Vaccine Mandates a Slippery Slope towards the Surveillance State and Mark of the Beast

[Ken]

Are you suggesting that vaccinated people don't contract and spread COVID?

I would be very interested also in hearing your response to this question, Boot...

Nothing is 100%, but vaccination makes a big difference in the odds of getting Covid in the first place, and they seem to shorten the length of time you are infectious and reduce the odds of spreading the virus if you do. And these are valid reasons for an employer to want employees to be vaccinated.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... cases.html
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/ ... ontagious/

Whether or not you agree, employers who have vaccine mandates believe that this is true. Not because they worship the beast and are trying to force you to do the same. They are trying to keep their employees and their customers safe, based on mainstream public health recommendations.

Employers actually have a lot of reasons for implementing vaccine requirements.

1. If they are self-insured as a lot of large employers are, then reducing health care costs through vaccinations and other forms of preventative medicine saves the company money.

2. A healthier workforce means less absentee costs do to illness which saves the company money

3. Employers may well have vulnerable employees who are immunocompromised or otherwise at higher risk of illness despite being vaccinated. And employers have an interest generally in making sure that their work-places are not vectors for disease. This means things like improved HVAC and ventilation systems, increased sanitation, and yes, making sure that employees are vaccinated.

4. Employers do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of society and most will consider that they have a social obligation to do their part in bringing the pandemic to an end. Among other things this means yes, encouraging or requiring vaccinations.

We live in a free market society. Employers are free to impose employment conditions on their workers. And employees are free to take their labor elsewhere. Or opt out completely and start a business apart from the control of large employers.

In point of fact, most large employers have come out in favor of the government's mandates. Because they want to impose vaccine requirements for the reasons listed above but deflect the flack to the government rather than put up with it themselves.

[Josh]

And if one is consistent in rejecting all products tested on cell lines I can respect that...and support that position though I don't hold it. If one does decide to civilly disobey I support that too though one needs to live then with the consequences. At our school we didn't strictly follow all mitigation directives...and I was willing to take the consequences if there were some...there weren't.

What I am saying is...vaccines seem hardly the mark of the beast.

I agree with all of this. To me, there's a huge difference between (1) refusing to use any product tested on cell lines and (2) calling vaccinations the mark of the beast or saying that children are being aborted in order to make vaccines or saying that Covid-19 is not real.

Children are aborted in order to allow foetal stem cell testing to happen.

It boggles me how you just keep pretending this isn't the case. If you want to accept foetal stem cell testing - then you are accepting aborting children in order to replenish foetal stem cell lines as well.

[Josh]

Nothing is 100%, but vaccination makes a big difference in the odds of getting Covid in the first place, and they seem to shorten the length of time you are infectious and reduce the odds of spreading the virus if you do. And these are valid reasons for an employer to want employees to be vaccinated.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... cases.html
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/ ... ontagious/

Whether or not you agree, employers who have vaccine mandates believe that this is true. Not because they worship the beast and are trying to force you to do the same. They are trying to keep their employees and their customers safe, based on mainstream public health recommendations.

Is any of this true about the Omicron variant?

A great deal of airline flights are cancelled today with employers saying their crews are out sick with COVID. An airline like United claims they vaccinated 98% of their workforce and they fired or laid off the rest of their workers. Yet a substantial amount of their flights are cancelled today due to COVID.

So does the vaccine work against COVID, or not? Variants always happen with every disease. If the vaccine doesn't work against the Omicron variant - well, then it doesn't work at all.

[Josh]

Employers actually have a lot of reasons for implementing vaccine requirements.

1. If they are self-insured as a lot of large employers are, then reducing health care costs through vaccinations and other forms of preventative medicine saves the company money.

Their efforts would be better spend on reducing obesity and alcoholism in their workforce then.

2. A healthier workforce means less absentee costs do to illness which saves the company money

United Airlines is almost 100% vaccinated yet has a huge amoutn of absenteeism today due to COVID.

We live in a free market society. Employers are free to impose employment conditions on their workers. And employees are free to take their labor elsewhere. Or opt out completely and start a business apart from the control of large employers.

This is patently false. There is a federal mandate that employers MUST require vaccinations of employees if they have over 100 employees. That's not a "free market".

In point of fact, most large employers have come out in favor of the government's mandates. Because they want to impose vaccine requirements for the reasons listed above but deflect the flack to the government rather than put up with it themselves.

Now you're going to tell us that most large employers just out of the goodness of their heart do what is best for employees and customers?

[Bootstrap]

I agree with all of this. To me, there's a huge difference between (1) refusing to use any product tested on cell lines and (2) calling vaccinations the mark of the beast or saying that children are being aborted in order to make vaccines or saying that Covid-19 is not real.

Children are aborted in order to allow foetal stem cell testing to happen.

It boggles me how you just keep pretending this isn't the case. If you want to accept foetal stem cell testing - then you are accepting aborting children in order to replenish foetal stem cell lines as well.

I believe what you just said is quite simply false. I have put a fair amount of time looking at the evidence on this. So if you have real evidence here, please produce it.

