Gaslighting basically refers to making people feel crazy as a power play, right? The benefits of the mRNA vaccines consistently outweighed the risks. A lack of 100% efficacy, and a lack of 100% safety, are what have driven much of the public away from vaccines, not gaslighting. People are notoriously unable to balance relative and absolu…
Gaslighting basically refers to making people feel crazy as a power play, right? The benefits of the mRNA vaccines consistently outweighed the risks. A lack of 100% efficacy, and a lack of 100% safety, are what have driven much of the public away from vaccines, not gaslighting. People are notoriously unable to balance relative and absolute risks in their brains. Gaslighting by the medical community was not the primary driver here, but I’m sure doctor exasperation existed as we worked very hard to persuade patients to get free shots that were MUCH better than taking their chances with COVID.
There’s lots of data to support this, and if you cling to the small but real risks of vaccination exclusively, then you are doing something worse than gaslighting, you are fear mongering and conspiracy driving. That contributes to death and disability and sadness.
Ryan, I am sure you are a wonderful physician, but you are out of touch on why the entire world has turned against the Covid vaccines.
It isn't because they were told they were 95% effective at preventing infection and transmission and it turned out to be 80%, or some lower number.
They turned against them because they were advertised as a vaccine to prevent infection, and it turned out they did not such thing - in fact it's possible they increased your chances of infection [1] which wouldn't be a surprise, because pre-2020, that was a concern of coronavirus vaccines [2].
The public was convinced by Fauci, Wallensky, Bourla, Bancel, Biden, Maddow, Colbert, and the entire PH apparatus that these shots were the key to ending the pandemic, would prevent you from getting infected and become (in the words of Fauci) "a dead end fo the virus".
That turned out to be 100% incorrect.
As 2021 progressed and we started seeing the vaccinated get Covid anyway, the press (via the messaging from Fauci) kept calling these "rare breakthrough cases" and were adamant there was no need to be alarmed. Is it "rare" when literally every single public official got Covid *after* they were vaccinated? Biden getting it, sure, that could be breakthrough. Biden, Jill, Fauci, Bourla, Maddow, Bancel - multiple times too - that's not a "lack of 100% efficacy". It's 100% lack of efficacy.
It was clear to anyone following Israel, which saw the vaccines fail at stopping transmission first, that they didn't do what they were promised.
And here is where the gaslighting comes in.
Rather than own up, and remind everyone "science is a process", and it evolves with new information, and as it turns, they were all wrong about the efficacy, they lied and acted like this was always known, pretended they never said the vaccines wouldn't stop transmission or infection. No, instead they now claimed the vaccine merely lowered chance of bad outcome from Covid, and it was our fault for not understanding the limits of what the vaccine could do.
Unreal.
All of this gaslighting might have been easier if we didn't have them on record saying all this bullshit late 2020 through early 2021. "We have the receipts", so the expression go.
And furthermore, we know it wasn't even a "noble lie", because these people pushed to mandate the vaccine. They pushed to fire medical staff who were uneasy taking the fastest vaccine developed in history, using a platform never rolled out to humans on mass scale [3], against a class of pathogens we had never come close to making an effective vaccine before.
They wanted children barred from school, cancer patient revoked treatment, and firefighters sidelined for any hesitancy because they claimed this was the only way to stop the pandemic.
They can't say "we didn't say the shot would block infection" because that wouldn't make sense on mandate vaccine anymore than mandating statins.
They honestly believed it, were wrong, and when realized they were wrong, rather than admit error, they gaslit.
That's why only 20% bothered to vaccinate their kids, whey few showed up for the booster and even fewer for the biavlent. Why country after country is throwing their unused surplus out. Why Pfizer stock is right back to where it was pre 2020. Why the 3rd world countries we earmarked millions of shots for don't even want them.
Ridiculous to cast my description of reality "fear mongering and conspiracy driving" - that, is gaslighting.
/rant. Sorry a little aggravated tonight, rough week, and I expect to be smarter than this.
__________________
[1] Rather than cite the Cleveland Clinic study showing this, I will show the fact check of that study, because the flimsiness and desperation of the "Fact Check" is even more compelling than the actual CC study
You could of course, simply look at state by state, country by country, cases and all-cause mortality before and after vaccines to see they were no more effective than a placebo and any observational study data drudged up to show the opposite is easily refuted by it's inability to predict anything or replicate.
