I’m Never Getting A Covid Vaccine, And I’m Not Alone – The Federalist

Back in September I got Covid, and got it bad. For two weeks I was too sick to work or do much of anything except sit on the couch or lie down in bed. The initial (and very intense) flu-like symptoms turned into a bad cough, which slowly faded into persistent fatigue and what many have described as a kind of Covid brain fog. It was nearly a month before I had recovered enough to work out and resume a normal schedule.

For all that, though, I was relieved. Having contracted Covid and recovered from what was by no means a mild case, I knew that my natural immunityconferred longer lasting and stronger protection against future infection and illnessthan the immunity I could get from any of the Covid vaccines.

But I was also relieved because it irrevocably settled a question for me: No matter what else happens in this pandemic, Im never going to get a Covid vaccine. Ever. Im one of the unvaccinated, and Im going to stay that way.

A lot of people, upon hearing this, wont want to listen to anything else I have to say. Theyll conclude Im a crank and a conspiracy theorist or just a blithering idiot. The unvaccinated, for too many Americans, are nothing more than selfish rabble whose continued intransigence is, at best, needlessly putting the vulnerable at risk and, at worst, outright killing people.

If anyone is to blame for the terrible toll of Covid, their thinking goes, its people like me, who are perpetuating what President Biden hasrepeatedly calleda pandemic of the unvaccinated. Were so awful, according to Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, that although it might be ghoulish to mock us if we die of Covid, its necessary. After all,were just getting what we deserve.

Yet at least 40 percent of the country remains unvaccinated. You cant just write off 130 million Americans as conspiracy theory-addled rubes, or decide its okay to dance on their graves if they die of Covid. Thats a recipe for a poisoned public discourse, and its fundamentally un-American.

Besides, one thing the omicron variant has made clear is that were going to have to learn to live with Covid, at least for a while. So its time for the vaccinated to try to understand the motivations of the unvaccinated, and learn to live with them, too, instead of incessantly scapegoating and demonizing them.

Like millions of other Americans, I chose not to get a Covid vaccine for a variety of reasons. Before I caught Covid, I knew that my age, fitness level, and medical history all put me in a very low-risk category for severe illness or hospitalization.

I also knew that, because the Covid vaccines have only been around for about a year, we dont have any data on their long-term effects but we do know about some of the risks they pose,especially to young people. In short, I concluded that the unknown risks of taking the vaccine were, in my case, greater than the known risks of catching Covid. That risk-benefit analysis will be different for everyone, but everyone needs to do it and come to his or her own decision.

Another factor for me was the contradictory and ever-shifting messaging about masks and lockdowns throughout 2020 that led me to question the honesty and competence of our public health experts and the pharmaceutical industrial complex. When the vaccines came out, the credibility of our experts was already in serious jeopardy. Things have since gotten much worse.

After I recovered from Covid, I was even more confident in my decision not to get a vaccine. Like the vast majority of healthy Americans who survive Covid, I gained natural antibodies that conferred a level of protection from future infection I otherwise couldnt get, not even with two doses of the vaccine and a booster shot.

Here, too, the experts unwillingness to discuss or even acknowledge the existence of natural immunity made me deeply suspicious. Some 60 million Americans have now contracted Covid. Fewer than a million have died from it. That means, at a minimum, tens of millions of Americans have some level of natural immunity. Why isnt that part of the conversation? Why doesnt that seem to factor into any policy decisions, especially drastic ones that affect peoples livelihoods, like employer vaccine mandates?

Now we have the omicron variant, and everything weve learned about it thus far has confirmed my decision, along with tens of millions of other Americans, not to get vaccinated. It turns out Covid vaccines are not very effective against omicron, and whatever protection they do offerseems to drop sharply as vaccine-generated antibodies wane. Case numbers worldwide right now are at record levels, despite mass vaccination efforts across the globe and ever-increasing numbers of the vaccinated.

Indeed, omicron is now tearing through countries that have vaccination rates of 90 percent or more. The data so far suggest the best protection against omicron isnt vaccination at all, but natural immunity from a previous infection.

One studyin Qatar found that previous infection offered about 90 percent protection from symptomatic reinfection by earlier strains of Covid, and about 60 percent protection against reinfection from omicron. Thats far higher than the 37 percent effectiveness against omicron from two doses of an mRNA vaccine and a booster shot, according toa separate study in Ontario.

I hesitate, though, even to cite studies to support my argument, because in online Covid-world anyone can dig up counterfactual data or some other study (however shoddy or underpowered) to dispute any assertion about vaccine efficacy. As Cory Zue wrote ina long blog post last week, one of the problems with our Covid discourse right now is that science and data about the vaccines are being used to affirm our previously-held beliefs, rather than help us see truth.

And the truth is, every one of us has to make our own decision about the Covid vaccine, about whats right for us and our families, assessing the risks and rewards for ourselves.

But whatever one believes about the vaccine, its getting hard now to maintain the position that the way out of the pandemic is through mass vaccination. In fact, mass vaccination might even prolong the pandemic, depending on how future variants react to fully-vaxxed immune systems that have had multiple booster shots in a relatively short timeframe.

If you want to get a vaccine and multiple booster shots, go ahead. Thats your decision. But Ill never do it, especially now that Ive had Covid. There are tens of millions of Americans like me, and were never going to change our minds. Thats something the rest of the country, at this point, is just going to have to accept.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Texas Monthly, The Guardian, First Things, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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I'm Never Getting A Covid Vaccine, And I'm Not Alone - The Federalist