Battling Vaccine Disinfo: 15 Common Myths

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My frustration with the misinformation surrounding vaccines has come to a head.

2020: the perfect crucible to amplify our fears, biases, and compulsions — an etheric vessel easily conjured by the very unholy trinity of the pandemic, US general election, and sudden social media immersion. As if it wasn’t already way too easy to get stuck in a dopamine loop, COVID made it so that most of the constraints imposed on our scrolling suddenly disappeared. I myself possess none of the swagger to look at you and say I am inoculated against that pattern. I am just as susceptible as the next person to the doomscroll. In fact there were many times in my social media immersion that my self-righteous kink reared it’s head: I’m a fire-type person, I not-so secretly love being right. All of my hard work and training to transmute that heat was on the line (that beast has taken a helluva long time to tame). And while I sacrificed a lot of my chill at the altar of science, in that ‘sacrifice’ I have encountered the gamut of anti-vax arguments. I can now coherently share with all of you why COVID-19 vaccination is safe for most people, what the potential ramifications are from an alternative wellness perspective, and how to debunk the common myths you will encounter.

I’m not hoping to convince anti-vaxxers of anything here. I’m here for those on the fence, and those (like myself) who can be susceptible to shitty memes despite their best defenses. The photo accompanying this post is indeed of me getting the jab. It was a sublime experience. If you insist on criticizing my choice to be vaccinated, fine, but if you flame me in my own house know that I am basically a giant heat succubus. Don’t fall into the trap of recharging my batteries. I’m also really good at boundaries (blocking). None of this makes me any less spiritual, in case you were wondering.

Before we get into all the anti-vaccine (AV from hereon) myths, let’s be clear about how low the actual risks of vaccination are. If you wanna skip straight to the myths, click on, Captain.

The entire raison d’être of this tech is to create a solution that reduces the risk of illness and death for the greatest number of people in comparison to the risk of actually contracting an infectious disease. While people will argue BUT 99% OF US WILL BE FINE (Mikki Willis, you’re a trashruptor), they’re missing a lot of pieces. Managing a pandemic is all about risk stratification. Your risk goes up or down according to your age and health status. And if 1 out of every 100 people dies, why would you even want to endorse that? It also takes a special kind of ignorance to maintain that death is the only consequence of viral infection. Long-term effects of COVID-19, which are far from theoretical at this point, can be dire: we’ve seen permanent lung, heart, neurological, and kidney damage. I know a few people personally who can’t ascend a small staircase without losing their breath. And that’s just what we know about so far. All of these risks decrease exponentially in a vaccinated population, which is the whole point. Heck we’ve got preliminary evidence that the vaccine can actually help long-haulers! If it turns out these or any vaccinations contribute in some small way to ill health effects, we can absolutely manage that later. What we can’t manage is a highly infectious global pandemic without a vaccine.

Don’t get vaccinated if you don’t want to, but don’t spread misinformation to discourage those that do. If you’re the person who mistakes their dreams for prophecy and FB messages pregnant people to tell them they’re harming their fetus, I am ONE THOUSAND percent looking at you. Give that shit up.

But what about building your immunity naturally, with food and herbs?

I love the way Starhawk, incredible elder and spiritual teacher, put it recently in her FB post on receiving her final Moderna vaccine:

"When Europeans arrived on this continent, the indigenous people of the Americas were amazing herbalists, incredibly skilled healers, extremely knowledgeable about all the medicines of the land, and they ate completely wild, nutrient dense organic food--but they had never developed immunities to European diseases and millions died. For that matter, the old Witches of Europe were damn good herbalists but that wasn't much help, either, against the bubonic plague.”

Your immunity is basically commensurate to what you were born with. Digestion can play a big part but it’s a tricky thing to balance! Many of us have genetic disadvantages here, whether we’re cognizant of that or not. Others of us deal with chronic and often incurable illnesses. Superfoods and immune-boosting herbs make for cunning marketing but sadly no food or herb is a one-size fits all (and honestly? I’m done being shamed by diet culture and healthism). While the jury is still out on Vitamin D I won’t deny the promise of the preliminary evidence for its effectiveness in preventing respiratory illness and potentially COVID-19. However that has less to do with it being special and much more to do with the widespread deficiency resultant from living our lives as super-brained indoor cats.

