What got me through the COVID scourge in 2020-2022 was a clarion beam of enlightenment on something called Microbe TV, with its podcast TWiV, which I listened to, religiously. For 4 hours a week, I learned stuff about viruses, immunology, vaccines, epidemiology I never learned in medical school--I don't think they even knew when I was in medical school.
Dr. Offit
One of the star guests they had on often was Dr. Paul Offit, from Penn, who is on the FDA committee which approves or rejects vaccines and he was always a voice of careful reason, unswayed by trends or bombast, just a show-me-the-numbers kind of guy.
This link to an interview with "Dr. Mike," who is someone I've never heard of, but who is one of the best interviewers of medical people I've ever run across-- is 90 minutes long and it is worth every minute. I listened to it in 30 minute segments and Offit is so disarming and so open, and obviously knows what he's talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A27ameSqcQs
I keep imaging the interlocutor who sometimes comments on this blog, who is informed by every FOX and QANON conspiracy theory, listening to this, and gradually smiling and saying, "Hmm, maybe this guy is a good source of real information," and the world being transformed.
Never will happen, I know. But Paul Offit is so reasonable, it almost seems possible, he could break through to the other side.
One thing he says is that given the widespread level of COVID vaccination, and especially for people who have had some form of native COVID, plus the vaccine, especially in people who are not high risk (over 75, immune suppressed, pregnant) another vaccine at this time may not be worth it. There is always a small risk and he talks about the clotting with the J&J vaccine and the myocarditis in young male athletes after Pfizer, but he is always trying to figure the risk vs. the benefit ratio.
He also talks about T cells, the unheralded hero of immune protection, which more people ought to know about. Everyone knows about antibodies, but T cells are the infantry who are going to come out of the trenches and get the invaders when the next wave hits, after the antibody calvary are long gone. T cells are in it for the long run.
What is especially engaging is his answers to the questions about who can you believe, and how can you know what is the truth? They talk about the doctors who are well known and well adorned with prizes and big university names who have testified before Congress and on CNN and FOX and elsewhere, who say vaccines cause autism, or introduce DNA contaminants into your cells, and how tough it is to know who to believe. We're not talking about Dr. Oz here, but guys who are doing really fine work in other areas, who, for some reason have felt the need to go on TV and talk about stuff they really don't know about.
But the overall effect is, at least for me, profoundly reassuring. You figure, if the committee has guys like Paul Offit reading the 400 pages before the meeting on every next vaccine, you've got a fighting chance the government is actually going to make the right call.
