Emily
Editor, Senior Moderator
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94526
Vaccine Tribalism Is Poisoning Progress on COVID Science
— It fails to promote safety or fight misinformation
by Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH September 15, 2021
....
Thus, we find ourselves in a precarious arrangement. Many people who view themselves on the side of the moral right are pushing harder and harder against nuance. They are eager to label any investigation or discussion of vaccine safety as "anti-vax" out of fear that it will fuel a public anti-vax agenda. They have asked that other scientists who generate a myocarditis estimate contrary to their worldview or using controversial methods lose their medical license. In doing so, they poison their own cause, and become a threat to science and sound health policy.
Many of these commenters need to be honest and appraise their own skill set. Are you capable and do you have experience quantifying rare harms? Are you certain that the federal agencies tasked with this appraisal -- the same agencies that have made colossal errors -- are not making errors here? For most people on Twitter, the best way to be a science communicator is to sit this one out. When used correctly, science is the greatest lighthouse for human endeavors, but if misused, science has led to some of the greatest errors in our history.
Demonizing people interested in better characterizing vaccine safety signals is not pro-vax; it is pro-ignorance and anti-science. Vaccine tribalism is poison.
Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, is a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, and author of Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People With Cancer.
Vaccine Tribalism Is Poisoning Progress on COVID Science
— It fails to promote safety or fight misinformation
by Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH September 15, 2021
....
Thus, we find ourselves in a precarious arrangement. Many people who view themselves on the side of the moral right are pushing harder and harder against nuance. They are eager to label any investigation or discussion of vaccine safety as "anti-vax" out of fear that it will fuel a public anti-vax agenda. They have asked that other scientists who generate a myocarditis estimate contrary to their worldview or using controversial methods lose their medical license. In doing so, they poison their own cause, and become a threat to science and sound health policy.
Many of these commenters need to be honest and appraise their own skill set. Are you capable and do you have experience quantifying rare harms? Are you certain that the federal agencies tasked with this appraisal -- the same agencies that have made colossal errors -- are not making errors here? For most people on Twitter, the best way to be a science communicator is to sit this one out. When used correctly, science is the greatest lighthouse for human endeavors, but if misused, science has led to some of the greatest errors in our history.
Demonizing people interested in better characterizing vaccine safety signals is not pro-vax; it is pro-ignorance and anti-science. Vaccine tribalism is poison.
Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, is a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, and author of Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People With Cancer.