Most adults in industrialized nations don’t have the best digestion, whether they enjoy munching kale or dipping cookies in milk. In many cases we’ve lost our ancestral wisdom and knowing how to care for our bodies has become confusing. We have new exposures our ancestors didn’t have, often different lands and climate, and access to a ton of a different foods that aren’t always easy for us to digest. According to the wisdom of traditional medicine you’re gonna have a much harder time clearing infection when the digestive system is confused like this. It doesn’t really matter if you take probiotics and swear by echinacea tea. What is ‘healthy’ is actually a lot more subjective than we realize. So, through no fault of our own, most of our guts are in disarray, which means the body’s defenses are too. While there are no guidelines complete (or magical) enough to help everyone, simplicity is key and there are some basic ways to help most people digest a little better. My favourite generalized approach for staying well during this pandemic has come from Vaidya (Ayurvedic Dr.) Jessica Vellela, BAMS. It’s all about keeping your digestion running well via daily routines and simplified dietary practices. Find her guidelines for prevention here.

And if you want to get REALLY simple, never discount the power of mindfulness. Any meditation will do. Calming the mind really does have the power to reprogram your body’s innate intelligence. When you’re chill you simply make better choices.

I’ve read through some incredible successful COVID-19 treatment case studies from practitioners of TCM and Āyurveda in China and India, so I’m still of the mind that traditional medicine can absolutely treat this. But. Very few people have access to an incredible traditional medicine doc from an incredible lineage who could treat you with herbal meds for COVID. And even if you did, you’d have to start from a pretty healthy slate to ensure you’d suffer no long-term effects. For most of us? The vaccine is a phenomenal option and a sublime privilege.

Let’s not forget the very real problem of medical racism.

Black patients face objectively higher rates of adverse medical experiences than White patients, including untreated pain, or complications or death after surgery. There is a storied history of mistreatment, marginalization, and over-policing of Black bodies. There are people alive today who remember their relative’s accounts of being experimented upon against their consent or will. Many live with health disparities non-Black people do not. There are very real reasons to refuse vaccination when historically you haven’t seen public health measures benefit your community. So why would you trust them now? While I hope dispelling some of the following myths will help everyone feel safer, I respect that as a White person, I have benefitted from the same system that has harmed Black people, and wouldn’t have reason to question public vaccination in the way a marginalized person would.

Read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/health/tuskegee-syphilis-study-vaccine-distrust-reasons-wellness/index.html


 
 

BUT DUH VACCINES CAN’T EVEN REDUCE TRANSMISSION, THE CDC SAID SO.

This is a classic move. Take public health guidelines as gospel without understanding the underlying priorities and science, then use them as a gotcha when they change. It harkens back to the beginnings of the mask debate. People were haunted that the government could change the guidelines — that is, update them in presence of new evidence. That’s science in real-time, and the reality of it is most of us aren’t privy to this process, and easily get confused.

As for reduction in transmission? Scientists suspected it all along, but without having prioritized it in the clinical trials, we had no data. While lay people are comfortable with making scientific pronouncements without evidence, scientists are not. As anticipated, preliminary evidence now suggests covid vaccination reduces transmission. Right now the mechanism being investigated is reduction in viral load — at this point, with vaccination coupled with a mask, we’ve got pretty robust protection.


These studies are preliminary (and in some cases not peer-reviewed yet), but this is the evidence we have for reduced transmission so far:

BUT IT WAS RUSHED

The best place to understand why it only took 9 months to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 is from YLE: Your Local Epidemiologist. Follow Dr. Katelyn Jetelina on FB or sign up for her newsletter because there is no one better translating this stuff into layman’s terms than her.

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-got-to-us-incredibly-fast

COVID Vaccine Development Timeline.jpg

TL;DR?

Check out this visual from YLE — when stacked end to end those bars delineate the typical track of a trial. In this case it was possible to complete many of the steps together. It may look like corners were cut, but here’s a brief breakdown of how we got here so quickly (so safely!):

(1) Previous research with SARS and MERS meant we had little territory to cover academically.

(2) Three separate phases were able to be overlapped (actually advantageous AND time saving).

(3) Demand was so serious (hello high infection rates) the Gov't and Pharma took a huge risk and started manufacturing started BEFORE trials were completed. It’s tough to source materials and figure out storage for vaccines — it can take forever. Starting while trials were happening made a huge difference. And if the trials had failed? The vaccines would have been destroyed, friends.

(4) Much of the waiting time in clinical trials is actually enrollment because it’s hard to find suitable volunteers (it can take years). Not in a pandemic!

BUT WHAT ABOUT LONG TERM EFFECTS

I really empathize with this one — it makes the most immediate sense and before I studied up on it (notice how I didn’t say ‘researched’ 😄), I had the same concern. Not that I have ever watched a vaccine trial unfold in real-time, or worried about it. I’ll be honest — the memes got to me.

