Rebuttal to Palacios' Vaccine Stance

I sincerely appreciate Healdsburg City Council member Skylar Palacios making a thoughtful, detailed statement about why she has chosen not to take the Covid vaccine.

Unfortunately, Palacios' statement will do a great job of corralling support from all the wrong people, and bolstering their cause. Among the anti-vaxers, we find anti-science zealots, the misinformed, the paranoid, the outright selfish and fundamentalists of every stripe (Christian, New Age, Islamic and so on). By and large, these people don't believe their vaccine decision will affect other people. Their runaway suspicions of our medical and journalistic institutions compromise their arguments from the onset. I do not see them as the principled, cautious and discerning folks that Palacios makes them out to be in her statement. Good luck finding level-headed and rational thinkers among them who are forwarding a data-driven argument. The politicians who oppose vaccine and masking mandates are among the most ideologically narrow and superstitious our country has seen in modern times.

Palacios should be distancing herself from them. Instead, she shares their belief in a preposterous list of conditions for what a successful vaccine should be. The vaccine is not 100% perfect, nor does it need to be. If all the world were to follow her “caution” and “discernment” then we would have many, many more thousands of dead to grieve for.

I share with her an opposition to the influence that corporations have on medicine and media (and politics), and I don't doubt that the frightening cases she uses to illustrate their malfeasance are true. Nonetheless, nothing is more supportive of truly objective information (information that is freely available to serve people of all types) than our scientific and journalistic institutions. They may at times be compromised, but if we throw them out completely, it is to our peril. Palacios' statements vilify the media, and medical experts, by focusing entirely on their faults. She leaves no room for objective, unprejudiced conclusions to arise. I oppose this kind of broad blanketing of distrust being thrown over the dedicated work of thousands of scientists and journalists (of every color, gender and creed) who are working for our health and for our freedom. It's paranoid -and it is deeply unfair and deeply destructive. 

Are there a handful of scientists who recommend against taking the vaccine? Yep. But why choose to stand with the marginalized few unless it’s only to validate one’s pre-existing fears or metaphysical beliefs? 

People who have chosen not to be vaccinated will lose their jobs (and entrance to events etc.) but this is not an injustice. Getting a vaccine is about as "deeply personal" as washing your hands after going to the bathroom. You are far, far more likely to get sick from food poisoning than from the vaccine. The freak-out and the exaggerations are simply unwarranted. People are willing to lose their jobs because they have mistaken a data-driven reaction to a public health emergency (the vaccine) -for an assault on their freedoms. It’s a ridiculous confusion, in my opinion, but confusion is the order of the day in the Trump Era that we still live in.

The "Medical freedom" argument is deaf to actual medical science and it isn't about freedom, the way I understand it. Does the kind of freedom you are after eschew how deeply our decisions affect each other in a life-or-death scenario? Unless Palacios is explicitly advised by her doctor to avoid the vaccine, then she ought to re-frame the risks the vaccine poses, which have been blown out of proportion. She ought to do what more and more Americans are realizing is the moral thing to do. Get the vaccine and be a part of ending this nightmare. 

Unfortunately, I am afraid she has dug herself in too deep to make this a simple reversal. The other city council members, and many staff members, want to move council meetings to in-person with a vaccination requirement for attendees. Her decision creates an unfortunate burden on the city staff (to set up a hybrid format meeting to accommodate her) and should they scrap or postpone in-person meetings, then this furthers a very non-inclusive meeting format as not everyone can afford internet service. The vaccine, on the other hand, is safe, effective -and is 100% free.