Changing My Mind About the Covid Vaccine
My background is in biotechnology. I’ve made insulin, at least on the small scale. I’ve caused expression of a gene of interest that was carried on a plasmid (a small circular piece of DNA) by yeast. My degree is in hard science. To this day, after university, I still read basic science literature — damn near constantly if I can get access to the literature houses that publish academic papers. Needless to say, it’s good that I still retain a .edu email address.
Also, as a point of background, I have an autoimmune disease for which I am treated with immunosuppressants. One shot in my bum every 84 days prevents my body from attacking my joints, skin, colon, eyes — virtually every organ system.
So here came Covid last February. And here we have the leader of the free world, a known liar and bloviator, talking up all the things he is doing to blunt the impact of this disease on American citizens. The project of his to expedite the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was suspicious to me because it came from a suspicious person. So-called “Project Warp Speed,” because corners and red tape were being cut in order to expedite vaccine candidates. “Okay,” I thought to myself, “let’s see what happens.” Also bear in mind that these immunisations are of a new breed using a new platform in which we eschew the traditional mechanism of immunising individuals with inactivated virus, viral or bacterial fragments or the like. No, instead these two vaccine candidates are mRNA based meaning that we somehow get the mRNA into our own cells, and get them — our own cells — to express these viral fragments and thus cause the immunity to develop. (Back when I was in school, getting RNA into cells, such as those in the retina was a Herculean challenge, like to treat macular degeneration). Suspicion, to say the least, abounded for me.
Come December, when it looks like the regulatory agencies were scrutinising the vaccine candidate from Moderna and Pfizer, it came out from news sources that there were threats made against the FDA Commissioner to approve the vaccines lest he be out of a job. The FDA was never, ever supposed to work like this. Threats traded were never part of the deal for the 83 years the organisation has been part of our government. To put it mildly, it is antithetical to the mission of the FDA in protecting our citizenry from quackery and poisons (and disease).
So I was suspicious, leery, and distrusting of what our government approved for emergency use in the Pfizer and Moderna (and ultimately Johnson and Johnson) SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. I am sick already, and we have a hack at the helm, making threats to the FDA to approve it, or else… Not to mention that we have zero data points of successes with respect to previous mRNA immunisations. I was sceptical indeed.
But I had a change in thinking. As it turns out, we have been working on SARS immunisations for some time. Remember 2004 and the outbreak in Taiwan, and then the MERS outbreak in the Middle East? This family of viruses has been on public health officials’ radar for some time. The vaccines (and their mRNA platform) had been in the works for a long, long time. Dr. Shane Crotty, who is a virologist who normally works on HIV at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, had an interview that I watched where he broke down exactly what had been going on with the production of these immunisations, their effects, their efficacy, and their history. I’ll enclose the video that made everything clear to me, but most importantly, helped me to overcome my mistrust of the previous White House occupant (and his associated henchmen).
And so, after thinking extensively about what I listened to, I began to overcome the mistrust, dodge the lies spat out by the previous government, and consider very deeply what Dr. Crotty explained in this half-hour interview. So I made my appointment and got my jab as well as the follow-up one after a month. It did hurt both times, more so the second one.
The take-home message is clear: even if the hacks abound, search deeply for the truth, get the signal out of the noise, don’t be fooled by the puppetry, and don’t be afraid change your thinking as necessary. My shot was given to me not because Otto the Orange in the White House told me to do so; instead, it was my own desire for answers that set me straight. We’re here now, on the precipice of freedom again, going out and having a proper time outside. And I can’t wait.
TL;DR:
- Don’t be afraid to change your thinking with substantial evidence and;
- Get your shot.
