“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Recently a potential adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine made the rounds on Twitter when Sara Beltrán Ponce, a resident at the Medical College of Wisconsin, suffered a miscarriage less than a week after receiving her second dose. She posted the following tweets on January 28th, after receiving her second shot, and on February 4th, after her miscarriage. Shortly thereafter she set her account to private when the tweets went viral.
Now, let’s start by immediately dispensing with the idea that this woman was anything but a very loving mother-to-be. She clearly believed that vaccination was the right thing to do, and so she did it. This is not filicide. At worst, this is someone who was not aware of potential side effects. At best, this is simply a common miscarriage that has nothing at all to do with the vaccine.
So I’ll stop short of impugning the good doctor, and instead ask the simple question: is it possible that there is a link between the COVID-19 vaccine and miscarriage? Or is this just standard Twitter-sphere frenzy?
As with virtually all things COVID, the truth is hard to find.
The United State’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) contains dozens of alarming outcomes, but these numbers need to be put in context of how many pregnant women have taken the vaccine. Unfortunately, we have no way to know that right now. For reference, anywhere from 10-20% of pregnancies are estimated to end in miscarriage under normal conditions and the vast majority occur during the first trimester. While we have no way to know what percentage of pregnant women who take the COVID-19 vaccine suffer a miscarriage, we can tell that a strong majority of the miscarriages in VAERS occurred during the first trimester.
Early data from rat trials for BNT162b2 (the Pfizer vaccine) and mRNA-1273 (the Moderna vaccine) seemed to suggest potential negative effects on pregnancy, but these were not followed up on. In January, the WHO recommended against both BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 in pregnancy, unless the woman is considered high-risk for COVID. While the United States’ CDC has dropped all pretenses of caring whether or not the vaccine affects pregnancy, most European countries have followed the WHO recommendation against vaccination during pregnancy.
“The Health Council of the Netherlands advises against vaccinating pregnant women at present because the vaccine’s efficacy and safety have not been tested sufficiently for this specific group.”
Netherlands Getting Vaccinated Against COVID-19
“The recommendation is to avoid vaccinations during pregnancy. If you are trying to become pregnant, you are also advised against accepting the first dose of the vaccine. … If you discover that you are pregnant once you have had the first dose of vaccine, the pregnancy will be prioritised and you will not be given the second dose.”
Belgium Coronavirus COVID-19 Vaccination
“The STIKO does not currently recommend general vaccination during pregnancy.”
Germany STIKO-recommendation for the COVID-19-vaccination
Clinical trials specifically targeting pregnant women have begun. Out of the gate they will only be studying late-term pregnancy, but if all goes well then they will eventually expand it to earlier term. Hopefully we will start to get answers in a few months.
Either way, the intent of this article is not to determine whether the COVID vaccines cause fertility issues, but rather to plant a seeded question in your mind: is it possible that at least one of all the miscarriages being reported to VAERS was actually caused by the vaccine? Just one?
“Primum non nocere“
First do no harm
In October 2020, Australia suffered a “worst-case scenario” of COVID-19 lockdowns
Four newborn babies died because they could not be transferred from Adelaide to Melbourne for what would have been routine life-saving treatment for heart defects.
Let’s stop for a minute to fully process this. This is not like those pregnancies that were prematurely terminated after mom gets the vaccine. This is not a question mark. These are newborn lives that were snuffed from existence. Because of us.
Each of those babies was going to be a person. Each was going to go to school with other children. Each was going to sneak out late at night as a teenager. Each was going to choose a career, build a life, settle down, make a family, and grow old.
Because of COVID lockdowns, none of that will happen. Those babies will never have those experiences, and, more importantly, neither will we. We will never get to know what these lives might have become. We have collectively been robbed of their contribution to the shared existence we call humanity.
“Well,” you might say, “if all it takes is four dead babies to get COVID under control, then perhaps maybe it’s worth it?”
To that I say: shut your damn mouth and look around.
