The Oklahoma Curmudgeon

I have the auto-play off on these, so if you want to hear them, you’ll have to click play. 🙂

roberto-nickson-5PQn41LFsQk-unsplash-scaled.jpg
Not quite as catchy as 'the Oklahoma Kid' but it will do. This post is for my friend from Oklahoma, DavidWn. I don't recall how long we've known each other, but it's been a while now since we first met during our earlier blogging years. It's been a real pleasure knowing him all this time.

I found a few other things I thought you might enjoy but I’m fighting with a compressor program and a CDN at the moment.  HOPEFULLY I’ll figure it out in a bit and write another post for you. 🙂  Until then-

What’s Up With This Whole Vaccine Thing?

I really don’t understand a lot of things about this whole vaccine thing.  Mainly why anyone wouldn’t get one that is in an “at risk” group.  I understand that to this point, the various instances of those out there have only EUA  (Emergency Use Authorization), but hey, somebody has to be the guinea pig.  It’s understood isn’t it that there were clinical trials done before the current authorization was put into place?  Ten years down the road I might grow wings and hop on my butt like a toad, but between now and then I probably won’t die of Covid-19.

I decided to do a bit of research after my husband said there was scant information he could find out about any side effects. I found a link to those and I started by going to the Pfizer site. Right on the main page there was a link under the status of “Our Science” titled “The Facts About Pfizer and BioNtech’s Covid-19 Vaccine”. Now if you click the link up above this one that takes you to the Pfizer site’s home page and then click this one to take you to those facts, you’re going to find  that you’re going to end up right back where you started from. Huh? That’s what I said anyway. SO- more research….

The first place I go when I can’t find something I think should be somewhere on the Internet but isn’t, is to The Wayback Machine. AND just as I suspected, there at one time was, in the not so distant past too, an actual page the link that now redirects back to the home page, opened. Here is that page which was accessible up until the 7th of July of this year. The Facts About Pfizer and BioNtech’s Covid-19 Vaccine.  There are definitely more facts on the FDA’s site than are located from the link that takes you back to Pfizer’s home page (heh) and more also than are on the archived page I linked secondly here.

Why would they make their fact page inaccessible?  And why did I have to do all this searching for something that should be readily available?  And what is the meaning of this that I put below in an image?  Don’t those two statements say the same thing except for the names of the vaccines?  Don’t those two things kind of rule each other out?

Those two statements came from authorizations posted on the FDA that has a link to each of the vaccines and to their determinations concerning those.  Now if you go to each of the different types of vaccines they have listed on that link you’ll find all three types have that statement in the letters of authorization for each.

What I find strange is that the last date I found on The Wayback Machine where you could access the “Our Science/Facts” link about the Pfizer vaccine was July 7, 2021.  That’s also the date Moderna was reissued their letter of authorization by the FDA.  Coincidence?

I found in Pfizer’s info that their vaccine has been given an EUA for children 12 through 15 by the FDA.  The information in that letter of authorization states- ” FDA concluded that it is reasonable to believe that Pfizer-BioNTech COVID‑19 Vaccine may be effective in individuals 12 through 15 years of age. Additionally, FDA determined it is reasonable to conclude, based on the totality of the scientific evidence available, that the known and potential benefits of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID‑19 Vaccine outweigh the known and potential risks of the vaccine, for the prevention of COVID-19 in individuals 12 through 15 years of age.”

MAY BE…

Just pretend it’s measles, mumps, rubella and get it over with.  Vaccines are a good thing. That’s what they told all the mothers who were vaccinated against anthrax and gave birth to babies with defects.

Seriously though, I understand why some people would/will/did balk at getting a Covid-19 vaccine.  I thought it was the best thing to do for myself.  Mainly because my husband would probably never have spoken to me again if I hadn’t. The things you do for love.  I’ll fly or hop back here a few years from now and let you know how it all turned out.

OH! One last thought on the matter-

Identification Of Voters, Is It Necessary?

Let me begin with HELL YES, and if you disagree, why? Identification is needed for almost everything in today’s world. You can’t get a passport, fishing license or hotel room without one, or any of the instances this image shows either.

I’m sure there are plenty others but I think the point is clear.  Hopefully you believe that electing the person who will be in charge of this country for 4 to 8 years is as important as buying a bottle of Mad Dog and a pack of Pall Malls.

There are 49 states that require no copy of your identification included with an absentee ballot. Forty states  have no notary or witness signatures on return envelope required. Now many of these states have other requirements that do require identification when applying for an absentee ballot although others simply require signing an oath and others that notify voters that they sign under penalty of perjury. If you’d like to see what the requirements are for your state you can click this link to the National Council of State Legislatures to read those.

It seems to me that if you were required to enclose a copy of your identification it would take quite a bit of the guesswork out of determining if a signature on a ballot was valid.  Most verifications are made by election workers of the signature on a ballot to the signature on a voter’s file. That seems like it would be fairly time consuming when compared to checking the signature on the ballot to one on an enclosed identification copy; not only time consuming but more likely to result in error or indecision.  But what do I know?

I know that if you think people don’t need to show identification to vote, in person or absentee, when they need to for practically everything else, you’re not really concerned about the integrity of the whole voting process, and that, I think, is a shame.

I originally set out to make a meme, but as is often the case with me, I got sidetracked and ended up here writing this.  The following is what set me on the path.

Every time a credit card transaction requires an electronic signature from me I just scribble something barely legible and it’s always accepted.  Never say I don’t finish what I set out to do.