mediatechnology wrote: ↑Fri Aug 08, 2025 1:30 pmDr. Hatfill said, “It was more dangerous to take a vaccine than it was to contract COVID-19 and be hospitalized with it.” This is what I've been saying since the very beginning. I was ridiculed, laughed at and called a conspiracy theorist.
I know I'm kinda late to the party here, but I'd like to share my personal COVID vaccine story, that further validates your "illiterate far-right conspiracy theory." The backstory portion is a bit lengthy, but integral to establishing what we were dealing with.
My small town Arkansas workplace was founded about 25 years ago by a pair of local guys, and quickly became an industry-dominating, runaway cash cow with double-digit annual growth. That $ucce$$ drew the attention of a global corporation, which dangled a money carrot the owners couldn't pass up.
The new ownership was packed 'n' stacked with hardcore ultra-lefties top to bottom, from the corporate CEO down, and they immediately initiated a scorched-earth blitzkrieg against our "eeeeville" quaint, family-and-friends workplace culture based on traditional, down-home Southern values. I'll spare the details of their sweeping new employee policies (which would require literally days to commit to text), but suffice to say they consisted cover-to-cover of key liberal doctrines, enforced with an iron fist by the new onsite network of Cancel Culture Gestapo. Future policy changes were implemented in response to whatever "social injustice" had aired on CNN the night before, and I'm NOT exaggerating one iota. What used to be a largely pleasant, actually sometimes fun place to work at became an abject misery, with
by far the worst morale of anywhere I've ever been. You get the picture.
When COVID rolled around, the sheeple, Fauci-puppet management went into "the sky is falling" total panic attack mode. I'll again spare the details of everything they did, but when the vaccine was rolled out we were ordered to get it within a couple of weeks, or an ongoing fine would be deducted from our paychecks every week until we did. It was christened a "non-compliance fee," obviously pulled from the same playbook as "carbon credits."
Just a few days after unleashing their vaccine policy, SCOTUS put vaccine mandates on hold pending hearing and deciding the case. Not ones to accept defeat, they quickly concocted a new plan that would sidestep a potential SCOTUS decision thwarting their iron-fisted control. If you refused the vaccine, they'd pay a much smaller percentage of your employee health insurance premium, leaving you to pay that share yourself or else lose your insurance.
As you can imagine, this kicked off a massive outrage firestorm among us blue collar employees. In response, the new management brought in a local MD (whom we all knew as a legendary quack and nutjob liberal activist) for an all-hands employee meeting to assure us the vaccines wuz safe 'n' effective cuz Fauci and da Gubmint sed so, and anyone who wouldn't wanna run and be the first in line was a kook Q'Anon conspiracy theorist with exceptionally low IQ and a penchant for bestiality. Several employees had connections elsewhere and quit, some who could afford the $160 monthly fine (plus an additional $160 for each family member insured on your policy) refused the vaccine, and those who fit into neither group had no choice but to unwillingly get it, which was the group I fell into.
My wife's equally idiotic wokeplace, I mean, uh,
workplace, did something similarly Draconian, requiring involuntary, mandatory use of your paid personal vacation time to cover THEIR mandated 5-day quarantine periods after exposure as well as actual COVID sickness. But, if you got the vaccine, you could retain your PTO and the company would cover it. Of course, policy dictates any work absences occurring after an employee's annual PTO allotment has been used must be due to a list of "emergency circumstances" defined by the company. Otherwise, they're regarded as unexcused absences and thus subject to disciplinary action, including termination upon the 3rd offense. Apparently, their own mandatory COVID quarantine period that the employee has no fault in nor anything to do with failed to meet the prescribed criteria, unless of course the employee first bowed down to the Cult of Fauci and despotic liberal authoritarianism.
So, we were facing dire financial losses or even termination, at the height of the pandemic when unemployment was skyrocketing and everything was uncertain, not to mention we'd both been at our jobs for many years and had seniority, benefits and privileges we'd lose even if we
were actually able to start over somewhere new. It's a long story as to why, but barring an absolute miracle, any changes to our employment at that time would've been devastating.