This story from Adelaide only made the news because the deaths were clustered together in time and space. But similar lockdown-induced disadvantages exist in every corner of the world. There’s over two billion children on this planet — how many of them have missed cancer that could have been treated, because their parents chose to avoid hospitals? How many have been irreparably damaged while locked away at home with their abusers? How many have regressed academically, and will pay for that with reduced lifetime earnings and shortened lifespans? How many have taken their lives because of lockdowns?
The Adelaide babies aren’t just four babies. They are the tip of an iceberg. They are a visual that we can see, representing a tiny fraction of the horrors that lie just beneath the surface.
“Anyone who destroys a life is considered to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.”
Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5
The United States passed a very grim milestone last month: half a million deaths associated with COVID-19. For reference, that surpasses the total United States death toll of World War II, in which 420,000 Americans lost their lives.
500,000 is a big number. Too big to even comprehend when we’re talking about human lives. How are we supposed to even make sense of it, and how do we compare it with the lives cut short by lockdowns?
Let’s look at this from the perspective of life-years lost. What we’ll do is take those 500,000 deaths and multiply them by the average number of years that each death is removing from the individual’s life.
Research has shown that somewhere between 11 and 13 years of life are lost with every COVID death. I find this to be an absurdly high estimate, as COVID mortality age actually tracks above all-cause mortality age. That means that the average age of death for COVID is higher than the average age of death from all causes. So I don’t know where in the heck we’re getting 11-13 more years from out of all these people dying at life expectancy, but okay, let’s go with it just for the sake of argument.
Settling on 12 years of life lost per COVID death, and multiplying that by our current 527,000 COVID deaths, we get:
12 x 527,000 = 6,324,000 years of life lost
Let’s park that 6,324,000 number and come back to it in just a second.
Earlier, we talked about real babies who were born and died because they were denied medical care. We talked about pregnancies that were prematurely terminated. In both instances, we were talking about real, tangible forms of life that can be measured and weighed.
But what about a human soul that never existed at all? How do we measure that?
Economic experts have recently taken interest in the relationship between macroeconomic factors and population fertility. The idea goes that when large-scale world events happen, the birth rate is affected. Times are good; birth rates go up. Times are bad; birth rates go down.
The world-renowned think tank Brookings recently predicted that the COVID-19 economic fallout will result in 300,000 fewer U.S. births. Assuming an average life span of 78 years, how does this compare to the 6,324,000 life years lost to COVID?
78 x 300,000 = 23,400,000 years of life lost
Oh dear. Even using the absurd estimate of 12 years lost for every COVID death, we still wind up in this gut-wrenching mathematical hell-hole. We have to grapple with the fact that our economic response has actually cost almost 4 times as many life years as COVID has to date.
This reduction in expected births is not caused by the virus, but rather by our economic response to it. So we have to consider the question: even if our response could’ve magically saved everyone who died, would it have been worth it?
Now, it would be pretty easy to just stop there and claim scientific and mathematical high ground. But that’s not enough for me. I lay claim to the philosophical and moral high ground as well…
When we talk about the 6,324,000 life years lost to COVID, we are talking about lives that have already been lived. Adults. People who have experienced the Universe and hopefully had children of their own.
When we talk about the 23,400,000 life years lost to COVID hysteria, we are talking about children we should have had but didn’t. Unborn babies. Anticipated souls who will never get to experience the Universe, nor have children of their own.
If you know me, you know I unapologetically believe that children are more than just life’s priority–they are life’s purpose. I firmly believe that at all times a healthy society must place the well-being of its children above all else. Even if these numbers were flipped around, I would still argue that protecting our children, both born and unborn, outweighs risk to adults. The fact that the numbers are what they are changes this from a philosophical question to an incontrovertible tragedy.
“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”
George orwell
I truly wish like hell that comparisons could end there, but unfortunately there is still one colossal truth to be dealt with:
COVID mitigation efforts have not even saved lives
You might remember disgraced Neil Ferguson’s infamous Imperial College London model where he sensationally predicted 2.2 million American fatalities if the government did not impose strict mitigation measures. As of today, our 527,000 deaths account for about 24% of Ferguson’s let-it-rip model. Fantastic, we saved the other 76%–that’s 1,673,000 lives we saved!
