Questions To Ask Vaccine-Hesitant Friends

Introductory Thoughts

Here are a few questions I have asked vaccine-hesitant friends when they asked me about vaccines, along with source links for the information. I recommend keeping such a dialog in the context of relationships. If you don’t have a relationship, don’t try to persuade.

I do not recommend simply forwarding them a link to this page; it really won’t have any benefit. Instead, educate yourself so you can have a useful one-on-one conversation and address some of their real and valid concerns.

I realize that sharing this online in this blog is akin to standing on a street corner soap box, rather than asking these questions in a conversation, but I find this blog a useful way to make the questions and links readily available to my friends.

If you have other questions you think might be worth asking, please drop them in the comments, along with sources/links for the answers. (All questions are moderated.)

Monoclonal Antibody Questions

If you oppose vaccines, but support COVID treatment with monoclonal antibodies, have you considered that those monoclonal antibody treatments have so far been tested a lot less rigorously than the vaccines, and have a lot fewer doses administered to prove their safety in real-life applications (nearly 500 million COVID vaccine doses so far in the US alone as of October 2021)? For example, from Regeneron’s own website, “REGEN-COV is investigational because it is still being studied. There is limited information known about the safety and effectiveness of using REGEN-COV to treat people with COVID-19 or to prevent COVID-19 in people who are at high risk of being exposed to someone who is infected with SARS-CoV-2. REGEN-COV is not authorized for pre-exposure prophylaxis for prevention of COVID-19. REGEN-COV has not been approved, but has been authorized for emergency use by FDA.” (clinicaltrials.gov) (cdc.gov) (ourworldindata.org)

Are you aware that monoclonal antibodies, such as Regeneron’s REGEN-COV, are NOT approved by the FDA, but only temporarily authorized under an emergency use authorization? (fda.gov)

Are you aware that “monoclonal antibodies, such as REGEN-COV, may be associated with worse clinical
outcomes when administered to hospitalized patients with COVID-19 requiring high
flow oxygen or mechanical ventilation” (from a fact sheet on Regeneron’s website). (regeneron.com)

Are you aware that Regeneron does not consider its monoclonal antibody treatment a substitution for vaccination? “Post-exposure prophylaxis with REGEN-COV (casirivimab and imdevimab) is not a
substitute for vaccination against COVID-19.” (regeneron.com)

If you oppose vaccines because you worry about what’s in them, or you fear that the government is injecting you with tracking chips, why are you more inclined to trust monoclonal antibodies or other post-infection treatments that are also injected intravenously? (regeneron.com)

Are you aware that the FDA-emergency-authorized COVID monoclonal antibody treatments are made directly from mouse cells and proteins? (For example, from Regeneron’s website, “Regeneron’s VelocImmune technology utilizes a proprietary genetically engineered mouse platform endowed with a genetically humanized immune system to produce optimized fully human antibodies.”) The mRNA COVID vaccines have no non-human proteins in them. (regeneron.com)

Are you aware that COVID monoclonal antibody treatments have a fairly high percentage of side effects? (For example, REGEN-COV has about a 1 in 100 risk of anaphylaxis, compared to about 1 in 400,000 for Moderna and 1 in 217,000 for Pfizer.) And just like the vaccines, there are no long-term outcome studies yet. (cancer.org) (medshadow.org) (NationalGeographic.com) (pennmedicine.org)

Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)

If you oppose vaccines, but support treatment with HCQ or ivermectin, have you considered that those medicines have far less study to prove efficacy than the vaccines? Have you considered that all the reliable studies that HAVE been done show them to be far, far less effective than the vaccines – if they’re effective at all? Most studies show no effect. The one meta-study most often cited as proof that they work was retracted after serious problems were noted by reviewers. (fda.gov) (nature.com) (statnews.com)

If you oppose vaccines, but support treatment with HCQ or ivermectin, have you considered that those medicines have a higher rate of side effects than the vaccines, even when administered at recommended levels? (For example, for ivermectin, about 1% rate of side effects even when administered at anti-parasite levels that are far too low for suggested COVID prevention or treatment, and 10% of those were serious.) (rxlist.com) (webmd.com)

Treatment Versus Prevention

If you oppose vaccines and would rather simply treat COVID if it gets serious (which is about 1 in 16 cases), are you aware that once the body begins a serious reaction (usually from what’s called a “cytokine storm” of runaway inflammation), there’s no guaranteed treatment for severe COVID? Doctors pretty much have to resort to trying to keep the body alive while the virus and the resulting inflammation response runs its course. Monoclonal antibodies help but are not a guarantee. Vitamin D and zinc and other supplements are not proven and studies show some but only limited value. There are simply no guarantees of recovery or freedom from long-term effects. (harvard.edu) (mayoclinic.org) (uchealth.org)

Aborted Fetal Cells

If you oppose vaccines because of a connection with aborted fetus stem cells, are you aware that the stem cell lines used in research came from exactly two aborted fetuses more than 35 years ago, and NOT from ongoing abortions? One was in 1973 and the other in 1985 (and there may have been a third in 2015). Those stem cell lines have been replicated and maintained in the 35+ years since, and used in a huge number of research and production projects of all kinds. They are literally thousands of cell generations away from the original donor fetuses. This doesn’t mean evil wasn’t done at the time of those two abortions, but it’s an complete fallacy to claim or even imply that abortions are being caused today for the purpose of creating the new vaccines, literally decades later. In 2009 guidelines were put in place to prevent further harvesting. (nebraskamed.com) (health.nd.gov) (catholicnews.com)

If you oppose vaccines because of a connection with aborted fetus stem cells, are you aware of all the other medicines and products you probably use that were also tested and/or developed using the exact same aborted fetus stem cell lines? Lots of cosmetics, for example. Also lots of medicines you probably use, including acetaminophen, albuterol, aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Tums, Lipitor, Senokot, Motrin, Maalox, Ex-Lax, Benadryl, Sudafed, Preparation H, Claritin, Prilosec, and Zoloft. Many common artificial flavors were tested this way. Plenty of perfumes. Did you ever get the chicken pox vaccine? That, too. Even the monoclonal antibody treatments that might help save you if you aren’t vaccinated and you get severe COVID were stem-cell tested. (mcgill.ca) (webmd.com) (cincinnati.com) (nbcnews.com)