[2] As recorded by Dan Werb interviewing the Titan of Coronavirology Ralph Baric
"Baric knew that vaccines that didn’t accurately match their targets could weaken human resistance and inadvertently make people who were inoculated sicker.
“Baric was one of the few scientists who saw the stakes clearly. It wasn’t that an eventual SARS vaccine might work or not. It was that a vaccine could be either an antidote or a poison for a future pandemic-ready coronavirus, and there might be no way to tell them apart until it was too late.
p97 The Invisible Siege
[3] Honestly I might be quite wrong on this claim. My understanding is that this was the first time we rolled out mRNA beyond clinical trial phase. I have nothing against the platform. I just wouldn't personally invest much in the stocks of companies pushing it because it's first test was a complete failure and I am a conservative investor.
Hi Michael, while I do appreciate that much of what you’re saying has truth to it, and I’m certainly not going to change your mind commenting, I would point out that there is a lot of absolutism in your thinking. The whole world has not turned against vaccines, and very little in life is 100%.
Blaming people for some real time lane shifts by leaders and experts as this thing played out in real time is not ok. Otherwise you get leaders like Bolsonaro who try to act like they are omnipotent and omniscient, and their strong man approach to uncertainty with certainty leads to hundreds of thousands of people dying unnecessarily in their countries. That unwavering stance pleases a certain mindset of people who cannot handle uncertainty and vagary and flip flopping, but that’s what we need to acknowledge is necessary as something like this mutates and we learn more.
I’ll just conclude that mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives, prevented hundreds of millions of cases which can lead to permanent damage and disability, and have resulted in a comparatively small number of deaths and disabilities…which we can all agree would never have been an absolute number like 0.
Fair enough, but Offit, like Prasad, doesn't enter the comments. (So far? Maybe will change?)
May jump in your comment section if you don't mind polite pushback (above, as I mentioned, was me venting after a terrible day). While I made a habit of being a paying subscriber to everyone I came across who writes well, regardless of whether I agreed with them, I had to pause that practice recently so no offense for just remaining free reader.
Sorry about the terrible day. As fellow human travelers we can all relate! And there is no way to be a paying reader for all the good substacks out there!!! I usually post a link in the notes section which is a good general place to give feedback without subscribing to everyone as you know. Enjoy the holiday weekend
Gaslighting basically refers to making people feel crazy as a power play, right? The benefits of the mRNA vaccines consistently outweighed the risks. A lack of 100% efficacy, and a lack of 100% safety, are what have driven much of the public away from vaccines, not gaslighting. People are notoriously unable to balance relative and absolute risks in their brains. Gaslighting by the medical community was not the primary driver here, but I’m sure doctor exasperation existed as we worked very hard to persuade patients to get free shots that were MUCH better than taking their chances with COVID.
There’s lots of data to support this, and if you cling to the small but real risks of vaccination exclusively, then you are doing something worse than gaslighting, you are fear mongering and conspiracy driving. That contributes to death and disability and sadness.
Ryan, I am sure you are a wonderful physician, but you are out of touch on why the entire world has turned against the Covid vaccines.
It isn't because they were told they were 95% effective at preventing infection and transmission and it turned out to be 80%, or some lower number.
They turned against them because they were advertised as a vaccine to prevent infection, and it turned out they did not such thing - in fact it's possible they increased your chances of infection [1] which wouldn't be a surprise, because pre-2020, that was a concern of coronavirus vaccines [2].
The public was convinced by Fauci, Wallensky, Bourla, Bancel, Biden, Maddow, Colbert, and the entire PH apparatus that these shots were the key to ending the pandemic, would prevent you from getting infected and become (in the words of Fauci) "a dead end fo the virus".
That turned out to be 100% incorrect.
As 2021 progressed and we started seeing the vaccinated get Covid anyway, the press (via the messaging from Fauci) kept calling these "rare breakthrough cases" and were adamant there was no need to be alarmed. Is it "rare" when literally every single public official got Covid *after* they were vaccinated? Biden getting it, sure, that could be breakthrough. Biden, Jill, Fauci, Bourla, Maddow, Bancel - multiple times too - that's not a "lack of 100% efficacy". It's 100% lack of efficacy.
It was clear to anyone following Israel, which saw the vaccines fail at stopping transmission first, that they didn't do what they were promised.
And here is where the gaslighting comes in.
