Responses to Sentinel Attack on Critical Thinkers
This page provides the references for the claims made in the sign-on letter to the editor (both included immediately below), written in response to the Keene Sentinel’s 1/8/21 Editorial, Sticking point; For everyone’s sake, including your own, take the COVID vaccine. Below that, we’re also appending other citizen responses to the same editorial.
Is Critical Thinking Allowed?
Re: Editorial 1/8/21: We are asking the Sentinel to apologize for the attack on a sizable section of Monadnock citizens who exercise independent thinking, based on research that reaches beyond the heavily censored mainstream information. The signatories of this letter are not the deluded, naive, uneducated, irresponsible people you describe.
Here’s just one example of information you ignore and we consider significant: the recently launched Great Barrington Declaration[1], critical of current lockdown policies. Developed by three highly credentialed professionals from the US and Europe, it has garnered signatures from over 53,000 medical practitioners and public health scientists, and more than 727,000 citizens.[2] It’s worthy of note that the policies espoused by this declaration have been the longstanding and noncontroversial scientific consensus prior to 2020.
Vigorous discussions between experts used to be the hallmark of healthy policies. But our medical dictatoriat has now decided that “people only need to know what we tell them.” We are inviting our Keene Sentinel and Cheshire Medical Center to rise above this view and open a discussion on the points made by the Great Barrington Declaration. Such discussions are the American Way.
And now to the “Sticking Point” – the jab all responsible citizens should take, according to the Sentinel. Please note:
• The warp speed development of COVID-19 vaccines means everyone taking it basically agrees to be part of a never-before-attempted gene therapy that hasn’t even completed Stage 3 clinical trials. Some data won’t even be collected until 24 months after injection.[3]
• The adverse side effects of the vaccine are still largely unknown. In an initial CDC report, after just a single dose 2.8% of recipients were unable to work, perform normal daily activities, or needed some kind of medical intervention.[4] More severe side observed effects include anaphylactic shock, facial paralysis, seizures, and encephalomyelitis.[5],[6]We’ve even seen some deaths soon after injection for otherwise healthy individuals.[7]Since the PREP Act gave pharmaceutical companies zero liability[8], what will you do if you experience adverse effects?
• The vaccine does not claim to reduce hospitalizations or deaths or even stop viral transmission[9]; trials are only looking for the reduction of mild cold- and flu-like symptoms.[10],[11]
It is irresponsible for the Sentinel to advise its readers to take the vaccine without offering an honest presentation of the risks involved.
Other Responses
Reasonable People Have Reason for Concern
In response to the 1/8 Sentinel Editorial, “Sticking Point; For everyone’s sake, including your own, take the COVID vaccine.”
While I am in disbelief that the Sentinel would print this editorial, I can certainly understand why the author would not want to attach their name to it. The dismissive and divisive tone is an insult to any critical thinker who dares to have an informed opinion.
To suggest that it is irresponsible and potentially lethal to pose logical questions about public health policy, especially when it comes to inadequately tested injections, is ridiculous.
It is currently unknown if, and unproven that, the vaccine stops transmission. If this shot does not stop transmission and merely minimizes symptoms, how exactly does this stop the spread?
Is it dangerous to consider possible side effects versus benefit for a virus that has a 99.75% overall recovery rate? Would factoring in cases so mild that they are unreported, and the overreporting of deaths from people who died with covid versus people that died from covid, improve that rate even more?
It’s common knowledge that this fast-tracked shot has not been tested long-term. Is it unreasonable to have concerns about the potential long-term side effects of this new mRNA technology that essentially creates an autoimmune response in the body? The author speaks as though they have somehow been bestowed the authority to assess risk on behalf of the individuals of this community.
Should we not be concerned that the manufacturers are exempt from any liability from damage caused by their product? Will this author and the Sentinel accept liability for damages that may occur from following their medical recommendation to take this vaccine?
Is it not prudent to consider the massive amount of worldwide collateral damage as a direct result of the pandemic public policy to this point?
Is it not warranted to question the long-term effects that unproven, fear based public policies are having on our children’s mental health and development? On our economy? On small business? On our community? On the very fabric of our lives?
It is insulting and arrogant to suggest that having an open dialogue with concerned members of our community, to discuss, share concerns, and contribute their voice, is somehow deviant and dangerous behavior.
I would submit that a society that stifles the voices of its concerned citizens is the true evil here.
If there is anyone reading this, that believes these are unreasonable concerns, I would invite you to bring your argument, and the data to support it, to the public forum.
