I’m not an anti-vaxer by any means. I had all the usual vaccines during childhood and have as a result lived a pretty healthy life. I keep up to date on the boosters like tetanus etc.
That being said, I haven’t had a COVID vaccine. This is in part due to medical advice based on a physician observing how my body reacts to drugs that seem to work for everybody else. If there are weird rare side effects associated with a particular drug, I’m the one to exhibit them.
Elsewhere in this blog I’ve discussed my desire to be vaccinated against COVID and my confusion, worry, and ultimate selection process of the vaccine.
To be honest I didn’t see the necessity of being vaccinated against COVID, but was considering the vaccination as a gateway to employment, and resuming normal life. President Biden really. made a mess of employment rules with his attempted mandates and subsequent statements.
Regardless of where you come down on the vaccination question, more data is coming out daily that suggests the COVID vaccines may not be all they were cracked up to be.
First we were told the vaccines would prevent COVID.
Then we were told the vaccines would reduce the spread of the COVID
Then we were told the vaccines would reduce the risk of hospitalization. (This one may still be true for some populations.)
We were told the vaccines were safe and effective. The effectiveness is at this point demonstrably questionable, and the safety question is still out for debate.
We were told we needed a booster, now it looks like another booster may be required every six months.
All this for a virus that is 98% to 99% survivable.
When you put the questions raised about the COVID vaccines against the other medical screwups over the past 20 years it begs the question.
Does the medical / pharmaceutical industry really have the high ground?
Leaky Breast Implants, weight loss drugs (Phen Phen), vaginal mesh, defective replacement knee or hip joints, pacemakers, and a plethora of medications that were found to be harmful enough that they were removed from the market after years of common use because the law suits piled up.
These issues, have always made me question my personal doctor. But now with the constantly shifting story about COVID vaccines, I find that I’m going to be demanding more time from my Doctor during my annual visit. I also find that I’m far less trusting of the medical establishment in general.
As a patient, I’m probably going to be labeled “Difficult” because I’m going to demand logical and concise explanation of the problem, and options to address or solve the problem. I’ve never been one to look at the “One Size Fits all” solution as the only solution. But now…
I’m going to be asking a lot more questions and I’m going to be expecting real answers not platitudes, or hand waving. I’m going to be much more likely to walk out of a medical practitioners office if I’m not getting real, verifiable, information. That information had also be in reasonable, normal, everyday English, not some heavily accented pigeon English.
I’ve always believed if a doctor couldn’t explain something in plain English, they didn’t really understand the subject matter.
I worked with computers. People have a hard time with computers and computer people have our own variation of English or terms to describe the functions of machines. Generally speaking it’s the terminology that causes folks to stumble. The trick is converting all the technical jargon into something that a non-computer person can relate to.
There are some computer terms for which there is no direct translation, at that point it’s best to draw a picture either with words or literally. If a computer person really knows the subject matter they can effectively do either. If they don’t know the subject matter and really understand it, typically they’ll try to baffle with bullshit jargon.
I believe that medical professionals have for too long gotten away with the jargon and perhaps don’t understand drugs, procedures, and medicine as well as they should. I’m all for holding them to the same standard as the lowly computer technician.
This is going to lead to more time spent with patients and impact the Doctor’s bottom line. Their insurance billing is based on number of patients and number of diagnosis per day. I personally think this is a shitty business model that doesn’t really serve patients but that is another story.
Being a Doctor is a tough job. I generally respect the profession.
But given that I feel the medical establishment had obfuscated and perhaps flat out lied to me and every other person on the planet for the past two years, I can’t say that I trust them. I doubt that I ever will trust them again.
This is not just about St Anthony of The Mask, a.k.a. Dr. Doom, a.k.a. Sir Follow the Science.
This is also about those Doctors who were silent, those who didn’t question, those who went along with the establishment and didn’t feel it was necessary to do their own research or thinking.
I especially loath those Doctors and researchers, who abdicated their responsibility to question what they were being told in favor of a fat paycheck and Wednesdays on the golf course.
Don’t be surprised if you see a lot of Doctors retiring. Some of them are probably realizing that the loss of trust their patients are showing, signals the end of the gravy train.
Others may simply be retiring in shame over how so many of their profession have behaved. These doctors are as much victims of the medical establishment as the rest of us.
I don’t think I’ll ever in good conscience be able to write Doctor as a title of respect anymore. I wonder if anyone would notice that I write doctor and md in lower case and what I mean by that.