Friends! I have been totally absent for a long time — I have just felt like I couldn’t touch what is happening in the world without it coming out wrong. There were no words. I am here as a friend and a supporter, and I just haven’t been feeling any of that lately. Until today.
My bestie and I talk every day on the phone. For millennials, that is the little icon in the toolbar that looks like fidget spinner. Its used to talk to people with voice. This “talking” has been instrumental in keeping me sane over the last two months while we both were on isolation for close contact with COVID, and then our kids have been sick, and now in Alberta our numbers are verging on a clinical disaster, so we haven’t seen each other for coffee in months. And today we talked about the COVID vaccine.
Now guys, I’m a nurse. I know the difference between a T-cell and a B-cell. I know what hemoglobin looks like and why platelets are important to stop bleeding. I even know how stem cells are used to treat many different life limiting conditions. I don’t know everything, but I would say I have a solid understanding of how the human body works with respect to immunity. Which is what brings me to my list of arguments to fiercely defend the use of vaccines to slow the spread of COVID. Have a read:
Stop with the “rushed” vaccine rhetoric.
The vaccine was not rushed! The vaccine was produced quickly with a high degree of priority.
Sometime around January, scientists realized that the potential for widespread illness from COVID19 was imminent. So they started working on a vaccine. Sometime around March, thousands and thousands and thousands of people were dying from the virus and so the WHO and the richest governments in the world set aside an enormous amount of money to fund the vaccine. This attracted the most intelligent and brilliant minds to stop what they were doing and jump on board to try to stop the deadly virus. Let me say this again. The most intelligent people on the planet have been working together to find a safe vaccine. We aren’t talking about your average med school student. We are talking about the top 0.5% of the world in medical science.
Now to the money piece — normally when a vaccine is being produced, companies have a limited amount of funds to invest in a drug. They spend years developing a plan to convince people to give them grants to fund the investigation. And even then, they still might not have enough. The COVID vaccine was immediately funded and this took years of delay away from development. If every vaccine was funded like this one was, we would certainly have solutions to common illnesses faster and more readily available, but that is impossible.
Science is a really awesome!
We would not be in existence today without the help of science.
Do you think that there were Karen’s around in 1928 when Alexander Fleming discovered that “mold-juice” could kill bacteria (penicillin)? Do you think people protested the revolutionary medication that could save lives and stop the spread of pneumonia, ghonorrhea, meningitis and diphtheria? Probably not. My guess is they realized this could change lives, help people live longer and save children from dying. They likely didn’t think it was a conspiracy from 5G networks. When was the last time, in Canada, that someone died from diphtheria?
Not sold on antibiotics? How about insulin. Before 1922, people who were diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes had a lifespan of 12-24 months after diagnosis. Children with diabetic ketoacidosis were kept in large wards together while their grieving parents sat beside them as they died, which would only take a few days due to the severity of the illness. Until one day, a guy named Frederick Banting and his colleagues Best and MacLeod used ox insulin and subsequently cured a child from diabetic ketoacidosis. Cool hey. That’s because of science and trusting science.
(One more for the road). I work in pediatric oncology and I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of children survive childhood cancer. Why? Because of science, guys! Not everyone does, sadly, and my dream is that one day there will be no cancer to survive from, however do you know that many parents decide to donate a piece of their child’s tumor for cancer research? Scientists take a small piece of the rare cancer and try many many many different drugs on it, so that one day when another child is diagnosed with the same illness they can come back and say “Look! We tried this and it worked! So maybe we can do it again!”. And guess what, many kids end up surviving— because of science.
You can’t possibly control everything, so trust the experts.
It really is okay to trust really intelligent people and give up a little bit of your control with the world when it means that our quality of life might improve.
On your last trip to Hawaii, did you paddle a canoe there, or did you fly? Fly? Good, me too (I’m a terrible rower). The airplane that you flew aboard was likely a pretty big plane. It likely had 300+ people on board and weighs about 161,000 kg. And I don’t know if you have watched me fly a paper airplane lately, but I can tell you that I can’t get it very far — because I am not an aerospace engineer and I have no interest in becoming one. But, I do trust that the guy who figured out how to get that Boeing 787 in the air was really interested in making that 7 ton airplane lift off the ground, propel itself over the rocky mountains and the Pacific ocean, and somehow was able to get the giant steel capsule to land in a designated runway and not explode into a million tiny pieces. I don’t need to know what velocity it travels at, how many atoms and molecules it takes to get it to seemingly float alone in near outer space, or what happens to everyone’s pee when they use the washroom on an 8 hour flight. I don’t need to know because I trust that they do know, and unless I want to take a kayak to Hawaii I am going to have to trust that science is on my side.
Weigh the risks and benefits.
Okay, this really is my last one so chew on this. Lets talk about the worst case scenario with getting a vaccine for COVID19. Side effects include: anaphylactic shock (you can give epinephrine, you’re getting it in a controlled setting. Also you could go into anaphylactic shock at Red Lobster and you still eat there), a sore arm (you can take a Tylenol), headache (again, take a Tylenol). The worst case scenario for vaccinations can not possibly be worse than living in isolation for the next decade, never being able to hug your elderly parents or grandparents again, dying alone or intubation when you can’t breathe. Any side effect that might occur can be controlled with medication that we know a lot about vs, we know so very little about the COVID19 virus. I have never, ever, not even once, seen a zombie apocalypses happen because of the small pox vaccine.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury
We are all tired of this. We are. I am tired, I’m traumatized, I’ve lost a lot of hope in humanity. I have also seen glimpses of goodness, kindness and beautify in all of our time together. I have seen hope restored in the eyes of children when they hear this might get better. I want nothing more than to have Christmas as a big family and I will never take it for granted again. But we have to unite. We have to decide to be good people for the good of people. We need to put away Fox news and start reading peer-reviewed and evidenced based articles.
Sincerely,
Your completely average nurse who understands a little bit about science and who believes a lot about science.