It’s GO Time!

We’re heading into winter with the weapon we need to put this pandemic behind us.

If you’re like me, you jumped in the opposite direction when the COVID vaccine came out. Warp speed? Hard pass. America’s medical establishment is full of politicians and corporate stooges. I don’t trust them or the media. It’s not that they lie, exactly, but they leave stuff out to suit them, and tend to discount ideas that aren’t theirs.

So I immediately refused the vaccine. I took every other precaution, and meanwhile kept an open mind to new information. I followed the news on outbreaks around the world, and also found the excellent substack, Your Local Epidemiologist, which provides accessible summaries of scientific research as it’s published.

And this month – finally – it made sense to me to get vaccinated. The pandemic has given up some secrets in the last 20 months, and now my game plan has changed. I think yours should, too. Hear me out.

The clincher for me was the Delta variant, which was so bad there’s an upside for those of us who’ve survived it: now we have clues to better understand the virus. Respiratory coronaviruses like COVID tend to have an MO where they throw off lots of variants, seeking the best way to infect as many bodies as possible.

It’s a balancing act. If a strain is too contagious, it’ll burn itself out in a flash; too deadly, and it won’t have any more hosts left to transmit it.  A virus needs time to come up with different variants, see what works. This summer, Delta kicked our ass but the good news is, the worst is likely behind us as it’s hard to imagine a more dangerous strain.  We could be looking at our last winter of the pandemic.

Let’s not fuck this up. Can you imagine keeping safe all this time, only to be stricken in the final stretch? Numbers are going down, we need everyone doing everything we can to continue this trend and contain Delta’s last stand this Holiday season. If we do this right, life could be mostly back to normal by spring. This is not a drill! Actual scientists are cautiously optimistic.

Now’s the time to vax! Slam this virus when its down, shut off its means to create a new variant that could slip past our immunity gains and slam us back into lock downs. It’s not likely, but it’s possible. Why take the chance?

We have well more than a year of practical evidence, almost three billion people have been vaccinated worldwide, we know by this point it is safe and effective.

If I didn’t believe this, I wouldn’t have gotten vaccinated myself. But I have, and I am fine. Furthermore, my clients and their parents have this extra security – it’s no guarantee, of course, I still wear my mask indoors. But this vaccine is by far our best defense. New anti-viral treatments hold some promise but they only work after you’ve been infected. And we don’t want that.

Let’s not give COVID another chance to throw us a curve ball! Let’s get all our arms out there, let’s rally each other for these last few critical months. We’ve seen the worst it can do, now let’s hit it back with the best we’ve got. Thank you for doing your part! Peace.

Agree? Disagree? Leave your comment below. Please follow the links in this article for deeper dives. Read Dr. Woodson’s last column here. 

MASK UP! Even if you’re vaccinated, the live virus can circulate in our airways as we breathe. Without a mask on, you could be blowing COVID everywhere you go, possibly infecting others. Please cover up this cold and flu season.