Discussion Guide: COVID-19 Vaccination

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS answered by Dr David Pennington

The arguments against COVID vaccination fall into a number of well-defined categories. The below list is not complete but covers most concerns.

1. COVID vaccines are experimental vaccines that have never been used before and have been rushed out without being properly tested.

ANSWER: The trials for all the vaccines were standard US FDA & Australian TGA approved types of trials (Phases 1 to 3), completed in 2020. These types of vaccines (like viral vector and mRNA vaccines) were being developed 15 years ago for use against SARS-1, but that disease petered out, so funding was stopped. But a lot of progress was made then, and the developers of the new vaccines used that progress to develop COVID-19 vaccines. They were given special priority because so many people were dying from COVID-19 in the US and Europe. Already hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved by these vaccines.

2. Some of the vaccines contain live viruses that have DNA in them, and they could affect my DNA in a bad way

ANSWER: The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a benign virus (called a viral vector, or “carrier”) to carry a message into human cells to instruct them to make Coronavirus spike protein. Viruses can enter cells, whereas most foreign things cannot. The spike protein is what causes your body to make antibodies to kill the virus. The adenovirus viral vector has been inactivated so it can’t multiply itself. Although a DNA message does enter some cell nuclei (ONLY SOME CELLS RIGHT AT THE SITE OF THE VACCINE, NOWHERE ELSE), IT DOES NOT INCORPORATE ITSELF INTO YOUR DNA. There are a very few “natural” viruses that do incorporate into your DNA…such as the AIDS virus and the Ebstein Barr virus, probably the Zica virus in embryos, but adenoviruses DO NOT.

3. The mRNA vaccines can alter my DNA as well.

ANSWER: IMPOSSIBLE, as mRNA does not enter the cell nucleus, where the DNA is.

4. The vaccines cause my body to make a toxic viral protein (Dr McCullough’s claim)

ANSWER: The “toxic” viral protein is the spike protein, which is only a small PART of the COVID virus. It does NOT circulate widely in your body, and only a very minute amount can be detected in the blood soon after vaccination. Once the body makes antibodies to it, utilising cells from the nearest lymph nodes in your armpit, it is entirely eliminated from detection in the bloodstream within two weeks (proven in a study from the Brigham Hospital in the US). If you are infected by COVID, however, hugely greater amounts of the spike protein get into your system.

5. Some vaccines might rely on products of the virus being grown using aborted human cells (ethical argument)

ANSWER: Yes, that’s possible. But what would have happened if the millions of people’s lives saved by vaccines did not happen, because we did not have (or would not use) human tissue cells to help manufacture ant-viral vaccines? Tissues taken from foetuses who were aborted since the 1990s are no longer allowed to be used, however.

6. Ellen White was against drugs and vaccines.

ANSWER: Ellen White wrote against many of the drugs used in her day, as many of them were toxic and dangerous. A search of her writings turns up NOT ONE MENTION of vaccines, despite some being around for 100 years.  However, we know from one of her longest-serving secretaries that Ellen White and some of her staff were vaccinated against smallpox, at her instigation.  Smallpox vaccine is a live virus. She had no concerns about it affecting her genes…she did it to help protect others.

7. I can “fight off the virus” using “natural” remedies.

ANSWER: No, you can’t. It doesn’t matter how strong your immune system is, the delta strain will still infect you if you have contact. Some natural health rules (Vitamin D, keeping a normal weight, possibly zinc supplements, exercise in fresh air) may influence for the good whether you will become extremely ill, but won’t stop you passing it on to others. They might die, even if you don’t. A person in their 30’s has just died from the disease in Sydney. Even some of the healthiest of people have been badly affected for many months, even after they have “recovered”.

8. COVID-19 isn’t more deadly than influenza.

ANSWER: Sorry, completely wrong. Apart from the flu pandemic in 1918-1919, the worst flu epidemic in the US was in 2012, which killed 43,000 Americans. To date, COVID has killed over 600,000 Americans. That’s a ratio of 14 to 1…ie COVID-19 is at least 14 times more deadly than flu.

9. Thousands of people have died after vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines…you are more likely to die from vaccination than from COVID.

ANSWER: Not true. Even if we use the most conservative figures of supposed deaths from vaccination (US VAER statistics), deaths from COVID-19 outweigh them by over 100 to 1. UK figures put the ratio closer to 200 to 1.

10. The AstraZeneca vaccine can kill me from blood clots.

ANSWER: The chance of dying from the rare blood clot situation (VITT) after AZ vaccination is about 1 in a million after the first dose, but around 1 in 20 million after the second dose. Although there is a 1 in 50,000 risk of getting a clot, 95% are treatable.

11. Government lockdowns and compulsory vaccination (in certain industries) are affecting our freedom of religion, maybe even introducing the Mark of the Beast?

ANSWER: Paul the Apostle wrote this about the governments of his day (which were much tougher than ours)…

“Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.” Romans 13:1-2 NKJV

The only exception to this is when governments try to stop the spread of the Gospel (Acts 5:29), or act against God’s Law, especially the Sabbath. That has not occurred in Australia to date. If you are undecided on what the Mark of the Beast is, SDA theological help is available here: https://theend.digital