~Dr. Gene Clerkin, Keene NH
Robust debate is the hallmark of a healthy democratic society
I am responding to the 1/8 Sentinel Editorial, “Sticking Point; For everyone’s sake, including your own, take the COVID vaccine.”
The Sentinel editors doubtless believe they are offering the most helpful advice. However, they are actually promoting a false dilemma fallacy by implying there are only conventional truths (which all should agree with) and dangerous lies (which all should condemn). With this mindset, there is no middle ground, no reasonable basis for disagreement or debate. The Sentinel resorts to ad hominem attacks and strawman arguments while failing to cite a single scientific study.
Let’s consider the Sentinel’s use of the pejorative “anti-vaxxer” label. This term was invented by the pharmaceutical industry to preemptively dismiss the concerns of parents—and increasingly, doctors—regarding the effects of modern vaccines. The industry would rather you not know that: 1) it has zero liability for injuries from its vaccines; 2) the taxpayer-funded US Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out over $4 billion to date; or 3) we have yet to see a double-blind placebo study of a single childhood vaccine. They would like you to believe that the ruined lives of children and families have nothing to do with an aggressive schedule that now delivers 70 doses of 16 different vaccines starting day one, well before an infant has a fully developed immune system. They would rather not investigate the real epidemic of nearly 50% of US children suffering from at least one chronic disease condition. They’d like to bury the peer-reviewed study showing stunning differences in illness levels between conventionally vaccinated children and those who either delay or avoid vaccination (https://bit.ly/3bzQike). And it’s sacrilege to consider the Pentagon study finding that flu shots increase susceptibility to coronaviruses (https://bit.ly/2LNT3DG).
Now, the Sentinel editors insist you submit to an experimental gene therapy that does not even promise to prevent serious illness, death, or viral transmission, one with an adverse event reporting rate 50 times higher than that of flu shots. Yet the Sentinel is telling you, “Don’t question. We know what’s best for you.”
Robust debate is the hallmark of a healthy democratic society. Most of all, decisions affecting our personal health deserve to be fully informed. The outright intolerance of viewpoints that deviate from the establishment line is leading to dangerous levels of censorship and suppression that one would expect to find in totalitarian countries. The Sentinel can and should do better.
John-Michael Dumais
Keene
Once done, you can’t take it back…
Do not be coerced into doing anything you are not completely comfortable with when it comes to your health and wellbeing.
Important Covid-19 vaccine facts to consider:
MINOR IMPACT: Vaccine manufacturers claim that Covid-19 vaccines are 95 percent “effective,” but the FDA is allowing companies to define effectiveness as “prevention of mild symptoms.” The studies are not designed to detect a reduction in outcomes such as severe illness, hospitalization or death. 1,2 For individuals who develop severe symptoms, the vaccine is not a remedy. Instead, nutritional and oxidative support can help keep the illness from going into “overdrive.” 3
EXPECT ADVERSE REACTIONS: Participants in every Covid-19 vaccine trial have reported adverse reactions including high fever, chills, muscle pains and headaches. 4-6 Some have even reported severe reactions that required hospitalization and invasive treatment. According to the FDA, potential long- term effects may include Guillain-Barré syndrome, brain swelling, muscle weakness and paralysis, convulsions and seizures, stroke, narcolepsy, shock, heart attack, autoimmune disease, arthritis and joint pain, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, and death. 7 Some UK health workers have experienced anaphylactic shock after receiving one dose of the approved vaccine. 8
WON’T PREVENT COVID-19: An FDA Pfizer briefing paper published December 10, 2020 revealed 43 percent more suspected cases of Covid-19 in the vaccinated group than in the placebo group within seven days of vaccination. 9
NO LIABILITY: Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers will be protected from all liability—if you are injured, you cannot sue. 10 Manufacturers will have complete indemnity even though all previous attempts at creating coronavirus vaccines caused harm and never advanced to regulatory approval. 11
WILL NOT END RESTRICTIVE MEASURES: Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health acknowledges that the vaccines may prevent symptoms but will not block spread of the virus, so vaccine recipients will still need to wear masks, practice social distancing and avoid crowds. 12,13
NOT NECESSARY: According to the CDC’s current best estimate, the “infection fatality rate” (IFR) for Covid-19 is less than 1 percent for people age 69 and younger, including a .003 percent IFR for children and adolescents. 14
COULD MAKE YOU STERILE: Two prominent doctors, including the ex-head of Pfizer’s respiratory research, warn that Covid-19 vaccines contain a spike protein called syncytin-1, vital for the formation of the placenta. 15 If the vaccine triggers an immune response to this protein, then female infertility, miscarriage or birth defects could result.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: www.westonaprice.org/coronavirus/
Rebecca Montrone, Keene