For the Sake of Clarity

It seems I am losing my ability to communicate accurately, as the last several posts have led to readers completely missing the point I was trying to make. I will address just yesterday’s post for the sake of simplicity, a post in which readers suggested I was promoting misinformation and lies.

Let’s assume that Fauci’s statement in the first paragraph, that the vaccine will protect adequately from the Omicron variant, is true. It has been suggested that my comment in that first paragraph was was intended as contradiction of that statement, but that is not what I wrote. What I wrote was that the following content of the news report contradicted his statement.

I did not claim that the following content of the news report represented truth, merely that NBC News reported it. All of the “facts” in that material, about positive Covid tests in professional football teams and what have you, may have been lies and misinformation. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I did not present them for the purpose of making any argument about the validity or otherwise of the vaccine.

I presented them merely because they were things that the media was reporting along with Fauci’s statement that the vaccine is effective and with statements urging people to get vaccinated if they had not already done so.

The one opinion I offered as to vaccine effectiveness was when I said that I regarded the requirement for vaccinated persons to wear a mask as indication of the government’s lack of confidence in the vaccine’s effectiveness. That is not an unreasonable assumption. It was not intended as a reflection of my confidence or lack thereof in the vaccine.

Perhaps, for clarity, my last sentence should have read more along the lines of, “Why would the media urge people to get vaccinated after reporting a host of lies and misinformation that seem to indicate that the vaccines do not work?”

I have no axe to grind. I don’t know whether the vaccine works or does not work. I don’t know whether or not it is dangerous. If you are vaccinated, I applaud you. If you are not, I don’t care. But I am able to think rationally, and I recognize when the media is printing gibberish, and it is that upon which I was commenting.