Happily, serious vaccine side effects are VERY rare. When they do occur, it's hours or days after vaccination, not months or years. On the other hand, the risk of infection and long-term health effects of COVID-19 infection are high and very real. Vaccines don’t stick around in your body like medications you take repeatedly. Especially with mRNA, which sticks around for just a few days before it is destroyed.

The most common long-term effect of vaccines? Immunity and protection against disease.

Good source written by vaccine experts:

https://theconversation.com/amp/how-do-we-know-the-covid-vaccine-wont-have-long-term-side-effects-155714

BUT BIG PHARMA

I spent my early 20s flipping off the Man, attending rallies, and learning about all the ways capitalism was destroying the planet and people. As you can imagine, I get offended when AVers, especially those who were previously friends, accuse me of bootlicking and being brainwashed. Real irate. No doubt there’s some shadow in there, going from the lone protester outside of Newfoundland’s first Starbucks to someone who occasionally purchases a SB soy cappuccino, but I’m not holding out for perfection. One of the hallmarks of maturity, especially spiritual maturity, is the ability to hold complexity. If one apple is red does that mean that are all apples are red? You know that’s not right. We can be both grateful for and critical of modern medicine.

I will be the first to come for Purdue Pharma and the catastrophic graft that is OxyContin. While they are paying monetarily for lying about its addictive potential, they can never fully atone for the subsequent explosion of the opioid epidemic. I’ve also encountered my own ill-effects from conventional medical treatment (how do folks think I ended up in this field?). It’s thought that Iatrogenesis (disease caused by medical examination or treatment) may cause as many as 225,000 deaths per year in the United States. Even ‘Big Dairy’ is a thing. Ag associations and food companies have a shocking history of funding biased research to support their products. All of these shockers have been written about and studied out in the open — you don’t have to go to Bitchute or Youtube to learn about the actual atrocities of Big Pharma and modern med.

But ya’ll: this is not the same thing. Vaccine market share compared to drugs and medical devices is abysmal. Vaccination is a *preventative* medicine after all — unlike drugs, you only need to use it once or twice per condition and you’re done. Not exactly profitable. In the field of alternative health, which often largely encompasses preventative approaches, we know a thing or two about how little funding and interest there is for things that prevent people from getting sick. If previous coronavirus vaccine research had not been terminated due to lack of funding, imagine the enormous social cost that could have been avoided. The lives saved. It’s truly unconscionable.

Reference:

https://academic.oup.com/jlb/article/7/1/lsaa026/5838028

BUT MAH FREEDOMS

This one has gotten us some pretty far out content. A superlative example being the terrible and terribly disappointing music that came from Eric Clapton and Van Morrison (WTAF, guys) — if you wanna listen to two rich old White men moan about the police state and being slaves, this one is ripe with the Force (that is privilege). There’s also some monumentally bad celebrity takes on Twitter. No, Gina, COVID Holocaust analogies are not okay. Call on survivors of genocide as models of resilience but you lose me on comparisons of their torture to stay-at-home orders.

I’ve given you some of the more ludicrous examples out there but will admit, this one has occasionally left me pondering: AITA (Am I the Asshole)? Is mandatory vaccination okay? What about vaccine passports (HIPAA does not apply, shut-up Twitter)? Are these examples of government overreach? Are lockdowns really the slippery slope to losing personal liberties? Are the monopolies of social media engaging in censorship or is some info truly dangerous?
Public Health experts study exactly the frameworks they are implementing and how they impact the economy, society, liberty, justice and health. This isn’t a test. But people understandably have questions.

The thing is, so far, no vaccines have been made mandatory by the government. Yes your work may require you to be vaccinated, but that’s their prerogative, not some institutional decree. Just because the government is funding distribution, doesn’t mean there’s something nefarious about these vaccines. That’s paranoia, not critical thinking. If you learn anything from this article I hope it will be the ever-wise adage that correlation does not prove causation. A LOT can happen between cause and effect, and it’s way too easy to fall prey to bias when we’re trying to connect the dots. I mean, it’s gotta be wildly tantalizing to the conspiracist when things like vaccination disinfo start getting banned. THEY DON’T WANT US TO KNOW A THING LOOK.

