Doing Homework on Vaccines

In response to Thomas Oatway’s letter, “Ignore the Vaccine Disinformation,” Nov. 26:

As much as I respect Mr. Oatway’s opinions on the COVID-19 vaccines, and I will not, in his words, “rail against the vaccines,” it is my opinion that it is ill-informed to compare the 17 vaccinations of armed forces members, or any other previous vaccines, to the current COVID-19 vaccines.

None of the previous required military or civilian vaccines were MRNA, all were tested on many subjects for many years before being approved, none had adverse events as severe as Guillain-Barré syndrome, myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombosis, Bells palsy, stroke, anaphylaxis, or other neurological events.

These are sentences from the FDA website, Fact Sheet for Health Care Providers: “Additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious, may become apparent with more widespread use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.” And this instruction is included to health care providers: “As a vaccine provider, you must communicate to the recipient information including, ‘The significant known and potential risks and benefits of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, and the extent to which such risks and benefits are unknown.’”

Also, with past vaccines, the public was never subjected to job loss, ridicule and being called, again, in his words, “unpatriotic, ill-informed citizens.”

I’m not against vaccines, either, and hate to be accused of that. I am against hiding adverse events from the public so that people can’t know what the risk-benefit of the vaccine actually is.

I am against forcing people to take this.

One should talk to, or at least research, people who have suffered life-altering adverse events before ignoring them and calling them “ill-informed and unpatriotic.”

Kirk F. Smith Saugus