No reliable source I can find says that babies are being aborted in order to produce vaccines. That's not pretending, that's looking at the available evidence. If you have better evidence, please bring it. Let's not let build a culture of conspiracy theory and false accusation.

It is true, however, that HEK293 cells are used in production or testing for the Covid-19 vaccines. And the baby whose cells started the HEK293 line was likely aborted in the early 1970s - but not in order to harvest cells for science.

I believe the following summary is accurate. According to this source, the great majority of processed/packaged food products available for sale in the United States are also likely to contain ingredients produced or tested in HEK293 cells. Are there websites that list everything produced or tested using HEK293 for people who want to consistently avoid any of them?

Statement from Pro-Life Catholic Scholars on the Moral Acceptability of Receiving COVID-19 Vaccines

Common to the four major vaccines, produced by Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca is some use of “immortalized” human cell lines. Ordinarily, cells taken from a body have a limited life span, undergoing only a fixed number of cell divisions before they arrest and die. For ongoing research, scientists prefer to use a “cell line,” or a population of cells derived from a single source that has been modified (typically by some form of genetic mutation) to divide indefinitely in culture. Such “immortalized” cell lines allow scientists to conduct many experiments on cells that are both genetically identical and routinely available in the laboratory.

HEK293 is one such commonly used line.[1] The name “HEK” stands for “human embryonic kidney,” and “293” refers to the 293rd experiment conducted by the scientist who produced the cell line. The embryonic kidney cells were originally obtained from the remains of a deceased unborn child following what appears to be an elective abortion that took place in the Netherlands during the early 1970s. The exact circumstances of the abortion are not known, but the scientists producing the cell line were not directly involved and, crucially, the abortion was not performed for the sake of providing biological materials to researchers.

HEK293 cells are particularly susceptible to the introduction of foreign DNA, and they rapidly became a standard scientific workhorse, that is widely used by both basic scientists and by industry. Although there are currently many modified versions of HEK293s that optimize these cells for specific purposes, all of the HEK293 cells available around the world today were derived from the remains of a single unborn child that was aborted a half a century ago. Importantly, there is no ongoing use of aborted tissue to generate HEK293 cells, to modify these cells, or to maintain them in the laboratory. Thus, the use of HEK293 (and similar immortalized lines) does not create future incentives for more abortions.

How widely used are HEK293 cells? They are commonly used for testing processed foods produced by companies such as Kraft, Nestlé, Cadbury and others. Indeed, the great majority of processed/packaged food products available for sale in the United States are likely to contain ingredients produced or tested in HEK293 cells.

They are also used as an alternative to animal testing in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry. And their use in biomedical research is ubiquitous and has contributed to an enormous number of new medications and medical procedures developed over the last several decades. It thus seems fair to say that in addition to the use of HEK293 cells by the scientific community, nearly every person in the modern world has consumed food products, taken medications or used cosmetics/personal care products that were developed through the use of HEK293 cells in the food, biomedical and cosmetic industries.

The various vaccines have made different uses of the HEK293 cell line, with Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca using them for manufacture, Pfizer and Moderna for testing only. But these differences are irrelevant to the following questions:

• Do any of the vaccines make more use than others of the mortal remains of unborn children from whom the cell lines were derived? The answer is no; as a matter of scientific fact, no fetal “body parts” are present in these immortal cell lines. The immortal cell lines are artifacts—biological products that have been modified and reproduced many times over, and they do not retain the natural function of the tissue from which they were derived. They are not “body parts” in any meaningful or morally relevant sense.
• Does the production and use of any of the vaccines contribute to, cooperate with, or promote any abortion? Again, the answer is no, for the abortions from which cell lines such as HEK293 were derived happened decades ago, and no further fetal tissue is used or needed for the maintenance of these lines.

Common to all pro-life witness is recognition that the apparent elective abortion that led to the derivation of the HEK293 cell line was morally impermissible and involved the unjust taking of a human life. But to repeat, the HEK293 cell line currently used around the globe in scientific research and those like it do not contain the remains of any human being and so its use does not show disrespect for human remains, any more than the contemporary use of products, such as roads or train lines, that were constructed by unjustly enslaved human beings, or use of land unjustly taken, shows disrespect for those victims in the distant past.

[Bootstrap]

Nothing is 100%, but vaccination makes a big difference in the odds of getting Covid in the first place, and they seem to shorten the length of time you are infectious and reduce the odds of spreading the virus if you do. And these are valid reasons for an employer to want employees to be vaccinated.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... cases.html
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/ ... ontagious/

Whether or not you agree, employers who have vaccine mandates believe that this is true. Not because they worship the beast and are trying to force you to do the same. They are trying to keep their employees and their customers safe, based on mainstream public health recommendations.

Is any of this true about the Omicron variant?

Well, we're all speculating until the data comes in, but preliminary data seems to suggest this probably is true of the Omicron variant as well, especially with boosters - the effectiveness is less, but still substantial. Over the coming month, we will know for than we do now. But it's pretty clear what the medical community as a whole is recommending now, and that's what employers often follow.

But if you are an employer, and don't want to wait for people to get sick before we have all the data, there are good reasons to do what you can now. And preliminary data says it may well be very helpful. Employers aren't doing this because they worship the beast, they are doing this because they want to protect people during a pandemic.

