Dear Editor,
In a Feb. 18 letter to the Vermont Journal, Mr. Stuart Lindberg accused me of more vicious crimes than committed over the past year by Vladimir Putin. These include character assassination (his), “spilling vitriol” on the Cavendish Health Officer, demanding that she state that “she is not now and has never been a denier,” acting like Robespierre and some fictional monarch, demonstrating “the creeping normalization of the authoritarian mindset,” calling to “cancel Ms. Eddy” (whatever that means), a desire to “persecute Ms. Eddy,” being “driven by blind and irrational religious zeal,” making “illogical and ill-informed” claims, and consuming “an incapacitating amount of Kool-Aid” (Sorry, maybe good Vermont IPA, but not Kool-Aid). Hmmm, did someone say something about “vitriol?” For a comparison of our vitriol levels, after reading Mr. Lindberg’s letter, watch the video of the Cavendish Selectboard meeting from Feb. 13 where I committed these crimes www.okemovalley.tv/cavendish-selectboard-213-4.
Of course, I’m not the only one guilty of crimes in Mr. Lindberg’s mind. The VT Department of Health, which certifies Town Health Officers, and the FDA “declared that the shots would prevent viral transmission when they did not.” Actually, nobody said that. They said the vaccines were shown in the clinical trials to be over 90% effective in preventing serious illness, which it has been, and, if infected, they can spread it but are less likely to do so (www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02328-0). The evil pharmaceutical industry, of course, is at the bottom of this conspiracy. There is plenty to say about this industry, driven as it is by the profit motive like every other industry (This is called “free market capitalism,” something which Mr. Lindberg generally espouses.). Too bad pharmaceuticals aren’t pristine like the oil industry, which has never taken a cent from the government, used public (i.e., our) land, funded climate science denial, or bribed a politician. I guess that’s why Mr. Lindberg feels so proud to work for them. Of course, there is one person who is working to curb the excessive profits of the pharmaceutical companies – the progressive Bernie Sanders.
Mr. Lindberg refers to his “conscientious objection to the unprecedented and indiscriminate mandating of the Covid mRNA shots.” No one in the general population was required to get either the mRNA or other Covid vaccines, and it is also not “unprecedented” to require vaccines (www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/history-disease-outbreaks-vaccine-timeline/requirements-research). This odd phenomenon is often called “public health” – it is an infectious disease, after all, and if you get it, you can spread it.
Mr. Lindberg presents a list of generally dodgy and out-of-date links to people who have disagreed with what most investigators have found. Of course, there are always dissenters, as there should be, but since these links were posted, these people have been proved wrong. Despite Mr. Lindberg’s misreading of the FDA vaccine adverse event site, serious adverse events from the vaccine have been rare. Spreading misinformation about the vaccines, as Mr. Lindberg has, is dangerous and unconscionable.
Mr. Lindberg says that the vaccines had “never been tested on a mass scale.” In fact, the clinical trials were planned and conducted by doctors, scientists, and statisticians, who, unlike Mr. Lindberg who has never studied or worked in clinical trials or any branch of science, know a great deal about medicine. Tens of thousands of subjects took part in these trials. The trial results were rigorously reviewed just as any trial would be. Waiting to test the vaccines “on a mass scale” again, whatever that means, would have required waiting for many months or years to pass and hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people to die (www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations).
So, compared to Mr. Lindberg, what do I know? I spent 20 years studying math and science and programming computers, then spent 30 years working as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Lindberg has no scientific education or experience, but apparently got a minor in economics some years ago, which, by what he said in an email, means he knows as much about statistics as I do. Well, as the Dunning-Kruger effect has it, those who know the least think they know the most. However, unlike Mr. Lindberg, I don’t imagine I know much about the science of vaccines. That’s why I rely on those who do, at institutions like the Vermont Department of Health, the FDA, the NIH, the CDC, the WHO, the Mayo Clinic, the Harvard Medical School, Walter Reed, etc., and they all say the same thing – the Covid vaccines are safe and effective.
Sincerely,
Kem Phillips,
Cavendish, Vt.