The Potemkin Doctors

Two days ago I received my first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.  In slightly less than three weeks, I will receive the second dose.  You can tell from the fact that I have written this post that I lived to talk about my experience.

However, I wish I could inoculate people against the viral spread of misinformation coming from the Russian government.  (See this, this, and this for instance.)  Among the tools used by Russian intelligence agents are Internet trolls who pretend to be ordinary average Americans - yet the points of view expressed by these trolls conveniently happen to line up with Russian objectives against both the United States and the West.  I have been monitoring a few suspected trolls over the last several months, and I noted how they linked to essays written by Umair Haque which were designed to decrease support for the candidacy of Joe Biden among those who identify as progressive and liberal.  The ultimate aim of these essays was to make the 2020 election close enough to enable Donald Trump to steal it.  They failed to achieve their goal.

Now some of these trolls have become conduits for spreading distrust regarding COVID-19 vaccines made by the West, and they have made some outlandish claims about suppression of information regarding the risks of the vaccines.  However, the CDC website does indeed have pages which describe potential risks and how doctors should manage these risks.  (See this and this for instance.)  When I received my first dose, I was monitored for fifteen minutes afterward.  I left the clinic under my own power, as they say.

To me, the potential risks of vaccination are far, far outweighed by the potential risks and complications of getting sick from an actual case of COVID-19.  It should be noted that by now, about one out of every eleven people in the United States has been infected, so with or without the vaccine, it may just be a matter of time until most of us are exposed to the virus anyway.  While I do trust the efficacy of the vaccines made in the West, it appears that a majority of Russians do not trust their own homegrown vaccine.  If the Sputnik vaccine is actually both safe and effective (and preliminary reports in the Lancet appear to indicate that it may be), perhaps the Russian government would do better to focus its propaganda efforts on its own people.  And perhaps Putin himself should man up and get a shot of his own vaccine.  The best propaganda consists of a proven track record of telling the truth.  Putin's regime does not have this.