Please hold off on signing the VSRF Petition to Repeal the 1986 vaccine law
That Substack post was sent by VSRF staff without my express authorization due to a miscommunication. There were errors in the form processing and other errors.
Executive summary
The 1986 Petition Substack was sent by one of my staff members without my express approval. I was shocked when I learned it had been launched as my last communication was this is NOT ready.
I am livid this happened and have notified my staff it must never happen again.
The article itself should have said: US only.
The survey itself should have said: US only.
The survey should have made it clear the phone number is optional and explained what the phone number would be used for.
There should be no CAPCHA because this was sent to my subscribers.
There should be no unexpected errors on form submission.
And so on.
And the very first time I saw the draft, it was missing a link to the survey which I pointed out.
I said this was not ready to be sent out.
The next thing I knew it was launched by a staff member.
Sadly, Substack allows anyone to edit drafts AND launch. No separate controls for launch.
Summary
I am very upset this happened.
A lot of you wrote in pointing out the errors. Thank you for doing that, I’m sorry this happened, and I have made it crystal clear this should never happen again.
Every VSRF staff member will be educated on this incident.
No subscriber information was in any way compromised or exposed; the privacy and security of our systems were never in question.
We made some changes to the form to give people more helpful messages if they entered an incorrectly formatted email address or phone number. We modified the labels to make it even more clear that it's entirely optional to share your phone number, and it's optional to opt-in to receive automated text messages from VSRF. We replaced the "zip code" field with a "postal code" field that would accept letters as well as numbers. This means that people from Canada and the UK, among other countries, can submit their postal code information.
If you signed in with no problem, all is well!
If you get a Captcha error, we suggest trying turning off your VPN while signing the petition if you have one. You can also try a different browser.
Thank you for your support!
Don't sweat it Steve... your staff is doing God's work and we'll cut them all the slack they need. Look at it this way, at least you didn't accidently release a product that killed and maimed millions of healthy people. Keep perspective.