Dear editor:

This letter is a reply to Mr. Anthony’s letter of Dec. 31, 2024. Yes, vaccines are important but not when they are pushed on the public under “emergency use authorizations” without clinical trials or proof they are safe or effective.  

Vaccines have been around for a very long time. The first vaccine for smallpox came out in 1796. The vaccines we grew up with have been proven to be safe for years. Even our children, of the 80s and 90s, have grown up with safe vaccines. (It has not yet been proven that any vaccine causes autism like some people believe.) However, up until Covid all parents and adults have had the right to refuse vaccines for their children and themselves, as it should be. We are now facing the problem of many illegals bringing diseases we have vaccines for into this country. We don’t hear much complaining about that. The vulnerable American citizens will be the ones who have not been vaccinated.

While RFK Jr. is not a “vaccine denier” as Mr. Anthony calls him, he is being cautious about the Covid vaccine and any other new vaccine the feds might push on us. Like our old vaccines, any new ones need to be tested for years before they are ready for public consumption. That is all he is asking.

However, each year a new flu vaccine comes out which is created through guess work because no one knows what strain will arrive to inconvenience us again. Those vaccines cannot be tested but so far they seem safe enough, but since we no longer trust our government we quit taking them.  

Now that we are slowly learning how we were duped into complying with the Covid mandates, we shouldn’t trust anyone who tries to force us into compliance. Too many people lost too much during the Covid years and Big Pharma made out like bandits. Those same people cannot be held responsible for the inadequacies of their formulas. That is so wrong.

We would not push a Covid vaccine on a young child who is healthy. We would certainly think about it for a child who has health issues that could compromise their immunity. But, we would also do a great deal of research before making that decision. We would certainly look into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) before we did anything.

While we don’t really know all of RFK Jr.’s plans for the Trump administration, we do hope he makes decisions that are good for America and requiring vaccine testing is one of the best.  

Yes, Mr. Anthony, “many remarkable” and not so remarkable people died during the original Covid outbreak. They all had people who loved them and wanted them to stick around much longer than they did but that is on our government, not Trump, because he was gone when the mandates came out. It is on our government because they locked us up, closed us into what amounted to jail cells in our own homes, and would not let the doctors use whatever mechanism they could to keep people alive.  

Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin have saved a great many lives and cut down on the suicide rate of those who couldn’t cope. BUT, pharmaceutical companies and Dr. Fauci would not have made billions of dollars with a couple of old medications already proven safe for human consumption.

Linda and Bob Graff

Powell