Alexander Riley, Senior Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), has published an essay on controversies about Covid vaccines and masking. In “ForeverMask and NeverVax,” appearing online in the March 24 issue of The American Mind, he charts a position between extremes of the debate.
Dr. Riley, professor of sociology at Bucknell University, describes the two extremes as “on one side, the ForeverMaskers—’let’s wear masks forever and social distance unto death because the risk is too great”—and, on the other, the NeverVaxers—’COVID-19 is just a cold and the vaccines will kill you more surely than the virus.’” Statistics tell a grim tale. While Covid-19 did not return us to mortality rates during the hey-day of the Black Death, it “has killed 300,000 more of us than the Spanish flu did in 1918.” Covid vaccines “are about as safe as any vaccines we have ever developed.” They do not provide perfect protection; they significantly reduce our chances of dying from infection.
Riley is also critical of the masking extremists. “[T]he benefits of such a policy must always be evaluated against the massive negative health and economic consequences it [the masking] can—and did—produce.
The American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute. It “is dedicated to the ideas that drive our political life.”
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