I have ordered tens of thousands of vaccines in my lifetime.
We have not had near the time or ability to completely assess this situation with the COVID vaccines. And certainly with what we know about the COVID vaccines now, there are really no big benefits for “public health” in general. There is enormous benefit for individual patients that are at high risk and I have spent inordinate amount of my time trying to convince these people to go for it.
In the vaccinated, it appears the contagion can be spread and caught likely just as easily as in the unvaccinated. Therefore, the risks and benefits are all on the individual side and not on the community side. This is completely different than in most of the childhood vaccines which lead us to sterilization and decreased spread to zero. Our COVID vaccines currently will be able to do no such thing. We can greatly impact high-risk individual lives with these vaccines and we should all be trying to do that – but impacting the course of spread in a vast population is much different with these COVID vaccines than say with measles. It is unfortunately simply not going to work that way until/if we get better vaccines.
If the COVID vaccines worked like the measles vaccine, we would not be having all the discussion about “protecting the vaccinated” would we? If they worked like they were early on promised, the vaccinated would not have to worry for a second about the unvaccinated. The consequences and problems would theoretically all be on the unvaccinated. We can behave that way with certainty with the measles and mumps vaccines with just microscopic levels of breakthrough. But the COVID vaccines offer no such protection. I applaud anyone who gets vaccinated – especially those in higher risk situations. I spend large amounts of my day every day doing just that. But given the way these were sold, and given what has occurred, I blame no one for being hesitant. It is my job to convince those high-risk to overcome their doubts. But demonizing anyone who has concerns and having them fired is just completely inappropriate.
I really do wish Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo and even Dr. Wen and Dr. Fauci could spend just one day with me – and see what all the confusion and chaos has wrought in the minds and souls of my patients. I really do.
Public health has no business mandating these for individuals in this situation. Heart disease and strokes have killed more people than COVID this year – but you do not hear the public health authorities mandating that every adult take LIPITOR. Why not?
It is because coercion simply does not work in these situations. Coercion often severely coalesces resistance. Look around you. Much research has been done on this in the past. Just look at Dr. Fauci’s take on coercion and vaccine mandates from just last autumn before the vaccines arrived. What he said then and what he is saying now cannot both be true. (Of course when looking for that link, I was able to find 3 different contradictory things he has said about vaccines in the past year). There has been no sudden sea change in decades of public health research. And what he said last autumn had years of public health research and wisdom behind it. He appropriately exempted from his statement last year Health Care workers (and I would add the military) – which are not at all “the public” in public health.
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