Vaccination a Personal Decision

To the Editor:

Kudos to S. Hooper for her letter in Sept. 3, 2021, edition of the Record.

An individual’s decision to get the COVID-19 vaccination should be private and based on the individual’s review of the advantages and disadvantages to his/her person as reviewed and discussed with their family and physician. Each physician and patient must use a shared decision making process based on informed consent. What are the patient’s current symptoms? What are the adverse affects of treatment? Together they set the course for treatment.

In my opinion the current opposition to the COVID-19 vaccination stems from lack of informed consent and distrust of the vacillating and confusing information coming from the CDC, WHO, and “medical experts”.

Dr. Blackwell made reference to the polio vaccine but did not mention that research to develop a polio vaccine didn’t begin until 22 years after the virus was identified (1938) and then it took over 25 years for a ‘safe’ vaccine to be developed. In 1955 the U.S. Surgeon General questioned the safety of the trial polio vaccine and suspended all polio vaccination programs because an “investigation revealed that it was responsible for 11 deaths, and hundreds of cases of paralysis”.

S. Hooper asks “the million dollar question, ‘If the survival rate of COVID-19 is 98%, why the push to get everyone vaccinated?’”

There are physicians who believe the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and there are physicians and think everybody should get it though evidence of its effectiveness is sketchy. There are also physicians who are willing to treat symptoms of COVID-19 as early as they present like Dr. Peter McCullough MD. You can watch Dr. McCullough’s testimony before the Texas Health and Human Services Committee at the Texas Capitol back in March on YouTube.

Cindy Rodibaugh

Flatonia