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I want a COVID-19 vaccine more than anything. I am a huge believer in vaccines. I was always a casual believer, and then I read and learned more about the history of smallpox (short form: it sucks) and become a true believer.
But there is no such thing as a perfectly 100% of the time safe medical procedure, and even the rarest of side effects is going to show up when we're talking about an entire population.
This is not me saying "vaccines are secretly bad." This is me saying "people love and cherish the mango, it is incredibly culturally important to many, it is used for food and considered a delicious treat, and even inhaling too close to a heated mango can KILL ME DEAD."
My cats are my children. I would happily commit crimes for their sake. I am staying in a house with my mother, who refuses to respect social distancing, at least in part for the safety and comfort of my cats. And some people are so allergic to them that entering my home...
...could be fatal! My cats! TINKERBELL could be a death sentence to someone!
No, vaccines aren't kittens. But even the safest, most well-tested, most perfect vaccine in human history will kill someone if given to a pool of millions.
No, vaccines aren't kittens. But even the safest, most well-tested, most perfect vaccine in human history will kill someone if given to a pool of millions.
So as this rolls out, we WILL see cases of vaccine damage, and we WILL see people trying to use this to push an anti-vaccine agenda. Please. When that happens, think of mangos. Think of Tinkerbell.
As long as we're not talking one in ten, which shows medical malfeasance, but something closer to one in ten thousand, or one in one hundred thousand, we're in the Tinkerbell zone.
Yes, it sucks. Yes, it's awful to consider that a life-saving medical treatment could hurt you. Every time I have to go under anesthesia, I sign paperwork acknowledging that I might not wake up. This is how medicine WORKS.
And I very much hope that as we're doing our human vaccine trials, that the people running them are actively recruiting people of all ages, genders, and starting health statuses.
The scariest question of any medication is always, to me, "what will this do to pregnant people?", and that's ethically VERY HARD to test. But we can test "what will this do to the immuocompromised?" and "what will this do to the diabetic?" and "what will this do to the elderly?"