A great deal of airline flights are cancelled today with employers saying their crews are out sick with COVID. An airline like United claims they vaccinated 98% of their workforce and they fired or laid off the rest of their workers. Yet a substantial amount of their flights are cancelled today due to COVID.

I don't know the numbers behind United and Delta.

I do know this: To know whether the vaccine works against Omicron, you have to compare rates among the vaccinated to rates among the unvaccinated. This resource looks at death rates among vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, and explains how to compare in easy-to-understand ways:

How do death rates from COVID-19 differ between people who are vaccinated and those who are not?

I have not yet found a similar comparison for people getting Omicron or transmitting it to others. I suspect that is weeks off or a month off or so. We'll know with more certainty then.

So does the vaccine work against COVID, or not? Variants always happen with every disease. If the vaccine doesn't work against the Omicron variant - well, then it doesn't work at all.

If the vaccine offers 50-60% immunity, rather than the 90+% you get against Delta, it still makes a significant difference. The real question is this: what percent immunity does the vaccine give against Omicron? And I think it's still to early to know with any certainty.

But this is easy to know with certainty: people are trying to protect lives. Nobody is asking anyone to worship a beast to get a vaccine.

[Bootstrap]

Addendum: in Sweden not everyone is keen to be chipped and it remains voluntary, but the technology is already there.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/vi ... 1200837625

This article reinforces something I keep saying: convenience is what is driving people to give up privacy, and most of this has nothing to do with vaccines.

Imagine carrying just about everything you need beneath the surface of your hand - your wallet, keys and ID, all in a microchip. That’s reality in Sweden, as some early-adopters implant the tiny devices beneath their skin.

The technologies you worry about are being developed, but not because of vaccines. Some people would just rather not worry about where their car keys are and like the convenience of paying more easily. That's the same reason people use cell phones that leak all kinds of personal data, they like Google maps, digital payments, browsing and buying things with a hand-held device, texting, etc. If you worry about privacy and what could be done with your personal information, vaccines aren't the most interesting thing to worry about. What people are doing with your cell phone data is.

I don't think cell phones are the mark of the beast either. But if we do get significant persecution in this country, cell phone data can be used against us in ways vaccines cannot.

[Josh]

A great deal of airline flights are cancelled today with employers saying their crews are out sick with COVID. An airline like United claims they vaccinated 98% of their workforce and they fired or laid off the rest of their workers. Yet a substantial amount of their flights are cancelled today due to COVID.

I don't know the numbers behind United and Delta.

Let me help you:

United Airlines says 99% of workforce is vaccinated, nearly 600 workers to be fired

United Airlines said 99% of its employees have been vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus, and nearly 600 employees who didn’t get the vaccine will be fired.

In a memo from CEO Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart, the Chicago-based airline (NASDAQ: UAL) said that the decision to fire the unvaccinated employees was “an incredibly difficult decision but keeping our team safe has always been our first priority.”

Last month, United became the first major U.S. air carrier to institute an employee vaccination mandate after Kirby said he has written “dozens” of condolences letters to United family members who had someone die of Covid-19.

https://www.cleveland.com/business/2021 ... fired.html

[Josh]

Meanwhile:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus- ... df7dc8335c

Lufthansa, United, Delta cancel flights over Christmas

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — At least three major airlines said they have canceled dozens of flights because illnesses largely tied to the omicron variant of COVID-19 have taken a toll on flight crew numbers during the busy holiday travel season.

Germany-based Lufthansa said Friday that it was canceling a dozen long-haul transatlantic flights over the Christmas holiday period because of a “massive rise” in sick leave among pilots. The cancellations on flights to Houston, Boston and Washington come despite a “large buffer” of additional staff for the period.

So you have a workforce that is 99% vaccinated, yet having mass cancellations today.

[Josh]

No reliable source I can find says that babies are being aborted in order to produce vaccines. That's not pretending, that's looking at the available evidence. If you have better evidence, please bring it. Let's not let build a culture of conspiracy theory and false accusation.

There is no "reliable source" because research simply isn't done on this. Sorry.

It is true, however, that HEK293 cells are used in production or testing for the Covid-19 vaccines. And the baby whose cells started the HEK293 line was likely aborted in the early 1970s - but not in order to harvest cells for science.

Wrong again. Cell lines as recent as 1995 are also used (PER.C6). So, yes, you're perpetrating falsehood when you claim "nobody has been aborted since the 1970s".

I believe the following summary is accurate. According to this source, the great majority of processed/packaged food products available for sale in the United States are also likely to contain ingredients produced or tested in HEK293 cells. Are there websites that list everything produced or tested using HEK293 for people who want to consistently avoid any of them?

That is also false. The only widespread food product that meets that criteria is Nestle flavoured liquid coffee creamers (which I avoid). I trust the Children of God for Life researchers on this, since I know they are as opposed to abortion as I am.

Conflating eating normal food to using vaccines directly developed using testing on stem cells is ridiculous, but it continues to show your complete lack of respect for people like myself who don't believe abortion is OK.