I don’t have all the answers to this one, save but to say that none of the personal freedom arguments prove anything about the efficacy and safety of vaccination. I can say that before all of this I have always been someone who doesn’t want the government all up in my business. I protested net neutrality and supported Edward Snowden. I refuse to download TikTok and have both Tor and Signal on my cell phone. I’ve been loudly anti-prohibition since my early 20s. However there’s a difference between that and following mandates to protect yourself and other people from contracting an infectious disease.
I am also a big proponent of Health Freedom Laws: that is the protection of an individual’s right to choose how and from whom they receive healthcare — not having one in Pennsylvania makes my job as a herbalist particularly precarious. There’s also good reason to eschew the regulation of herbs. We already know that poorly designed studies have made casualties of trendy herbal medicines like Kava Kava. If the FDA can start dictating which herbs the public are allowed and not allowed to consume, we’ll have precious little access to some of the most affordable, ancestral capital there is. If that’s not a form of fascism but hushing up science-denialism is, I’m on the wrong boat.

BUT IT DOESN'T EVEN PROVE YOU'RE IMMUNE

I’m not entirely sure where this one is going half of the time, but I assume it’s the confusion around the new tech COVID-19 vaccines use. Traditional vaccines use actual viral material, whether dead or alive, to provoke an immune response to the same virus. mRNA and viral vector (DNA) vaccines uses genetic instructions to allow the body to recognize and destroy the virus when it arrives without actually exposing you to it. While it’s a different mechanism, all the COVID vaccines trigger an immune response and create antibodies. Some are more or less effective in their response than others (which has been clearly articulated, tho may admittedly be confusing for lay people). COVID-19 infection is an infection with the SARS-COV2 virus, and it's the spike protein of that virus that the vaccines create antibodies to. There's no mainstream media gotcha with this one. If you got vaccinated and your test for antibodies comes back negative, it’s not that the vaccine didn’t work, you just got the wrong test! You need to test for antibodies against the spike protein, not the SARS-COV2 virus. Tho if you get infected post-vaccination, you’ll get those antibodies too, just not before!

BUT IT CAN MAKE YOU SICK: ah, swollen lymph nodes!

BEWARE THE RAISING OF UNNECESSARY FEARS, FRIENDS.
Lymph node swelling is admittedly scary. I’ve been there. The only association most of us have with it is cancer so we freak out, despite the fact that it’s a normal, natural response to illness or infection. It’s something I’ve definitely gotten more comfortable with as an experienced massage therapist, and as an herbalist, I’ve been able to help folks track them to keeps tabs on wellbeing. We are big on lymph flow over here. It also just so happens that lymph node swelling is a common side effect or reaction to vaccines. Provoke an immune response and the body gears up! In most cases it just means your lymph system is functioning well. That's how your body works. It’s warned about in the insert for many vaccines, not just Pfizer or Moderna’s.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9320457/Mammograms-pick-harmless-breast-lumps-Covid-vaccine.html

BUT LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE ON VAERS & V-SAFE DYING FROM THE VACCINE

You thought your friend was chill and actually open to new information, but then they brought up the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

In 1990, VAERS was established as a safeguard against possible problems with U.S.-licensed vaccines. If troubling patterns emerged it could be used as an early warning system to detect new, unusual, or rare adverse events post-vaccination. AVers tend to have a HUGE problem with ‘authorities’ like the CDC and FDA, but I hate to break it to them that VAERS is co-managed by them both.

“But VAERS,” could be the official bellwether of the anti-vaxxer. Honestly you can probably give up if you get hit with this angle and save yourself a world of frustration. When you hear this line, imagine this person has been super thoughtful and pulled the fire alarm for you. All the scary ‘stats’ they’re about to terrify you with are not actual stats. Sadly for these folks, you can't make arguments with unverified, user-submitted, and thus anecdotal evidence. BUT OH, THEY WILL TRY. V-Safe is a newer database that’s getting the same traction in the AV community. I love the story of the anesthesiologist who proved this point by submitting his own peculiar side effect to the flu jab: he had turned into the Hulk. Absolutely anyone can and does report, with side effects from vaccination ranging from sniffles to car accidents and broken bones. This system cannot and is not meant to generate reliable data.

Vice does a good job breaking down this type of false claim.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjpmp7/anti-vaxxers-misuse-federal-data-to-falsely-claim-covid-vaccines-are-dangerous

BUT I HAVE AN (UNVERIFIED) VACCINE INJURY

Actual vaccine injuries are very rare but very real, and it’s a travesty that some AVers delegitimize what is a real person’s waking nightmare by claiming their illness is an injury caused by vaccination. This is not something you self-diagnose, and the process of verifying it can be truly harrowing for the small number of affected families. The risk is impossibly low but the consequences are devastating enough that I won’t get into them here. Let’s not play Dr. Google on hard mode.

