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Get Your Vaccines, Y'all (In Defense of Science)…
By Uma Periyanayagam, MD
It really is that simple. There is no vast conspiracy to rob you of your hard earned money. No one poison pill purposely keeping you sick. It's not that you should blindly trust your government, but none of us are that smart, organized, or effective, frankly.
Even the average doctor's/insurance/customer care/any office can't even get it together enough to call y'all back. That's only 5–10 people who can't coordinate a few hundred phone calls with each other! The entire US government wasted millions in urgent COVID vaccine shipments that had to be stored at −70°C — only for people not to really partake. That was a ton of waste that wasn't anticipated. Do we really think thousands/millions employed by big Pharma/big government/name the conspiracy — are going to be able to organize whatever mass movement you think they're planning? And leave no evidence? There are always reputable (unreputable too) journalists quietly digging, able to prove falsified data, eager to embarrass folks, to run the next story. Cause a juicy headline is money for THEM. What IS going on is capitalism run amuck, an overworked and overrun system, and a healthcare system incentivized towards sickness, not health. Throw in some medical racism too, and you have a system ripe for distrust.
It really kills me that trust in science, especially healthcare professionals and Big Pharma is at an all time low (don't get me wrong, you're right to have some skepticism). Most of us really did study for years and years, and came in bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to help people.
Overall, I say you should be skeptical of a whole flawed system, not all, or even most, individuals in the system itself. They are fed up, too. I say this as a reformed pessimist — Science is FULL of do gooder types who will NOT sell out for the almighty dollar. Corporations know that, and take full advantage of us. Period. Yes, money needs to be made to make the world go around, but it's usually disproportional to the service given.
Yeah, I probably wouldn't have believed it, either. But then I studied the art of medicine. I learned, and I mean really learned and dedicated my life to, science. I studied human nature.
This life changing honor taught me a few things. One main takeaway: universal consensus on anything scientific is a pretty big deal. Do you know how much scientists love to 'talk shop' and argue about things no one cares about — for example, the mating cycle of a specific type of whale in the southern Pacific? We will sit and debate minutiae while everyone else stares at us for hours, and do so happily. We will argue which papers support us, which won't, etc. So for millions and millions upon us to agree that vaccines/science work overwhelmingly, well that's a big deal.
And I learned about you. All of you.
I learned about Dr Jonas Salk, father of the polio vaccine.
Got polio? Almost none of us do, thanks to him. But it was a brutal viral disease that affected anywhere between 20,000–50,000 children annually until he came around.
Look at him. He's not a movie star. Never had an entire publicity team bolstering his image. Today, he'd be lost on Facebook and Instagram. I don't even want to think about TikTok. But he saved a decent chunk of humanity.
AND HE DID IT FOR FREE!!!
I don't doubt his family would be multi billionaires, maybe even the world's first trillionaires, if he patented it. But he didn't.
His words, verbatim: 'There is no patent. Can you patent the sun?'
The man didn't win a very well deserved Nobel Prize that year. Or any year.
Jealous colleagues accused him of being a publicity seeker even though he spent the rest of his life hiding from the spotlight. After he invented the polio vaccine, he founded the Salk Institute and spent the rest of his life quietly researching MS, Cancer, and trying to develop an AIDS vaccine for HIV+ patients.
"Yeah, okay, Dr Uma," you might say, "That was then. This is now. And face it, things have changed. Cash is king. Period."
It's just not true. Not always, anyway.
These stories don't make the news, and never will.
The millions of public health officials worldwide that kept y'all safe with COVID travel bans among death threats. The ones who could've sold you Ivermectin and made enough to retire within 6 months or less, but didn't. If Dr Fauci did this, this story would've been everywhere. He could've hidden on a private island for the rest of his life and enjoyed his days. It wouldn't have been impossible.
But he didn't. He got up everyday, beefed up his security, and spoke his scientific truth. As he has for the last several decades. Amongst all the hate/conspiracy theories, and lies.
And no, I don't blindly worship this man. Our handling of the AIDS crisis/crack epidemic in the 1980s was disappointing, he was a part of the NIH/government at that time, too.
A life overall in public service should be acknowledged, though.
Dr Paul Offit DID make a 25 million dollar profit, yes, it's true. But he saved billions of children worldwide from dying from depressing diarrheal illness with the rotavirus vaccine. When I told my husband this, he laughed and said 'that's it?' Which pretty much sums it up. We're still not looking at Musk/Bezos/Gates level of profit here? I dare say he did just as much for humanity, if not more. You all can fight amongst yourselves, it's just an opinion, one backed with some data though.
The rest of the heroes in these stories are everyday folks, and it's just not a very exciting or sexy story.
All day, everyday what I DO SEE is my colleagues, my friends, and my dear husband — heck, I like to believe myself — go to bat for their patients. For free. For a salary that has NOT been keeping up with inflation.
Spending hours on the phone arguing with an insurance company on why that MRI is life saving, and it MUST be covered.
Going to work without PPE.
Giving life saving vaccines, treatments, and advice to an increasingly belligerent and distrustful population. Calling a quack a quack, even if he or she is VERY popular and we COULD make even more money by leaning in instead and offering various, expensive unproven 'tests' and 'supplements' for a large fee, of course.
Refusing a patient a CT scan for 'headaches' and mild trauma, no neurological deficits — cause unnecessary radiation is still radiation, especially if your headaches occur during the day and often improve with a heating pad and Tylenol.
We don't do this because we don't like money.
Everybody does.
We do it because we really do care.
Also, it's very likely we will be caught.
We have regulatory boards, lawsuits, hungry malpractice lawyers just salivating over this story.
Waiting for our downfall. Let's not mention the media as well.
Back to vaccines, since I digress so often. What really happens in the majority of the cases is some soreness at site of injection, mild fevers, and, not often but enough of the time, little knots can form at the injection site for a couple of weeks. That's your body building immunity.
Sometimes, you get an allergic reaction (still rare), of course that must be treated and given under special precautions of course.
There are true side effects other than this, and they're all vaccine specific, but they are exceedingly rare, folks. And you can see for yourself how much money I PAID just to say that.
If you're offended, be offended but do me a favor and please marinate on all of this for a little while. My plan is to keep posting more about topics on vaccines, scientific literacy etc. as I've already rambled on enough.
Stayed tuned!
Love,
me