Rather than own up, and remind everyone "science is a process", and it evolves with new information, and as it turns, they were all wrong about the efficacy, they lied and acted like this was always known, pretended they never said the vaccines wouldn't stop transmission or infection. No, instead they now claimed the vaccine merely lowered chance of bad outcome from Covid, and it was our fault for not understanding the limits of what the vaccine could do.
Unreal.
All of this gaslighting might have been easier if we didn't have them on record saying all this bullshit late 2020 through early 2021. "We have the receipts", so the expression go.
And furthermore, we know it wasn't even a "noble lie", because these people pushed to mandate the vaccine. They pushed to fire medical staff who were uneasy taking the fastest vaccine developed in history, using a platform never rolled out to humans on mass scale [3], against a class of pathogens we had never come close to making an effective vaccine before.
They wanted children barred from school, cancer patient revoked treatment, and firefighters sidelined for any hesitancy because they claimed this was the only way to stop the pandemic.
They can't say "we didn't say the shot would block infection" because that wouldn't make sense on mandate vaccine anymore than mandating statins.
They honestly believed it, were wrong, and when realized they were wrong, rather than admit error, they gaslit.
That's why only 20% bothered to vaccinate their kids, whey few showed up for the booster and even fewer for the biavlent. Why country after country is throwing their unused surplus out. Why Pfizer stock is right back to where it was pre 2020. Why the 3rd world countries we earmarked millions of shots for don't even want them.
Ridiculous to cast my description of reality "fear mongering and conspiracy driving" - that, is gaslighting.
/rant. Sorry a little aggravated tonight, rough week, and I expect to be smarter than this.
__________________
[1] Rather than cite the Cleveland Clinic study showing this, I will show the fact check of that study, because the flimsiness and desperation of the "Fact Check" is even more compelling than the actual CC study
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2023/01/fact-check-cleveland-clinic-preprint-study-does-not-prove-risk-of-covid-infection-goes-up-with-each-vaccination.html
You could of course, simply look at state by state, country by country, cases and all-cause mortality before and after vaccines to see they were no more effective than a placebo and any observational study data drudged up to show the opposite is easily refuted by it's inability to predict anything or replicate.
[2] As recorded by Dan Werb interviewing the Titan of Coronavirology Ralph Baric
"Baric knew that vaccines that didn’t accurately match their targets could weaken human resistance and inadvertently make people who were inoculated sicker.
“Baric was one of the few scientists who saw the stakes clearly. It wasn’t that an eventual SARS vaccine might work or not. It was that a vaccine could be either an antidote or a poison for a future pandemic-ready coronavirus, and there might be no way to tell them apart until it was too late.
p97 The Invisible Siege
[3] Honestly I might be quite wrong on this claim. My understanding is that this was the first time we rolled out mRNA beyond clinical trial phase. I have nothing against the platform. I just wouldn't personally invest much in the stocks of companies pushing it because it's first test was a complete failure and I am a conservative investor.
Hi Michael, while I do appreciate that much of what you’re saying has truth to it, and I’m certainly not going to change your mind commenting, I would point out that there is a lot of absolutism in your thinking. The whole world has not turned against vaccines, and very little in life is 100%.
Blaming people for some real time lane shifts by leaders and experts as this thing played out in real time is not ok. Otherwise you get leaders like Bolsonaro who try to act like they are omnipotent and omniscient, and their strong man approach to uncertainty with certainty leads to hundreds of thousands of people dying unnecessarily in their countries. That unwavering stance pleases a certain mindset of people who cannot handle uncertainty and vagary and flip flopping, but that’s what we need to acknowledge is necessary as something like this mutates and we learn more.
I’ll just conclude that mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives, prevented hundreds of millions of cases which can lead to permanent damage and disability, and have resulted in a comparatively small number of deaths and disabilities…which we can all agree would never have been an absolute number like 0.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations
I won’t reply again, this is Paul Offit’s house so let’s show some good manners and agree to disagree perhaps.
Fair enough, but Offit, like Prasad, doesn't enter the comments. (So far? Maybe will change?)
May jump in your comment section if you don't mind polite pushback (above, as I mentioned, was me venting after a terrible day). While I made a habit of being a paying subscriber to everyone I came across who writes well, regardless of whether I agreed with them, I had to pause that practice recently so no offense for just remaining free reader.
Sorry about the terrible day. As fellow human travelers we can all relate! And there is no way to be a paying reader for all the good substacks out there!!! I usually post a link in the notes section which is a good general place to give feedback without subscribing to everyone as you know. Enjoy the holiday weekend