All that said let me not discount the importance of listening to the patient. Despite extensive training in differential diagnosis, health professionals can get it wrong. The thing is we have to get the language right. Yes, some vaccines can trigger certain responses. They may even have the potential to trigger certain diseases. BUT. The key word here is ‘MAY’ be triggered. We need to stay away from invoking vaccine injury and causation unless/until we have evidence. I'm not discounting the possibility that vaccines could contribute to autoimmunity (more on that later), but I think we need to be conservative with judgments, especially anecdotes and personal experience. There is no evidence as yet. Lots of speculation? Hell yep. I do empathize with folks’ frustration and struggles: it is not easy living with chronic disease. There is nothing about the medical system in the US that makes it easy to manage. I had no idea, until moving to here, that mainstream care could get worse -- I had my share of devastation at home in Canada, but coming here and adding the financial burden on top of getting effective care makes dealing with serious health conditions monumentally worse. However it is a perennial trap of the sick seeker of alternative cures to obsess over THE ONE ROOT CAUSE and THE ONE ELUSIVE CURE. If only it were that simple. I feel for these people but they don’t have vaccine injuries.

BUT INFERTILITY

Ah, the loaded gun of COVID AV myths. Let me first send my sympathies if you’ve been carelessly targeted by this one. People seem to be especially eager to spread this info-virus to others once they get infected. And who better to have disseminated it than the King of Conspiracy himself, David Icke. Fall down that rabbithole if you must. The hysteria is only proportionate to his unfortunately prodigious influence, and certainly not the veritable absence of any actual evidence. “97% of vaccine recipients rendered sterile!” “Global population decline!” Farcical stuff.

This rumour, in its infancy, was blaming traditional vaccine adjuvants for infertility — ingredients the earliest candidates actually bypassed (Moderna, Pfizer, J&J, AstraZeneca). The mRNA/DNA tech vaccines don’t need them. If even a shred of credibility was left after the laughable claims above, this should dissolve any that remains. And besides all that? Vaccine adjuvants are old tech, which means they’ve been studied ad nauseam and extensively publicly deployed and none of them have ever demonstrated reproductive toxicity.

The better question is, what is the evidence or biological plausibility that covid vaccines could cause infertility? We already know that COVID infection can cause ED. While the biggest debt goes to its inventor (Maurice Hilleman) and those who came before him in vaccine research and development, you can’t deny the coincidence of the rush put on the Mumps vaccine when it was discovered Mumps could irreversibly damage testicles. Good old patriarchal panic gets the job done. I mean really, haven’t you ever wondered how we don’t have a cure for ‘morning sickness’ yet?

What else do we know about COVID vaccine safety in reproduction and development so far?

  1. There have been no cases of complications/birth defects/losses caused by the vaccine. Over 30,000 pregnant people have registered in V-Safe and the rate of miscarriage and other pregnancy related complications (pre-eclampsia/GD/etc) are the same between unvaccinated and vaccinated people.

  2. All the aforementioned vaccines have passed DART (Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology) studies with zero red flags.

  3. There's nothing in these vaccines that's teratogenic. It wouldn’t be used if there was. Yes, we all remember Thalidomide and thank it for ushering in a new era of drug safety we benefit from today. We can thanks a savvy female FDA inspector for this legacy!

  4. There is no known biological mechanism that could cause any issues with fertility, pregnancy, or reproduction.

Full infertility myth debunking here:
https://factcheck.afp.com/false-claim-about-covid-19-vaccine-causing-infertility-circulates-online?fbclid=IwAR2PcC3aJKjUv5q-KIXGX60UoZO6W-xAwFk1PKQxd8D0RY2cx8BzqiYDTVM

BUT I DON'T WANNA BE A GMO, LET MY DNA GO!

Few have fallen further from grace in this infodemic than Mega-Health Influencer Dr. Christiane Northrup. We can thank her for this gem on Instagram: “Genetically modified organisms supposedly in the vaccine will start to alter your DNA such that you will eventually become literal property of the makers.” I think she pilfered this one from psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Kaufman, a conspiracist with a penchant for misusing medical jargon to hypnotize his following.

Wild claims aside, neither the mRNA nor viral vector DNA vaccine technologies have the ability to alter DNA. DNA lives in the nucleus of cells and mRNA has no way to get into the nucleus. Once the vaccine is injected, it travels to nearby cells to deliver instructions. Inside the cell cytoplasm it turns into a spike protein, setting off alarm bells that something bad is invading, and the cell figures out the best karate chop to defeat the protein. The cell then eats it up forever because it’s a mean bad inflammatory alien, creating antibodies in the process that will remember the exact best angle to karate chop future bad proteins off the SARS-COV2 virus to fight natural COVID infection.

