The Governmental Upside to Vaccines (sic)

 

There is a '(sic)' next to the word 'vaccine' because it is a fact that the vaccines we are being cajoled into taking are not actually vaccines in the accepted sense of the word.  For the record:

A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease.  A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins.  The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future.
    — Wikipedia, 9-21-21

(Whenever, following, I use the term 'vaccine', I am using it as a convenient shorthand only.)  The Covid-19 vaccine does not fit this description.  It is not synthesized from the C19 virus itself.  It does not provide immunity from C19, neither does it prevent future infection.  It's only claim is that it attenuates the severity of C19 should the vaccinated victim become infected.  Anecdotal evidence, largely from Israel, the most vaccinated country on Earth, suggests that the vaccine may, in fact, be more dangerous than C19 itself.  This is especially true for the so-called Delta variant.  That evidence takes the form that hospitalizations and deaths related to C19 closely parallels vaccination rates.  That is: as vaccinations go up, so do deaths.

Meanwhile, news out of India and Africa is being suppressed because it does not follow 'the narrative'.  That news strongly supports the view that Ivermectin (IVM) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) are effective prophylactics when administered early in the disease progression.  In the case of Africa, side-by-side graphs of 'vaccine countries' and 'IVM countries' show that death rates in IVM countries are a puny fraction of that in vaccine countries.  In the case of India, Kerala province went the vaccine-route while much of the rest of the country relied on early widespread HCQ/IVM use and the death rates in Kerala are substantially higher when compared to the rest of the country.

It isn't possible that our government doesn't know this, yet we are urged and coerced into getting vaccinated despite mounting evidence that other options have better outcomes.  Why would our government foist an unproven vaccination regimen on us when there are options that, it now appears likely if not 'certain', are better?

Given that these vaccines are by definition untested — there simply hasn't been enough time to know their long-term effects — could there be an ulterior motive?

Well, there's this:

If a third or more of our population were killed in [a nuclear] attack (a conservative estimate by the standards of the Rand Corporation's "Study of Nonmilitary Defense"), a stronger estate tax would have a tremendous revenue potential.
    — from a 1963 Federal Reserve System planning document

A new mRNA 'vaccine' whose long-term effect was to shorten life spans would likewise provide much-needed relief from Social Security's fast-approaching woes, especially if that vaccine or the disease it purports to treat were highly fatal to an older population.

Alternatively, it has been suggested that our planet is severely over-populated.  A nice little pandemic could fix that — if effective treatments can be suppressed.  It isn't outside the envelope of possibility that the vaccines are simply used as 21st-century snake oil.

In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment.  The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics.
    — Thomas Sowell

—==+++==—

Update:    As of July 8, 2021, IVM is recommended by CDC/NIH for treating C19.

Update:   April 2026   Huge upswing in stillbirths and miscarriages

 

What if Social Security...?

 

There's lots of nonsense out on FaceBook and other social media sites about Social Security.  "I paid into this my whole life!" someone will pout;  "Where's all my money?" and it's followed by claims that SS is old-age insurance or that there's a separate account in each person's name.

None of that is true.

From the very start of the program, SS was a two-pronged piece of legislation.  The first piece was a tax plan whereby every wage earner would be taxed some small amount and their employer would be taxed the same amount.  This tax money (FICA) went into the General Fund from day-1.  There was never a 'separate account', but the Social Security Administration did keep a record of how much was taken and the earnings the tax was based on.  You can still get from SSA a list of how much you earned (that was taxed) from the day you started work.  Mine goes back to 1962.

The other part of that legislation was a welfare plan under which certain persons would be paid money based on certain qualifications: how much you had earned, your age, your health conditions, and a few others.  Under this plan, people who had never worked a day in their life (for wages) still got SS 'benefits'.  If there had been those mythical 'separate accounts', their balance would have been zero.  As a matter of fact, everyone's balance is zero.  You have no contractual right to SS benefits even today.

But listening to various people carp about how unfair the system is got me to thinking about how things might have been had those politicians in the 30s really been looking out for the welfare of the people.  Try this on for size:

Suppose the SS law had been cast something like this:

1. Every wage earner must escrow with a trustee of their choosing not less than __% of their gross taxable wages.
2. Funds so escrowed may not be withdrawn before age ___, except as provided by law.
3. This account is the property of the wage earner and heirs.

As of right now, when you die, your SS benefits die with you (except for your spouse).  Your children and grandchildren do not inherit your benefits, but the scheme above makes your SS account truly yours as many people think (wrongly) is the case now.

There's something else.  There would be other changes that are harder to predict.

For one thing, all that money taken as taxes was used to fund the Social Security Administration, and none of that money would have been needed because there wouldn't have been a SSA.  Our federal spending would have been noticeably lower, our national debt would have been lower, the inflation rate would have been lower, and the general health of the economy would have been higher, not simply because of lower federal spending, but because all that money in individual investment accounts would have been used to fuel the private sector rather than being wasted on the bureaucracy.

The Dow-Jones which now stands at 25,000-something might have been much higher, and the dividends from a more robust economy would have been reflected in higher interest rates paid on your retirement account.  What effect would that have had?  Hard to tell, but I ran a little spreadsheet on my numbers — which were not exceptional — and at 8% of FICA earnings (not including the amount my employers were taxed) accumulated at 6% interest, I would have had almost $400K at retirement age.  In the hands of a savvy investor, that might have been substantially higher.  If that 8% were bumped up to 15% to account for the employer's portion, my balance at age-65 approaches $750K.  That's a substantial nest egg, no?

Beyond that, I'm guessing that those numbers would have been substantially higher given my actual experience with 401k savings accounts.  What little time I did have to pour money into a 401k still provided a nice pile that SS would otherwise not have provided, and that 401k is mine to do with as I please and to pass along to my children when I don't need it anymore.

Yes, indeed, FDR's Congress surely did not do us any favors writing the SS law the way they did, but that probably wasn't their intent in any case.

Regardless, the law is what the law is.  No, you do not have your own personal SS account with a pile of money squirreled away for your retirement.  Stop complaining.