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HINCKLEY, Ohio — Things I heard recently:
“Stop pushing these ineffective vaccines and promote treatment options.”
“The COVID vaccine is no better than the flu shot that has been around for decades and is only 50% effective.”
“The media is blowing COVID out of proportion. If it wasn’t on the news, we would never have known it existed.”
“The COVID-19 vaccine is no better than a flu shot. When you have to continuously get a booster, that’s not a true vaccine. If was a true vaccine, people would be lining up in droves to get it.”
I would like to address these claims. I have a degree in biology, a certification in infection control, and a year of working with COVID-19 patients, both before and after vaccines were available.
If we are walking away from vaccines and toward “treatment,” we are closing the barn door after the horse has broken the fence, coughed on the sheep, and has galloped down Main Street to infect other horses and fill horse hospitals.
If we are claiming that the media caused a COVID panic, tell the dead 860,000-plus Americans and their bereaved families.
If we are comparing the flu shot to the COVID vaccine, then we need to understand that the flu shot is a vaccine, too. We know that boosters are needed after a vaccine, because that’s how our immune systems work.
The word “vaccine” is from the Latin word for “cow.” The first smallpox vaccine was utilized in 1796 by Edward Jenner, the father of vaccine science. Because cowpox and smallpox were closely related, it was noted that those who got cowpox didn’t get smallpox. Dr. Jenner decided to use that similarity to prevent the disease by intentionally infecting people with cowpox.
In the 18th century, smallpox mortality was 35%. Over one-third of all smallpox cases were fatal. Using the technique of variolation (variola is the smallpox virus), he used cowpox to prevent smallpox. Even earlier in 1706 in Boston, this technique was used using actual smallpox (with many fatalities and many successes), and even earlier than that in Africa to prevent disease.
Dr. Jenner took a small amount of fluid from a cowpox-infected person’s blister containing the live virus, and rubbed it into a fresh cut on a non-infected person’s skin. That person developed cowpox, which made them ill and blistered, but they recovered and never contracted smallpox.
Once that technique was mastered and widely utilized, it became apparent that this was needed throughout the world. But in the absence of refrigeration, how would they get it to the New World and the new Spanish territories?
Jean Wendland Porter spent 45 years as regional director for both national and local rehabilitation companies. She is semi-retired, but continues to work with COVID-19 and post-COVID patients.
In 1804, it was decided to spread the vaccine to the Spanish empire in the New World, Central and South America, and the South Pacific, by putting orphans on the ships that were headed to those new lands. The orphans were promised families and comfortable homes. Two orphans were initially infected. After 10 days at sea, two more orphans were inoculated with cowpox using the fluid from the blisters of the first two boys. Ten days later, two more were infected. This continued until the ships reached land, and the blister fluid from the last two orphans was used to infect/immunize settlers and natives throughout those territories. Hundreds of thousands of New World settlers and natives were eventually immunized and protected. The descendants of those heroic orphans still live in those areas today, likely unaware of their origins.
So many people don’t understand the COVID vaccine, or how it drastically improves the outcome of infection. They misunderstand and believe that the vaccine has live virus (it doesn’t), or dead virus (it doesn’t), or various conspiracy theories relating to 5G, forced sterilization, and random deaths. Only knowledge and education can demonstrate the benefits — and that the science behind the COVID vaccine may be only a decade old, but that its origins go back centuries.
Jean Wendland Porter is a semi-retired physical therapist who has worked with COVID patients and is a proponent of science and vaccines.
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