Viral Vector vaccines do on the other hand enter the nucleus, which is likely the source of confusion here. The process of ‘teaching’ your cells how to karate chop is pretty similar to mRNA. Happily, the inactivated adenoviruses these vaccines are built upon, and wild adenoviruses in general, simply don’t have the enzymatic machinery required for integration into the cell’s DNA. To even further cripple them, the adenoviruses in vaccines have big chunks of their genome deleted to prevent them from replicating.

Read more:
mRNA Vaccines https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2021/01/11/covid-19-vaccines-cant-alter-your-dna-heres-why/?sh=4f74d3452491

Viral Vector Vaccines https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/91604

Fact Check: mRNA vaccines don’t multiply in your body forever https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-genetic/fact-check-genetic-materials-from-mrna-vaccines-do-not-multiply-in-your-body-forever-idUSKBN29I30V

BUT VACCINES CAUSE AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES

This is a HUGE topic that deserves its own post, but suffice it to say, so far we have no definitive evidence that there is a connection. While many of us in alternative and even mainstream clinical work have seen some pretty uncanny patterns connecting the two (even after exhaustive differential diagnosis), there is no way at this point to claim causation. If it turns out there’s a connection, many of us suspect that it will still be rare and just one contributory factor among many. It takes a long time to develop an AI disease — for a vaccine to set off the cascade of effects (including actual physical changes) an autoimmune disease is precipitated by, many layers of protection need to fail and there’s just no historical precedent for these concerns (*see more on GBS). All that said the connection between some viral infections as triggers of AI conditions has been found to exist, including COVID-19 —which means your risk of triggering an autoimmune condition is actually greater with infection than vaccine.

I’m hopeful that mRNA and DNA technology may be able to bypass this potential effect, given that they contain no live virus as in traditional vaccines. However they still provoke a significant immune response, so it warrants investigation into how traditional medicine could explain the mechanisms that play out in this new tech. I can’t say I’m qualified to speculate on that yet. As a clinical herbalist I task myself with understanding the facts and avoid claiming causation when there is no real scientific evidence available. I encourage my colleagues in alike fields to practice the same — let’s be clear when we’re hypothesizing! We’re absolutely allowed to have theories, but it’s good to be mindful that our realms are already filled to the brim with indefensible claims. I'm not saying everything we do needs to be supported by scientific literature (maybe one day if we can get in on study design!). However, given that these traditions are storied and continuously practiced for hundreds if not thousands of years, the pedigree is there even if science hasn’t caught up yet. If we want to integrate our work within the mainstream and thereby make it even more accessible, this is one of the ways we do it.

ANYWAY! You wanna hear more about this you let me know, but so far the medical community’s consensus is that risk of adverse effects for people with autoimmune conditions getting vaccinated appears low. In most cases, your autoimmune condition is going to be much better served by improving digestion, moving your body, and reducing stressors than by avoiding vaccination. There’s a lot more things we can do post-vaccine should you believe you’ve suffered effects, than if you catch a bad case of COVID. Of course, you should always meet with your PCP/specialist to discuss taking anything when you’ve got a medical condition, so go ahead and get your approval before getting the jab.

*GBS may be triggered by flu and tdap vaccines but incidence is very rare and etiology is not proven. This is discussed widely in the literature. You are actually statistically at less risk by getting vaccinated -- greater risk by just catching flu. I am aware of some providers who advise their GBS patients against vaccination, or at least do it with close monitoring and spacing. I think that’s wise and again, talk to your healthcare provider when in doubt. If I had GBS I’d be clearing the vax with my doc. This is a good cited discussion: https://www.mdedge.com/chestphysician/article/111834/vaccines/myth-month-vaccinations-patients-guillain-barre-syndrome?sso=true&fbclid=IwAR3T7844WdNBwf9rlkTvDMwmrFmNs0svhekJf3XUG4DkLPPgMcZ-LWehJJM

Wanna read a similar but more qualified take on this from an MD who specializes in infectious disease? Check out this Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2021/02/17/covid-19-vaccines-and-autoimmune-disease/?sh=5c11d0284892

BUT ASTRAZENECA AND BLOOD CLOTS

UPDATE: April 14, 2021
OK — A lot has happened with the viral vector vaccines (AstraZeneca and J&J) since I posted. Thankfully incidence of these serious blood clotting events remains very, very rare.

