The Calculated Risk

In our lives, every day, we take calculated risks. If we leave our homes, we may be killed in a drive-by or by drunk driver or a fall down icy stairs and break our necks.

If we stay home, we may be killed by atrophy, isolation or a fall down just regular ordinary wooden stairs and break our necks.

Life is a calculated risk magnified 1,000,000 fold by the choices we make. The teeny tiny choices we make. A cut during a shave that we don’t immediately sanitize. The missed appointment with a doctor for that “something that has been ailing me.” The decision to marry or not. The decision to ignore the tax bill. Every decision we make or don’t, carries a risk, calculated or not.

Today I heard 27 Air Force personnel were being petered out of the military because they wouldn’t get the Covid vaccine. Now I can speculate why they didn’t, but my opinion doesn't matter, they made a decision based on what they felt best and what I think may have been a “calculated risk” assessment.

Listening to the latest government information; Covid vaccines don’t keep you from getting Covid, nor do they prevent you from spreading Covid. It seems if you get one, your symptoms will be lessened. Maybe you won’t have to be ventilated or you may just feel like you have the flu, but even then, you still will be able to spread it to others.

So basically, these 27 are being punished because they might spread it to others. Not that they have spread it to others, but they might. I’ve never heard of a vaccine that once you have it, you can still get the virus or disease and you might be able to spread it to others. NEVER.

I got the usual vaccines as a child. I had Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR); I had Polio (for sure that one was all the rage); I had Diphtheria, Whooping Cough, Tetanus. Later, at 24, I had Meningitis in actuality but I don’t think there was a Meningitis shot when I was a kid. Nevertheless, I had to have that vaccine before I entered graduate work a few years later, even though I already had it and spent a week in hospital for it. And, there was no “flu” vaccine when I was a kid.

One year, when I was about 9, I got the flu. My mother seeing my fever spike, put about ten pounds of blankets on me because in her world if I could sweat out that fever I would survive. Completely contrary to what we now know. I have no idea how many brain cells she killed with that method, but here I am fairly functional even though if she’d tried to keep my fever down versus driving it up to the breaking point, I might have been an Einstein.

Often, people will cite established vaccine mandates for service members as to why they should be mandated for Covid. But as those 27 know, they are being mandated vaccines that have been trial tested and in common population circulation for years, not months.

In fact, none of the vaccines have FDA approval, they’re in circulation on a special “emergency” waiver. The “Not Ready for Prime Time” Covid vaccine just got worldwide wide distribution this last March or so. Thus the probability is if even if you get it, you can still get Covid and you can still spread Covid.

Why should anyone care that these 27 are taking a “calculated risk” with their own health? They tell us, if you are vaccinated, you can still get Covid, but it won’t be the the "automatic death sentence Covid". And further they are telling us, if you get vaccinated you can still spread it to others, especially the “unvaccinated” and that would be very, very bad. So if you don’t get vaccinated you might get Covid and it will be far worse than if you are and you could spread it to others, even if they are vaccinated or unvaccinated.

So, in essence, you can only spread the awful deadly Covid if you’re vaccinated or unvaccinated, to people who have not been vaccinated. Either way, you might kill those who are not vaccinated, but if they were vaccinated they might not die they’d just spread it to somebody else who is not vaccinated and that person might die.

And those who are not vaccinated become the pariahs of society, unable to go to bars, restaurants or keep their jobs…even though those who are vaccinated are still able to infect the unvaccinated.

That’s like saying I take the calculated risk of speeding. 999 times out of 1,000 I might not get in a car crash with someone else while doing 90 down the expressway. And I might get caught 10 times and ticketed. But at no point will I lose my job for speeding or be kept out of restaurants because I got ticketed ten times or have my kids kept out of school because they were in the car with me when I was doing 90 mph.

In the speeding I was taking a calculated risk, way more dangerous than what I have witnessed with Covid, and I got fined, maybe even put in jail for a night or had my driver’s license suspended after the 10th time. But I still could go out to eat, work my job, have my kids in school.

Yes, I’ve been vaxxed. I am old that’s why. I’m not a twenty-something Airman. And that’s what they told us. You gotta protect grandma. But now they’re telling us even if you’re vaxxed, Grandma can still get it. So why wouldn't I, as a strapping 27 year old take a vax that hasn’t been around much longer than a fortnight? Maybe because I’m 27 and I have no idea how this will affect me at 45? Could that be the calculated risk?

We don’t tell people who chose to smoke, drink or overeat that they are now pariahs in society, do we? Oh, wait! We do. Fat people typically have a tough time getting a job, that’s a fact. A lot of job applications say “No Smokers.” I haven’t seen anything to regulate drinking on job announcements and I doubt that will ever happen, because for most people, if you have a job at some point you will want to drink. That too is a fact.

But we certainly don’t see “If you’ve already been vaccinated, you are welcome to apply, even though we know you can still get it and more importantly spread it.” Trust me…that is coming.

I hope there are lawsuits by employees that state the facts, not the hysteria. Why are they discriminating against the un-vaxxed? Even though there is very little appreciable difference on spread?

And I hope the courts will hold up the right to self-determination and ignore the flat-earthers who fail to see the lack of logic in their thinking.

Time to open up fully and see calculated risk as ancient, important and noble as time itself.

Breaking News as of Today: New York Times reports risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare nerve disorder, occurring in those vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.