COVID Confused? Pandemic Fatigued? Read This.
By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD
We all prefer clarity and simplicity. How nice it would be if life offered us simple either/or, good/bad choices. We crave simplicity so much that we impose it on complex situations and people: these kind of people are wrong, these kind are right. Or, they must be hiding something. They’re doing this to drive their agenda. Experts are phony.
Sorry folks. Reality is one big messy pile of ambiguity and complexity.
So if you’re frustrated that the media, political voices, and public health officials are giving you mixed messages, I’m sorry. They do make mistakes, and they could do a better job-but they cannot make it all easy and unambiguous. We’re working with probabilities and future projections-shades of gray. Not black and white. Whether you choose to grapple with this reality or to reject it will not change the reality itself.
Let’s grapple.
The limits of vaccination
Don’t tell me “vaccines don’t work.” See my previous post for data on the profound effectiveness of vaccination to prevent COVID deaths.
But “work” has multiple definitions, and the excellent American mRNA vaccines have shortcomings. In a perfect world, vaccines would do even more than save our…
