign? That’s can’t be the explanation. He doesn’t believe that the currently available vaccines have any public health benefit due to the fact that people who are vaccinated can still get infected and be contagious and also due to the fact that SARS-CoV-2 will evolve its way around the current vaccines (potentially mutating into something wildly more deadly, as happened with the Marek’s Disease<\/a> vaccine). So he didn’t inject his children with the idea that their stimulated immune system would be helpful to an 82-year-old<\/a> somewhere in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year I asked him to explain his decision and he responded with the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I know how collectivists think and act. Back in the USSR, we had this saying roughly translated as “Don’t separate yourself too far from the collective, or the collective will separate you.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This week he has been vindicated. A text message:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States Fencing Federation voted for a vaccine mandate for everyone at national events, including kids.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Said kids still have to wear coronarags under their fencing masks, despite everyone in the arena having been injected with a vaccine that is advertised as miraculously effective.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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