Covid Dilemmas 1

I have been spending  much time lately trying to make sense of the politics around  the virus known as SARS-CoV-2, or Covid-19. 

The discourse has become heavily politicised. Reading snippets from opposing camps one gets the impression that the sides live in different realities.

The  official narrative, touted by governments and mainstream media, is that the disease is deadly and the new vaccines are safe and effective.

The disease is bad enough to justify a slew of restrictive measures. Universal vaccination is  the only way out of this mes.

The opposition claims that the disease is less deadly and the vaccines less safe than presented.

Both sides have plenty of  anecdotal evidence to bolster their case.

As a person who likes  to think for herself, how do I decide who to believe?

Quite frankly, my brain has gotten lazier with age. Or maybe just less capable. Lazy implies that I could get this stuff if only I tried harder, and that may be wishful thinking. Anyway, my eyes glaze over at talk of receptors and blocking and docking and especially disputed statistics. I depend on reliable sources with integrity to digest the science input and spoon feed me the outcome.

Even though my brain is more the storytelling kind, I do have a deep respect for the scientific method. I understand a few basic principles.

Shout out here to my STEM teacher daughter. Dr. Nienke E. van Houten PhD teaches her students at SImon Fraser University how to evaluate scientific literature. Much of it goes over my right brained head, but I do understand the importance of looking at the methodology of a study first, instead of jumping ahead to the conclusion.

The phrase “studies show” is  meaningless without knowing more about the studies’ setup.

Studies can be useless for many reasons. They can even be set up to favour a desired outcome.

Some other basic principles to keep in mind.

Most people have heard these but they bear repeating.

Correlation does not equal Causation.

The fact that two things happened at the same time does not mean one caused the other.

Keep asking: What else is happening?

Anecdotes are not data. 

Fine. I get that. But all scientific discovery starts with basic observation, right? 

A single recorded incident is an anecdote. Many anecdotes are not data, but someone may see a pattern. When scientists see a pattern they form a hypothesis, and then the hypothesis gets tested, and if it holds up to scrutiny it becomes accepted science, at least for the time being. Science is ever evolving.

“Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to opening the way to the next better one.” Konrad Lorenz.

Some scientist, I forget who, quipped that science evolves one funeral at a time.

Some scientific conundrums do not affect most of us in daily life. String theory anyone?

That is not the case with medicine. 

In the case of Covid-19 the scientific consensus is far from uniform.

The mainstream narrative and gospel according to most governments is that the new ‘vaccines’ are safe and effective. Mass vaccination, potentially enforced by draconian measures, is presented as the only way out of the pandemic.

However, dissenting voices are many.  We are not talking here of anti vaccine activists.

For starters, hence the air quotes, dissenters point out that the mechanism of action of the new ‘vaccines’ is different from traditional ones. 

It may well turn out that mRNA therapy is the next penicillin and a great boon to humanity. BUT we don’t know yet.

That is a big but.

As a fat old woman, albeit one without comorbidities, the risk/benefit analysis was clearly in favour of me getting jabbed. Besides I am community oriented and willing to take one for the team so to speak. I started feeling hesitant around the second shot, and was talked into it by one of the voices I trust, dr. John Campbell of the UK.

Dr. John Campbell PhD  is not a medical doctor but a nurse and an educator of nurses.

His youtube channel is a wonderful resource of basic education in the medical field. 

He has been a calm, rational source of information since the beginning of the pandemic.

This is one source I trust.

And that brings us to the question: who do I feel I can trust, and why? 

To be continued.