Y’all. I deep dove this week into analysis on the big three Covid things: lockdowns, masks, and the vaccine. We’ll start with the latter: I’m not categorically against vaccines, so what’s bothering me so much about this one?
This question led me to Dr. Sebastian Rushworth’s blog. He’s a young Swedish doctor with an incredible ability to tell you about medical “stuff” in “real person” terms. Check out the in-depth Are the Covid Vaccines Safe and Effective? in which he dives into the clinical trials around the vaccines and—spoiler alert—ultimately concludes there IS one he’d take. Most striking, though, he outlines how some trials weren’t always double-blind—which even junior high science taught me was a primary requirement for The Scientific Method, test groups were young with in-range BMIs and very few underlying conditions—aka healthy, which we all understand is NOT the risk group for fatality with the virus, and the “result” of the test was contracting Covid, not dying of it—whereas death is what we are really worried about preventing given that even people with “long Covid” recover fully within three months.
Even so, he summarizes: “So all three vaccines appear to be highly effective at preventing covid-19 … In terms of safety, I have significant concerns about the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, considering that there is a signal suggesting that it increases your risk of developing transverse myelitis by a hundredfold or more … I also have concerns about the Pfizer vaccine, since there was a 73% increase in severe adverse events among those taking the vaccine, an issue that Pfizer hasn’t bothered to address at all … The Moderna vaccine does appear to be safe however, based on the data available up to now.”
He also has The Graph They Don’t Want You to See charting antibodies in Sweden and exploring why they follow the graph they do.
In case we wanted a refresher on what I have against lockdowns (lol SO MANY THINGS hi economy; hard pass on totalitarian regimes), this was a helpful reminder for me that the purported point of lockdowns was to “flatten the curve” to slow the spread so as not to tax hospital capacity NOT because lockdowns were ever going to stop the spread of the virus. Then, fear of asymptomatic spread—which has NO scientific evidence for and an abundance against—exacerbated the expansion of the original intent of lockdowns.
Socially, the (false) notion of asymptomatic transmission has the really terrible side effect of reinforcing the notion that everyone who isn’t you or in your bubble is the “other”, who can poison or kill you with the mere presence of their asymptomatic deadly-illness-carrying selves. Creating “others” powers the polarization narrative that I also reject (in Week 19 which was eons ago).
As for that ridiculous double-masking “common sense” advice you’re starting to see? Layering two things on top of another does NOT “common sense” make them more effective. Ask anyone who has ever worn cotton in the cold, or ANYTHING wet.
For a different perspective on one of the dramatic impacts of (ineffective) lockdowns, consider the widening Millennial Wealth Gap as a result of the pandemic.
Week 21: the shame convo. Week 20: the infection convo. Week 19: the polarization convo. Week 18: the wrong convo. Week 17: the convo. Week 16 (the rant).