I'm still shaking. I shouldn't let myself be affected by people's dishonesty, but this was a friend I've know for more than a decade.

Andy was hosting a zoom discussion which had been a spin-off from a group sponsored by the Center For Inquiry-West. Andy is a biologist and owns a bio-research supply company, so I expect him to be honest and factual when it comes to biology, but he's also a Trumper and Fox-watcher.

Now Andy resisted getting the vaccine until about two months ago, but then went to a superbowl party and got omicron. He had three days of misery and then recovered.

Andy spoke at length about Covid, but repeatedly expressed strong fear that the vaccines would begin to cause rampant auto-immune diseases. He also complained about endocarditis being reported by vaccine recipients.

While a few people have reported auto-immune responses to the vaccine, these have been so rare as to only be anecdotal:
[health.gov.au]
"...whether the association between COVID-19 vaccine and autoimmune manifestations is coincidental or causal remains to be elucidated."
[pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Widespread and long-term inflammation during severe COVID-19 may cause the immune system to produce antibodies to pieces of the virus it wouldn’t normally recognize. Some of those pieces might resemble human proteins enough to trigger the production of auto-antibodies. Excessive inflammation could also boost production of auto-antibodies that had previously only existed in the body at very low levels.
[nih.gov].
"The team found that 20% of people hospitalized with severe COVID-19 had high or intermediate levels of autoantibodies to type I IFNs."
[nih.gov]
(Meaning, Actual Covid CAUSES auto-immunity at a significant level.)

Another finding:
A total of 141,208 individuals suffered at least one adverse events following immunization following 239.97 million doses of COVID-19 vaccination. The frequency of side effects was 0.04%, 0.06%, and 0.35% following administration of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson's Janssen vaccines, respectively. Most of the patients had mild systemic side effects, the most common being headache (0.01%) and fever (0.01%). The frequency of serious side effects including anaphylaxis (0.0003%) and death (0.002%) was extremely low. (i.e. Side effects from the vaccine are infrequent. )
[pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
HOWEVER:
"The random-effects pooled proportion of placebo recipients reporting at least 1 systemic AE (adverse effect) after the first dose was 35.2% " (eg: More than a third of reported adverse reactions were PURELY self-induced!!!
[jamanetwork.com].

Andy said that the heart-effects were due to the adjuvant. Indeed, adjuvants can cause auto-immune heart effects (adjuvants are often extracts from bacterial cell walls to which the immune system responds very strongly). However, it turns out that for the vaccines. they modify the covid spike protein itself to create an adjuvant (by methylating and by creating an aluminum salt derivative of the S-protein). (Meaning, it is possible for the tiny amounts of spike protein coming from the vaccine to cause a problem, the risk from actual Covid is much, much greater. As we know all too well: "People with heart disease are at increased risk of severe complications from COVID-19."

But, Andy was all in favor of Fauci being fired because he lied to minimize the consumption of masks (needed by medical staff) in the first few weeks of the pandemic.

I'm really disappointed that my friend is so self-deluded with Fox disinformation and would readily propagandize others rather than learn the truth. Be aware that this is where the assholes at Fox are aiming their lies.

Sucks to be him.