I got the Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccine at a local pharmacy, and my face instantly flushed hot and red and I felt woozy and high literally even before the needle left my arm. The pharmacy staff were very visibly worried, and asked me to stay so they could observe me. After about an hour I told them I had to go home, which I did even though they adamantly protested. They'd obviously seen this several times before, and knew it was bad. Driving home, I was having extreme difficulty and became a little frightened, because I literally felt like I was wastoid stoned on something and could barely think. Several days passed before most of the "totally stoned brain fog" and deep, soul-draining lethargy subsided. Some of it never has, over 4 years later.
At the 3.5-week mark, when the immunity resulting from this particular vaccine was supposedly at its absolute maximum level ever, I contracted COVID for the 2nd time. The first time, 6 months prior, was just like a normal cold except for complete loss of taste and smell, which mostly returned after about 5 days and fully over a couple of weeks. That 2nd time, I went from feeling fine to extremely sick in maybe an hour, and about an hour later they measured a 103.7° fever at the medical clinic, which I felt go even higher the next day. The next, I was probably the sickest I've ever been in my life, and was sick for 12 days. Man, that vaccine works great, doesn't it?
My wife got the 1st dose of the 2-shot Moderna, and became so sick she could barely get out of bed to use the bathroom. Her arm was swollen from wrist to neck, with a
huge red welt at the injection site, that was so sore she'd yelp in pain if it was bumped. After the 2nd dose, she was so sick I actually began worrying she might die. It was several weeks after the last shot before she was able to lift her hands above her head, and a few more months before she could do so without pain. We knew something really bad had happened to us both.
So, where are we at today? As noted, my mental faculty was immediately diminished upon receiving the vaccine, and has never recovered to its previous razor-sharp acuity. Just prior, I'd scored 138 on a 2 hour IQ test and was a lifelong expert speller, who as a child had won the annual award for being the best speller in my class every year from grades 1 through 6. Now, I struggle daily with spelling words I've effortlessly known my entire life, and have difficulty learning and processing new things. I constantly experience significant short-term memory issues, as well as intermittent long-term memory issues such as extreme difficulty recalling things like rudimentary data and frequently used equations that were previously as second-nature as my own name.
For example, I've been tinkering with electronics since childhood, and over the past few years have done so almost daily. Thus, despite not being formally educated I naturally have plenty of deeply ingrained electronics-related stuff in my cerebral archives that I can instantly recall at will, like 1/(2*pi*(Rout+Rload)*Cout) is the -3dB frequency of the high-pass filter formed by a cascaded gain stage. But, during a recent, particularly bad but thankfully short episode of this recurrent severe brain fog issue, I was designing something and
couldn't remember Ohm's Law, nor what the 3 terminals of a FET are. That was scary, my friends, and terrified me to my core.
My wife experienced the same nasty brain fog and near-crippling loss of energy and stamina short-term, and 4 years later has likewise not fully recovered. We used to go out and do stuff continually, but since the vaccine we struggle to get out of bed each day, and often crash soon after getting home from work. Activities like hiking in the mountains that didn't faze us at all before the vaccine became impossible soon after, and still are. A quick trip to the grocery store completely exhausts her, and she frequently misses important details because she has similar difficulties as myself in observing, processing, absorbing and retaining things.
Additionally, within a few months after getting the shots we mysteriously, simultaneously developed Type 2 diabetes. I was also stricken with several other major health issues within that same time frame. The diminished kidney and liver functions, heart arrhythmia and labored breathing have thankfully improved over time, and done so without medication. The gout, rheumatoid arthritis and almost uncontrollable high blood pressure have not, and I have to take lots of meds for them. The rheumatoid arthritis has robbed me of the lifelong joy of playing the guitar, mandolin, bass and piano, and has replaced that joy with constant pain.
That's my story: the COVID vaccine has ruined our health and decimated our quality of life. I'm just thankful we're not among the even more unfortunate ones, the ones who lost their very lives to it.
"I believe that we are going to have to get some new conspiracy theories. All the old ones turned out to be true." - Sen. John Kennedy
