I am defined as anti-vax, but I am really just against it for myself. People are free to do as they wish and I would like that same freedom extended to myself.

Context, I have some health issue with food where consuming a handful of very common foods - gluten (wheat), sugar (sucrose in particular, lactose is fine), sodium nitrities (deli meats, bacon, celery), glutamate (msg in chips, tomatoes, hard cheeses), caffeine - leads to sinus headaches. They are debilitating and were a regular occurrence up until I figured out they were food related. That is to say, some perfectly safe things are not safe at all for me to eat. I am very strict in my diet. I also work from home so I can cook every meal, I am not very social (no bars, restaurants), so I view myself as very low risk of spread.

I do not really trust doctors to give good advice. I have gone for my sinus headaches and was never told it was food. I was given prescriptions to mask the symptoms but that is not addressing the root cause of the illness. As well, doctors and the government are both in pharma's pocket, and hospitals have a profit incentive here too [1].

I am in my early 30s, very low risk of getting sick from COVID, lower risk of dying [2]. Low risk of transmission due to my lifestyle. I am pro mask.

Now my beliefs about COVID. Bluntly, it kills and hospitalizes old people and fat people [3]. I am neither. If you eat yourself into a risky position, that is on you to isolate, vaccinate, and take precautions, not me. I believe more cases are asymptomatic than reported due to the bias of testing only when you have symptoms. The risk of a young healthy person getting hospitalized is very, very low.

Let's look at the vaccine. It reduces symptoms in people who have it. It reduces transmission rates by reducing the window in which vaccinated people carry it, though vaccinated people carry the same viral load. Its efficacy wanes pretty quickly. It is not effective against omicron. It gives people more confidence to go out and participate in risky behavior. My main take away is that it protects the individual from severe symptoms, it does not eliminate the risk of transmission. We are also seeing a ton of breakthrough infections as anti bodies wane.

The vaccine is not without side effects. Myocarditis in particular is what I am concerned about, but given how my body responds to perfectly safe foods, there are more unknowns for me. I know that myocarditis and blood clots are relevant to specific vaccines and certain populations. However, in the same way that I'm not knowingly exposing myself to COVID, I am not going to knowingly expose myself to those risk and other unknowns for my body.

Given my health issues, my perceived risk of COVID, and the efficacy of the vaccine, I will not be taking it.

Now the mandates. I'm a federal contractor. There is zero flexibility. No exception for working from home. I sought a medical exemption and doctors aren't giving them unless you have taken a shot and had an allergic reaction. So here I am, working below market for my country, for a small contractor, and carrying a few programs. Will I continue to work with the threat of being fired hanging over my head as the court challenges go forward? Nope. I've accepted another job. It is going to fuck this company and my boss who I like. I feel really bad about it, but I'll take the OSHA mandate which has a WFH exemption, plus a nice salary bump, over uncertainty about my job's future.

Couple all that with the media pushing every stat that promotes the vaccine and ignoring actually helpful data. For example, we up the number of tests and then report more cases rather than percent positive. We have not done a randomized and blind trial of how many cases are asymptomatic because that would harm the narrative. We have seen that 94% of COVID deaths have at least 1 comorbidity, many of which are weight or age related [4]. The way they were doing COVID deaths was literally testing anyone who died (car crashes [5] and gunshot wounds in extreme cases [6]). As well, ICU beds are elastic, hospitals can expand and decrease capacity, so reporting that metric is also bad.

It will be different for other people, but I don't know anyone who has gotten extremely sick or died from it. None of my healthy friends have noticed it. It just feels like a big narrative to pump pharma and hospital stock price. If I need to be told by the news that there is a pandemic, is it really a pandemic?

All told, I have done a risk assessment and am making the personal choice to not get the vaccine. You are free to do whatever you want. I think it is beneficial for old people and fat people to get the vaccine. I think masks are beneficial. The vaccines offer personal protection, they do not prevent catching it, they reduce symptoms when you do catch it, and they curb spread a little but not really.

tl;dr Personal health issues, lack of confidence in medical institution, low risk of COVID, low risk of symptoms, lower risk of hospitalization, very low risk of death, existing risk of vaccine, waning efficacy of vaccines, media narrative, inflexible mandates.

1. https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/arizona-hospital-profits-a...

2. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi... (even how these stats are reported with <1x rather than an actual percentage feels very disingenuous)

3. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut...

4. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-94-percent-covi...

5. https://www.westernjournal.com/county-counted-car-crash-covi...

6. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/12/15/grand-county-covid-de...