If you are worried because you recently received the J&J or AstraZeneca vaccines (especially younger, women), keep in mind just how rare this is (I have stats and visuals to follow to help you understand the risk). From Dr. Katelyn Jetelina: “If you have had the vaccine in the past 3 weeks, keep an eye on your symptoms (if they arise). If you develop a severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath within three weeks after vaccination, contact your health care provider.”

It doesn’t ‘prove’ anything was done wrong. The clinical trials were still rigorous and not rushed, in fact the response has been so timely because the safety signals were there all along (for both vaccines — the mRNA tech had no such signals in trials). The issue was that the incidence of these events between those who did and did not receive the vaccine wasn’t very different. Determining any causality has thus been very tricky. The background rate, how often these events occur in the general population, isn’t much different either. But it’s been enough to trigger a thorough investigation. Remember: safety is the highest priority. The whole point of vaccination is to decrease risk overall. If it turned out risk was higher with the vaccine than with natural infection, they wouldn’t be administered. Right now, despite the pause with J&J, and some of the restrictions with AZ, it’s still technically safer to get a viral vaccine than COVID-19 infection. Public health experts, IE people much more qualified than me, maintain that the benefits of viral vector vaccines far outweigh the risks.

Here are some helpful stats about J&J from The Unbiased Science Podcast (highly recommend following them on IG!):

OWA Vaccine J&J Blood Clot Stats Unbiased Scipod.png

Causality, Heparin…

While we don’t have any info re: causality with J&J, there is a paper in preprint (not yet peer-reviewed) demonstrating causality between the AstraZeneca vaccine and Autoimmune thrombocytopenia (AITP): a disorder of low blood platelet counts in which platelets are attacked by antibodies produced by the immune system. This disorder is similarly, rarely, induced in some patients who receive Heparin, a blood thinning drug. For comparison, incidence is actually much greater with Heparin, and we still use it. It occurs in about 0.2% of all patients exposed to Heparin, whereas in J&J the rate is 0.000088% (see above), and AstraZeneca is somewhere between 0.001-0.0001% (reported by the EMA). Remember not all AITP results in death, either: so far it appears to be fatal in about 15% of cases.

As always Your Local Epidemiologist’s reporting on this is timely and comprehensive, so please visit Dr. Katelyn Jetelina’s FB page if you need more info and resources.

Original (March 22, 2021):
The Atlantic recently released a really measured article on this. The crux of it is that the threat of a rare blood clotting disorder is low (so far about 1 in a million for those under 50), but it doesn’t mean investigation to confirm causation (or not) should stop. And it won’t. The threat of actual mass COVID infection is still more dangerous, and the more we understand about this rare condition, the better we’ll get at either eliminating or treating it. With cases exploding across Europe (they’re reporting ~3000 deaths/day in March 2021), it’s a lot safer than the alternative. We had folks on one side saying the caution was harmful to public trust, with others still crying panic. The problem is this wasn’t an overcautious move. Public health absolutely needs to keep on top of this, it’s just another consequence of involving the public in the real-time evolution of science. Generally the more and the earlier transparency the better. So far the odds of getting this are as low as getting GBS from the flu jab, and despite the very limp certainty around whether they’re definitively connected, the public is aware and still getting their shots every year. It’s no wonder it’s a media sensation right now — social media relishes in any and every story around vaccination and death, despite so far having zero evidence that any deaths have been caused by COVID vaccinations.


Latest from YLE: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/update-astrazeneca-and-blood-clots?fbclid=IwAR30hcmhZRxIpnGvdPl7myW_6iioUXSjgDLFnzXm1_WrsJ_r_Tp7beqq18M

The Atlantic article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clot-issue-wont-go-away/618451/

BUT AFTER GETTING THE JAB YOU'LL DIE WHEN YOU GET INFECTED

Upon learning about ADE (antibody dependent enhancement), I suspected a new conspiracy theory was on the horizon. I don’t think this one is prevalent in the wild yet but I got a broken telephone version of it from a member of a vaccine evidence-based discussion group I’m in. It goes something like this: "The last time ‘they’ tested mRNA vaccines on animals they developed such strong immune responses to the common cold that when they caught a cold later on their body went into overdrive trying to fight it that it ended up killing the animal.” There’s also a video circulating about a mRNA conspiracy where the vaccine multiplies in your body and becomes active upon infection to produce the same effect.

