In what turned out to be fortuitous timing, last week I got the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine. I felt a bit sick for about day afterwards, but was happy to get the whole ordeal out of the way quickly because that vaccine, which was suddenly paused this week, only requires one visit to the vaccination center.
The most surprising part of the process was the public reaction to me deciding to even get the vaccine. Because I have been ardently anti-lockdown since the beginning, and believe that the “experts” have failed us during the pandemic, there seems to be an odd presumption by many that I would be against getting an emergency vaccine.
I did not get it because I fear contracting the virus, though I strongly believe the data indicates the vaccines are indeed effective against it. As a 54 year old in very good health, who stopped taking severe precautions last May when I realized that statistically I was unlikely to be in grave danger, I viewed getting the vaccine much like going to the DMV to get my driver’s
It had very little to do with feeling much safer, but the tiny risk of something bad happening was marginally outweighed by knowing that I wouldn’t have to worry about how insane the “vaccine passport” movement might get, especially here in super-liberal California.
What has been most mystifying about the unprecedented drive to get America vaccinated is how contradictory and totally bizarre the public messaging has been on this topic. Never before has every major element of the media and the government been more on the same page about convincing everyone to get a voluntary medical procedure, and yet what they are saying makes absolutely no sense, especially now that the Johnson & Johnson option has been “paused” based on weak evidence of a problem.
In addition to constant pro-vaccine news coverage, it is nearly impossible to avoid pro-vaccine government ads which have been running virtually everywhere we get our media content (it appears that the entire radio industry is currently being held afloat by pro-vaccine/masks/lockdown ads). But it is becoming very difficult to understand, if everything we are being told by the “experts” and their media stenographers is true, why experts think their messaging is effective in encouraging those who aren’t very vulnerable to the virus to get it (not surprisingly, a whole lot of people, especially Republicans, are unconvinced).
There are at least two massive contradictions in the reasoning of the vaccine messaging. They go something
1) On the one hand, they tell us that everyone really must get these very effective and safe vaccines (it is the only way we get back to normal!), and that you probably won’t be allowed to do a lot of fun things if you don’t…
But then they also suggest that the vaccines don’t really do very much for you (you might be able to still get and transmit the virus!), and you can’t really change your behavior even after you get it.
2) These very safe vaccines are absolutely necessary because we are in an unprecedented emergency where our rapid reaction time is absolutely of the essence…
But we can delay millions of people getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because 1 in a million of those who have received it may have gotten blood clots due to the shot.
In a rational world, based on what we currently think we know, the pausing of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was a colossal overreaction/miscalculation by U.S. health agencies (Dr. Anthony Fauci has presumed the worst about “linked” illnesses already during this nightmare and been proven wrong).
Under their faulty logic, if the benefits of widely using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine aren’t worth the still unproven risk of a one in a million chance of getting a blood clot, then it can’t be very effective in protecting from a virus which is supposedly so dangerous that it has
The mathematical case for stopping the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is so incredibly weak that even liberal MSNBC questioned Fauci about it, and liberal election guru Nate Silver openly attacked the decision, making the strong case that it will cost lives (I have often thought that on the very rare occasions on which Silver, with whom I have had multiple dustups, and I agree, that position should automatically become law).
So, to review, Fauci doesn’t believe being vaccinated should provide you any more freedom, and that vaccines should be paused based on tiny evidence of side-effects, but he still gets extremely outraged at those who dare to question whether the vaccines are as effective as advertised. Frankly, Fauci himself sometimes sounds more like an “anti-vaxxer” than those who try hard to avoid taking vaccines.
As for what is really going on here, it is very hard not to conclude that the messaging is absurdly mixed because there are contradictory goals in play here. They know that vaccines work and that the more people who get them the better, but there also seems to be a desire by some for the pandemic