Not so fast.
Adaptations of the Imperial College model to non-lockdown countries like Sweden blow up this absurd idea that anyone has been “saved” by any of this nonsense. In the case of Sweden, the Imperial College model predicted that 80,000-90,000 Swedes would die by June 1, 2020 if COVID was allowed to run rampant. Fortunately the model is very magnanimous and predicts 30,000 deaths instead, as long as Sweden locks down. Well, as you know, Sweden did not lock down and on June 1st they had a cumulative total of less than 5,000 deaths. Even today their death toll stands at less than 13,000, meaning that they achieved a lower % of their Imperial College prediction than the U.S. did. And they never arrested salon owners or told their citizens to wear goggles.
At this point, my personal belief is pretty firm that large-scale mitigation efforts like lockdowns and masking have not reduced COVID mortality. I’ve come to this conclusion by simply scrolling through the COVID mortality leaderboard, where I see lockdown nation after lockdown nation — Belgium, Czechia, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Peru, etc. There is literally no correlation between how hard a country tried to avoid deaths and their actual death rate. If anything, mitigation efforts just seem to be an after-the-fact response to high COVID prevalence.
Instead of looking country-by-country, we can also look state-by-state and see that there’s no correlation between what a state does or doesn’t do and its COVID mortality. If you were to say that to someone on the street, they would probably look at you like you had three heads. But the data is all there, hiding in plain sight. As of today, the 4 states with the highest COVID mortality are the 4 states that have done the absolute most to avoid it: New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts. Sure, more lax states have almost caught up to them–Mississippi, Arizona, the Dakotas. But this pandemic has been going on for a year now and you’re going to tell me the most hardcore restriction states are STILL the mortality leaders? What the hell, exactly, are we doing here?
In the absence of concrete evidence that large-scale responses are saving lives, we’re forced to confront the idea that maybe a large percentage of COVID mortality was always going to happen no matter what we did.
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
Nelson Mandela
At this point I’m feeling pretty embarrassed with the state of humanity. This is a bad deal. This is a very, very bad deal. We cut off our nose to spite our face, but then COVID also took our face.
Unfortunately, we can’t even stop there. This is not a clean-cut comparison between COVID deaths that may or may not be avoided vs. births that will never happen. We also have to bring back the Adelaide iceberg and make peace with all the other collateral damage we’ve caused.
At this point in the article, I really don’t know what to say. It’s just stunning how much damage we’re capable of. I guess what I’ll leave you with is one more philosophical consideration: the human rights perspective. Consider the distinction in human rights between people who are affected by COVID and people who are affected by the response to COVID.
People affected by COVID do not have an intrinsic right to bypass respiratory viruses. These little bastards have been with us for quite some time, and they aren’t going away any time soon. There is nothing in the contract between humans and Mother Nature which says we can opt out of that. We are not entitled to a world without viral disease, no matter how much we long for it.
On the other hand, people affected by the response to COVID do have an intrinsic right to the life and liberty they have been deprived of. An unborn baby who won’t make it out of the womb because of the vaccine has an intrinsic right to life. Even if the vaccine is administered to millions of pregnant women and it only causes one single miscarriage– it has still broken the fundamental laws associated with human rights. Similarly, babies born with defects have an intrinsic right to life, which must be secured by our intrinsic duty to protect them. Young children have a right to an education; to grow; to develop naturally; to feel innocence; to feel safety. Older children have a right to the liberty and independence that defines their coming of age. Every person has a right to pursue happiness in their own way.
In response to the perceived risks of COVID, we discarded human rights in favor of whatever felt like a good idea at the time. We became convinced that take-out dinners and cloth masks would relieve us of our mundane obligations to Nature. We happily exchanged our dignity for dependence, and our volition for vaccines. As the months went by, we didn’t even notice that the life lost to COVID became overshadowed by the life we’ll never have at all.
Simply put, we lost our way. We forgot who we are and we forgot the principles that we built society upon.
It’s long past time to remember who we are and where we’re going. Are we nihilistic consumers, floating through space for no particular reason other than to avoid viruses? Or are we destined for something out among the stars?
