Prepare for More Gaslighting With a Pinch and a Burn

This story was inspired by a series (above) by Julio Vincent Gambuto and follows his eloquent and innovative lead.

Roll up your sleeve. Relax your arm. Just a quick pinch and a burn. There. You’ve been indoctrinated…ahem, inoculated.

Will this be America’s welcome to the year 2021?

Sometimes it seems as though a cure for the coronavirus is the only thing that can restore the purportedly essential consumer confidence our nation has lost as a result of the pandemic.

With this undoubtedly in mind, a $13 billion government initiative titled, Operation Warp Speed, was officially announced on May 15th. The project’s name reflects its exceedingly ambitious goal of producing 300 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021. In comparison, the Mumps and Ebola vaccines, two of the fastest ever developed, were produced in no less than 4 years.

One month prior to the announcement, the consensus from healthcare experts, including those on the coronavirus task force, was that a vaccine would be available in no sooner than 12–18 months. So just how quickly can we squeeze this vaccine in? Will we next be hearing about Operation Ridiculous Speed or Ludacris Speed? Actually, if it’s anything like other multi-billion dollar proposals of the current administration, the next thing we should expect to hear is that the coronavirus will be paying for it.

Joking aside, it’s the taxpayers who will be paying for it which will be just fine if the project successfully leverages the combined capabilities of five selected pharmaceutical companies to produce a proven vaccine. But what if it doesn’t? Is this another setup? I smell a good gaslighting coming on.

Let me be unequivocally clear, this is not an anti-vaccine message. I’m a board-certified physician practicing internal medicine and pediatrics. If anyone is pro-vaccine, it’s me, and those in pursuit of a vaccine for COVID-19 have my full support. But I also understand the limitations of vaccines. They’re not always quick to produce. They can have rare side-effects. It can be difficult sometimes to convince people to receive vaccines, and their effectiveness depends on how many are willing to do so. Even more importantly, though, is the idea that medical treatments, including vaccines, don’t mix well with political pressures or financial conflicts of interest. And in this case, we don’t have to look far to see just that.

On May 18th, one of the five pharmaceuticals, Moderna, announced encouraging initial data from its phase I trial prompting its stock to rise by 30%. Two days later, its chief financial and medical officers had sold their stock creating nearly $30 million in combined profit. Their actions were legal, but the optics were unsightly.

Even apart from potential bad actors, financial pressure is inherently built into the structure of Operation Warp Speed. Dr. Anthony Fauci commented, “What it [Warp Speed] means is that at the same time you’re finishing your Phase 1 trial, you’re preparing your Phase 3 trial sites, which is very expensive, and then you’re starting to manufacture the vaccine even before you know it works.”

So the taxpayers will cover the cost for multiple large corporations to manufacture a product that may not even be used. Government waste to this degree is unprecedented, right? Not really. The Superconducting Super Collider and The Expeditionary Combat Support System say, ‘hello’. Yes, we’ve seen billion-dollar government waste before, and despite the fact that some waste will almost certainly occur with Warp Speed, there’s still a chance for a high return on investment.

“We just need to ensure that decisions are made thoughtfully and in an apolitical manner as to not undermine the existing structures and expertise in place to keep vaccines safe and ensure impact. Any misstep risks eroding confidence in vaccines that could have lasting implications.” - Lois Privor-Dumm, policy director, International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Privor-Dumm is as smart as anyone with her assessment because we’ve seen vaccine confidence erode in the past even when it was avoidable. Dr. Michael Osterholm director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota commented recently on the influenza vaccine,

“We realized that the vaccine effectiveness was much lower than had been widely reported…in a good year it might be 50%…With what we learned from our work and that of others is that we urgently need new, much improved influenza vaccines.”

We know the coronavirus vaccine won’t be 100% effective either, and that’s ok because vaccines don’t have to work in every single patient to protect the population as a whole. But what if it’s 80% effective? 50% effective? 30% effective? At what point do we say it’s just not effective enough to use. Well, if billions of taxpayer dollars have already been spent to mass-produce it, what do you think could happen? Might we be peddled snake oil?

I’m not saying those involved in Operation Warp Speed have malintent, but I am suggesting the project is far from safeguarded against corruption or even the simple biases of human nature.

While it is concerning that a rushed vaccine attempt could potentially result in a substandard product, another, more insidious, scenario looms. Yes, my friends, this is where the gaslighting begins.

Over a month ago, Dr. Osterholm estimated that 5–20% of the US population had been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. He also stated, as many experts agree, that 60–70% of the population must develop immunity to COVID-19 either naturally or by vaccination in order to slow and eventually stop the spread of the virus. This is the concept of herd immunity, and it’s the only foreseeable way the pandemic will come to an end. Though no one knows exactly what percentage of the US will have encountered the virus by January 2021, there is a fair chance it will be closing in on that magic 60–70%.

What happens, then, when a vaccine arrives about the same time as natural herd immunity? Exactly. Developers will be tempted to assign undue credit to a vaccine for immunity achieved by natural means in order to justify the vaccine’s existence and cost. They will be ulteriorly motivated to claim victory over COVID-19 while making others feel crazy to think herd immunity was, in fact, achieved on the backs, hearts, lungs, and arteries of those whose immune systems fought and recovered naturally from the virus. That’s the gaslighting that could so easily occur if we aren’t shrewd enough to see it coming.

So how do we fight the oncoming feeling that we might be crazy? We must remember the adage, ‘correlation does not imply causation.’ In order to evaluate the vaccine’s success, we will need to be cautious to avoid simply looking for a temporal relationship between the vaccine and a reduction in cases. Instead, the new vaccine should be properly compared against a placebo or other control inoculation in a large enough cohort of patients with similar characteristics.

And what actions can we take? As with any other vaccine or medicine, read about it from reliable sources. Talk with your doctor and ask questions. Moreover, as I imagine Mr. Gambuto would agree, go vote. Whether or not the gaslighting of America continues is directly correlated with the names you place in the proverbial ballot box. I’m not just referring to the federal government. Your representatives at the state level and other elected officials like your state auditor and attorney general play a key role in ensuring citizens aren’t taken advantage of by insurance, healthcare, or pharmaceutical companies because it can happen even with the most good-willed of these corporations.

Don’t forget how up-scaling works. As we have learned from the pandemic and the events that have followed, even our most mundane actions have a huge impact when multiplied by the number of others like us doing the same thing.

Lastly, this story isn’t a prophecy. It’s about what could happen if we’re not attentive. But none of this is inevitable. In a few short months when a vaccine arrives, if you’ve done your homework, reviewed the evidence, and concluded this vaccine is the real deal, then by all means go out and get it. For those of us fortunate enough to have evaded exposure to the novel coronavirus, receiving a proven vaccine might possibly be the best thing an individual can do for humanity in 2021. I look forward to seeing your face, at least the top half of it, in the waiting room.