Why am I not getting vaccinated for COVID-19?

 

Why am I not getting vaccinated for COVID-19?

 

The pressure is mounting. Get vaccinated.  Soon there will be travel restrictions only allowing COVID-19 vaccinated people to roam freely, I am told.

 

I love science—science that I do, not the science that someone else has purportedly done and I am being asked to believe in.  Scriptures are to be read from the books, not science.  Science is about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and analyzing the data coming from these experiences.

 

With that kind of love for science, knowing that each one of us is unique in their body composition, and not believing in general medications, I ask myself what scientific data about COVID-19 I trust.  The easiest answer is obvious; I should trust the data that is most relevant to myself: my own body, my own experience with COVID-19.  I have over twelve months of this data to review—considering the end of February 2020 to be the start of the global pandemic.  In these twelve months this body has traveled nationally and internationally, has met people in groups big and small, and is still free of the feared infection.  If by taking small precautions, this body has been able to ward off Corona for 12 months, why should I believe this body will not be able to do so in future too?

 

A second level of comfort comes from studying the other set of data most relevant to me: the COVID-19 experience of my immediate family members. Parents, both over 80, active, meeting people, going places, are doing fine; siblings with similarly active lifestyles are also doing fine; all cousins are faring well too—the only infection being experienced by a 29-year-old man who ran a fever for a few days but got well within 10 days.  Why must this relevant medical history of immediate family members not console me?

 

The third set of COVID-19 medical data that I trust in, comes from studying the experiences of friends who attended college with me.  They were born around the same time I came in this world; they come from social backgrounds like mine.  Thanks to a WhatsApp group I am aware of things happening in their lives. Of these 195 people only one person got infected but got well within fifteen days.

 

My own medical history, the medical histories of my immediate family members and my close friends, tell me to decline getting the COVID-19 vaccination till long term effects of this vaccine have been analyzed.  And if there is something deep inside me that makes me susceptible to COVID-19, I am willing to take the risk.  I have lived a quirky life that gamblers live and am ready to lose this time.

 

A future Olympian revealed

A future Olympian revealed

February 24, 2021. In a practice run that took place between cross country runners from various schools of the Lake County, one athlete stood out as a possible member of the future US Olympics team.  Hannah Garrity, a Clearlake High School freshman who finished the three-mile race in roughly 15 minutes made her competitors look little kids in diapers.  The race took place at the Six Sigma Ranch in Lower Lake.

Oat Hill Mine Trail

 As the name suggests Oat Hill Mine Trail is a hiking trail previously used for mining operations.  We walked it starting from the trailhead at Highway 29, before the town of Calistoga.  At higher elevations you see a lot of burned trees.  Here are a few photos:

Ignacio Valley Preserve, Novato, California

 Ignacio Valley Preserve is a big park and there are various entrances.  Still, the directions given by the Google maps were incorrect.  The main entrance of the park is at the west end of the Fairway Drive.  Here are a few photos taken that day.

Are the Chinese Lying about their COVID-19 Fatalities?

 

Are the Chinese Lying about their COVID-19 Fatalities?

Three weeks ago the total US COVID 19 deaths passed the 400,000 milestone; the race is on towards the half a million mark.  Grim, indeed!

Meanwhile, China is reporting a total of 4,636 COVID related deaths so far.  How come China has less than one-hundredth of the total US deaths--even when China is allegedly the birthplace of the new Corona virus; even when China has over three times the population of the US; and even when China has almost a five-fold population density than the US?

The usual answer you hear in the west is that the Chinese are lying.  That the Chinese are under-reporting their COVID-19 deaths.  So, how many dead people is China hiding?  Ignoring the arrival time of the virus, if the US with a population of 328 million has 468,000 deaths (as of February 9, 2021), what should be the estimate of the COVID-19 fatalities in China, with a population of 1.4 Billion? Two million dead people?

I do not consider myself an expert on China, but if multiple trips to a country can give one a slightly better knowledge of that country than the understanding of an average person who never went there, I may claim that advantage.  

As compared to the country’s eastern part, western China is a sparsely populated area.  Back in 1995, when the city of Kashgar was still not connected to the Chinese national railroad system, I took buses to travel from the Pakistan-China border to the big city of Urumqi.  As we passed through small towns and vast expanses of wilderness, I wondered what an essentially one-party government was capable of doing with the people it considered the ‘enemies of the state.’  I saw a lot of empty land to build concentration camps on.

Yes, China can possibly do secretive things in a remote area, say in its western region or in deep south, closer to the borders of the Indo-Chinese countries, but COVID-19 is a different animal.  This ailment is a contagious respiratory disease, transmitted from one person to another. COVID-19 is supposed to be a high population density disease, an urban phenomenon. We expect it to be a New York disease, a London disease, a Calcutta disease, a Beijing and Shanghai disease.  

China because of its ever-increasing involvement in the global trade is constantly evolving. The world is deeply connected with today’s China and especially with its large urban centers.  You cannot have over 50 international airlines flying out of the big Chinese cities and have no knowledge of large number of people mysteriously disappearing from the urban centers.

May be the Chinese COVID-19 deaths are really that low.  May be instead of doubting the Chinese numbers we should be asking: Why are the US COVID-19 deaths so high?

Tags: The deceptive Chinese COVID-19 statistics

China is hiding its COVID-19 deaths

China is under-reporting its COVID fatalities

Chinese cremation centers are working overtime to cremate COVID-19 dead bodies

China has over two million COVID-19 deaths

China's COVID-19 deaths are a lot higher than the numbers reported by the Chinese Government

China is claiming COVID-19 no more lethal than normal flu

Life has come back to normal in China, but not in the rest of the world

In Wuhan, the bat soup is back on the menu

The Asian people have better immunity towards COVID

Communist countries are hiding their Corona death figures

Totalitarian governments are under-reporting their COVID fatalities

COVID-19: The game of numbers 

Wuhan Flu

Chinese Flu

COVID-19, COVID-20, COVID-21

Karima Mehrab Police case is still open

 

Yesterday, by the time I found out the name of the Toronto Police Service constable investigating Karima Mehrab’s case, he was gone for the day.  I was a bit more lucky today; I got to talk to Constable Butt. According to Officer Butt the case is still open but the initial determination has been made about there being no criminal activity related to Karima Mehrab’s death.  Did he discover Karima’s dead body?  No.  But he made the determination (by looking at the body) that there was no criminal activity.  Was Karima Mehrab found alive on December 21?  No, she was deceased by then.  Then why does the TPS web site say, ‘she was located Monday, December 21, 2020, at 9:15 a.m.’?  Constable Butt thought I should talk to a different division of the TPS that maintains the web site about this detail.

 

Labels: Karima Baloch, Baloch activist