Out of a gigantic abundance of caution (because that’s how careful researchers are when vetting a new drug or vaccine), vaccine researchers track even the most theoretical risks when it comes to new tech. ADE, very loosely because I’m not a scientist, is the very rare event that immunity conferred from an initial viral infection somehow ends up having the reverse effect in re-infection. So, instead of being protected, the virus now has a backdoor that allows it to make you sicker on the second round. This phenomenon is very, very rare and really only a concern where ppl are continuously re-infected. It was first observed in Dengue fever, and again in some immunizations like RSV. The big caveat here is that those immunizations contained live virus or snippets of it. mRNA vaccines contain instructions, not viral material. Nevertheless, it’s on researchers radar because even the smallest of risks are calculated when you’re dealing with immunizing the public. Given that the risk is impossibly small in traditional vaccines, you can imagine how it vanishes even further as a risk in mRNA and DNA vaccines.

As for these animals getting killer cold from mRNA testing? No idea where that came from. Sounds similar to this fact-check on Reuters, re: Mice and SARS. Wasn’t mRNA tho, but we’re learning memes rarely get the facts straight (remember the point is to prey on your fears, not your desire for understanding): https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-mice/fact-check-a-2012-study-did-not-use-mrna-vaccines-or-result-in-animals-dying-from-disease-idUSKBN2A22UW

Want more on ADE and vaccines?
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/covid-19-vaccine-researchers-mindful-of-immune-enhancement-67576
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2f_PFOzGBuEE3w-PfZMmNE6Q2Kc2F3pnVhwBCFCpEqcrSJnAGRtdntUrY

CONSPIRITUALITY

With respect, I can’t go here today. Not for the least of reasons being that it would make this article about 10x longer, but also that the claims happen to be almost 10x more outlandish than what we’ve already covered here which is just ABSURD. Follow Matthew Remski on FB and have a listen to his Conspirituality podcast to get the scoop on this one.

AN AV EXPERT SOUND TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? THAT'S BECAUSE THEY PROBABLY ARE.

BEWARE people embellishing their ‘expert’ credentials. Many AV people have been sharing a bogus meme about ex-Pfizer employee Dr. Michael Yeadon because he ‘ran’ the company or was director when in fact he was fired 12 years ago from the small allergy department he directed, not the entire company. The famed journalist and psychonaut Daniel Pinchbeck’s recent lauding of ex-Gates employee Geert Vanden Bossche as the person ‘running’ GAVI is another example. Bossche is a smart dude with a Ph.D but while under Gates was a lower level project manager for distribution, not research and development. In his video, he tries to put the burden of proof on the audience to prove him wrong as way to deflect from providing any evidence for his theory that mass vaccination is going to destroy the world.

Then we’ve got the science-deniers with Ph.Ds and MDs. Haven’t you heard the news from the 19th century? Germ theory has been disproved!
I’ve read a lot of the arguments against germ theory in favour of Béchamp's terrain out of a sincere desire to understand if there was something there. It quickly becomes pretty clear how this camp re-uses 100+ years of science denialism arguments to bolster their flawed perspectives. Arguments most people (even MD's) are not privy to because why learn about Koch's postulates unless you're interested in the history of epidemiology? These concepts have been disproven and retired many times over. I mean most of these folks don't even understand what postulates are, considering that they try to 'prove' SARS-COV-2 isn't actually a virus by checking it against KP. Of course, it's really easy to get people to buy stuff when you use complex jargon they don't understand.

And speaking of selling stuff — is your ‘expert’ also trading in the prohibitively expensive supplement game, like famed Dr. Zach Bush? This one’s a huge red flag for me always and forever, especially as someone who has studied traditional medicine and seen how effective the most accessible, inexpensive options are in herbal healing (it comes down to what's in your backyard -- it's a bummer that we still aren't capitalizing on that and more popularly reviving that knowledge). I mean Avicenna was out here in the 12th century talking about germ theory before anyone else had even formulated a theory. Āyurveda was writing on microscopic beasties before microscopes. These time tested traditions knew and know what's up, and their methods don't cost you 1000s/month in supplements.

Many of the scientific concepts Bush uses in his sermons are certainly true, but woefully distorted. It's a clever kind of cherry-picking for sure. And when he comes against the limits of his understanding he pivots to spiritual speculation. He has a wonderfully moving story about his first 'alternative' experience receiving acupuncture, the start of his perceived 'hero's' journey no doubt. But in that experience he reminds me of every false self-appointed guru who, in his spiritual infancy, mistakes his experience of the divine for his own divinity and runs a whole platform on it.

Ally GobiComment