Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine, who recently announced that she’s running for Colorado’s new eighth congressional district, appeared on conservative talk radio show last week to explain her objection to a social media post by the Weld County government, which encourages vaccination for Weld citizens in anticipation of in-person gatherings for the holidays.
The meme Saine is referring to was posted on Facebook on Nov. 9, and explained the timeline for vaccination to ensure optimal protection from the coronavirus.
Saine’s contention revolves around the implication that the county government officially endorses a vaccine for general use without warning of adverse effects and diverse individual reactions.
She also objects to the implication of the post that those choosing not to get vaccinated “don’t care about loved ones.”
“It’s defining that getting vaccinated means you can look forward to Christmas and Thanksgiving. It means it’s a safer holiday with at-risk family,” explained Saine on KCOL‘s morning show with host Jimmy Lakey. “… But what my constituents are telling me is that there seems to be an insinuation that to enjoy your holidays with your family, you need to have a government medical shield. It also gives people — really, it just insinuates that people don’t care about loved ones if they don’t follow government prodding and timelines. And no medicine or medical procedure is 100% safe, as you know. … People have different reactions to the same vaccine, including, well, including death. I mean, you can look up the Vaccine Adverse Reaction website and you can look to see the spectrum of things that people — the types of things that people will fall into as far as the types of reactions. So, there’s a real risk that people need to take into consideration.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the health protection agency of the United States, reports that the COVID-19 vaccines are “safe and effective” and that “serious adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination are rare but may occur.”
Adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), all of which occur at extremely low rates, include anaphylaxis (severe allergic response), thrombosis (blood clots), myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle and the lining of the heart, respectively), and possible incidences of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (an auto-immune condition causing weakness and paralysis).
The four FDA emergency-approved vaccines available to Americans have unique sets of adverse effects associated with each, and all adverse effects are restricted to a very small percentage of patients with certain medical conditions and genetic or demographic profiles. Patients with a propensity to any of the identified adverse effects can opt for another type of vaccine, decline vaccination, or seek a formal exemption for any vaccine requirement.
Deaths were reported among patients receiving the vaccines at an extremely low rate of 0.0022%, and only 6 of those reported cases can be confirmed as being caused or directly contributed to by one vaccine type.
Saine, who’s a former state legislator, also objects to Weld County promoting any branded product, such as the vaccines listed by their market brand names specified in the meme.
“One last thing: the other part is it goes into branded vaccines at the bottom of this post,” she said on air. “There’s a lot of problems with that and that gets into the role of government. One, we should not be pushing branded anything, including things that have side effects which include death. And if we were to be vaccine salesmen as the government, we would have to have all those long disclaimers at the end of all those vaccine names. So, the post doesn’t represent me as a county commissioner, nor the constituents, certainly, that I’m hearing from.”
Saine expressed opposition to any county ordinance requiring masks or vaccination and suggested that as a commissioner, she will advocate for upholding medical freedom in the commission’s upcoming strategic planning for Weld County.
“So, it’s well and good for us to say we won’t require masks or vaccines — and by the way, Jimmy, I’ll never allow a vaccine passport in Weld County, as long as I’m county commissioner,” she continued. “But if we have any messaging contrary to that, anybody who believes that government knows best, by the way, what you do behind the closed doors of your house is on the way to nannyism at best and tyrrany at worst. And the people of Weld County know this. It’s why they moved here. It is why they live here. Our brand is freedom.”
Weld County residents should not be lulled into a false sense of security and invincibility by wearing a mask or getting vaccinated, Saine said. She contends that hospitals are intentionally misleading about COVID patients being mostly unvaccinated.
“And then you have hospitals putting out false information — I think it’s false because they say our hospitals are filled with unvaccinated people,” she told Lakey. “Well, let’s take a look at that definition and changing that definition. Almost all of those folks had some vaccine, not — they’re calling them unvaccinated because they haven’t had all of their vaccines, including boosters. So that’s false information. So, we really need to get this information out there, Jimmy. It’s not 100% safe and you’re not bulletproof if you’ve received one vaccine or all of them.”
