As we work towards moving to the end of this coronavirus pandemic, hoping to finally find ourselves living in a post-COVID world, there are plenty among us who are skeptical of just how we’re going to get there.
Much of the trouble comes in the form of “vaccine hesitancy”, which is fueled as often by misinformation as it is by the mainstream media. Conspiracy theories abound as well, with a number of individuals repeating the hypothesis that the vaccine is just a way for the government to further control you…somehow.
This week, some further reluctance emerged as a J&J vaccine appeared to create serious side effects in a number of women, forcing the US to pause its rollout while it could fully articulate the risks to the American public.
Now, to make matters worse, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has provided a curious and confusing angle on the story during a recent appearance on Anderson Cooper’s CNN program.
Murthy said, “[W]hat we are trying to figure out right now is whether these unfortunate cases of clots are, in fact, related to the vaccine itself.”
Murthy said, “So, the reason to pause, Anderson, there are a couple of reasons: One is to do the investigation quickly, to understand whether there’s a connection between the vaccine and the adverse events. But there’s another reason as well to pause, which is to give us time to speak to the medical community, to doctors, nurses, and others who are taking care of patients so we can enlist their help in looking for the kind of symptoms we may be concerned about and then have them report it.”
The pause on the J&J vaccine may only last a few days, as the government seems primarily concerned with conveying the risk of the issue to an already apprehensive public.
