This morning I was considering speaking on a conference call with clinic staff where I work, and where the vaccine is being heavily promoted. Our clinic administered the first 20 doses of the Moderna product to employees this morning. I have responded to a survey indicating that I am not willing to receive the vaccine at this time. I imagine sharing these thoughts in a video for social media. The time I think is coming for that kind of activism, and the response it generates will be worth navigating… I think. Here is a brief writing of what I might have said on that clinic meeting:

Hello, before I say anything, I just want to voice that I am open to further discussion about my position, and about your decision on whether or not to receive the vaccine. I am choosing to wait at this time for a couple reasons which I’d like to share. First, I hesitate with the terminology; since a “vaccine” as I understand it, should have the antigenic components to which our immune system generates antibodies. In this case, the injection contains the genetic coding sequence for the spike protein which is then generated in our own human cells. It’s an interesting idea, and it might work, but it is not a vaccine in the traditional sense of that word. Second, the studies that were done to get it approved were completed by the pharmaceutical industry that benefits financially from its approval for use and distribution. They know how to design studies that satisfy the lowest bar for approval, and there is not effective oversight for long-term safety. This product has not been fully evaluated and approved by the FDA, it was granted an emergency authorization for use due to circumstances of the pandemic, and so from my perspective, appropriate caution is warranted. I don’t yet know if the benefits are greater than the harms. I’m not in a position to advise against the vaccine, because there isn’t evidence now that it is more dangerous than beneficial, but I am here to simply voice my uncertainty in the setting of a medical industry that is rapidly promoting its use. It is not mandatory now, so you have the opportunity to decide for yourself. As do I, as a physician currently seeing patients. I am at low-risk for severe disease from COVID (and not zero risk), and I am choosing to delay on receiving the vaccine that is being distributed to my colleagues today.

I am a conscientious objector to the COVID vaccine. I am a millennial who graduated from medical school in 2016, which means my Facebook feed is filled with my peers who are bravely and proudly receiving the shot in a bid to promote public confidence, hopeful for a path out of this pandemic which has been so challenging for so many of us.

    Since the first days, we have heard from Bill Gates and others that the way out of this will be through the vaccine, which we initially thought would take years to develop. Operation Warp Speed was announced on the evening news at our house, with the plans to manufacture a supply of the vaccine while the testing was being completed to expedite the relief from the pandemic. At the time, I was a doctor out of work, living with my parents after taking time for a personal retreat. The clinic where I had recently worked, and clinics everywhere were seeing very few patients as people were too afraid of exposure to seek care.

    I went back to Minneapolis and to the clinic in July. I have been there on a part-time schedule, seeing mostly patients who were screened as non-infectious and had concerns that outweighed their virus concerns. Occasionally, I also worked in the COVID screening clinic with full PPE and did see a few patients who needed hospital care for their deteriorating condition. For the majority, it was simply a question of whether they needed to quarantine to prevent spread of the infection because they had had symptoms that were concerning for it.

    I have always been interested in holistic health. To me, that means paying attention to the food we eat, the way we move, as well as the quality of our relationships, and the way we manage stress. To be complete, it includes everything, including our finances, our emotions, our jobs and our spirituality. In the conventional system, it can be hard to address, or even identify the root causes for the problems that lead to the complaints that show up in the clinic.

    During my time off, I had more time to read, and given my personal and professional interest in holistic health, those are the topics I like to explore in my free time. In particular, I started to look into the perspectives from people associated in my mind, with the “anti-vax” movement. For the most part, they all seem to reject the label “anti-vax” for themselves, often claiming that they are supportive of safe and effective vaccines. In medical school, even in residency when I was the doctor ordering the shots at the well child checks, we learned to follow the CDC guidelines. That was the curriculum, and that was what we did. I learned that there is no maximum to the number of shots that can be given during 1 visit. If the patient is behind on their routine schedule, we can give 6 doses in one day to help get back on track.

    I am aware that most of my former classmates, and most of the current medical staff have little tolerance or interest in “anti-vax” perspectives. I recognize in myself, that it would be difficult to suspend my judgement long enough to understand their arguments and claims while I was also working in a clinic and routinely recommending the shots. So during my break, I had mental bandwidth to sit through and consider the perspectives presented in a 9 (!) part documentary series entitled ominously : “The Truth about Vaccines”. Ty and Charlene Bollinger co-hosted the dateline-esque series of interviews with a number of figures who pieced together, as best I could tell, the case against vaccines.

    I’m not able to boil it down to a damning sentence. Even this whole essay might not convince you. I wasn’t sold after watching the series, but I had a sense of who the figures in the community were. Paul Thomas and Robert Kennedy Jr. were two of the figures who appeared more credible, but in general I was intrigued that most of the speakers appeared sincere and with a story to tell, and not desperate or overly emotional, the way their arguments get reduced down in memes on social media.

    So here I am, working at a community clinic as a family physician during the pandemic, with the decision on whether I personally would like to take the vaccine when it is available to clinic staff. Initially, I was quite uncertain. I listen to my peers, I listen to the news, I listen to Dr. Fauci, I listen to updates from doctors at the hospital and I hear a promising message of a safe and effective vaccine. I understand that our clinic would like to build trust with our community so they too will be ready to get vaccinated, and they would be glad to have staff like me, demonstrate that we are willing to receive the shot.

    Also, I know where to find those alternative perspectives, the ones who never seem to end up on the evening news or in the conversations with medical professionals. My job now is to integrate the information, all the information that I can process, and come to a decision for myself. And given what I know, for now, my answer is that I am not ready to receive the vaccination.

    I will continue writing. I have a lot more to say. I am nervous about putting these thoughts out to the Facebook community, but I know that I eventually do want to address a wider audience. I am open to conversations, and I recommend you do plenty of research before making this decision for yourself. I wish I could say that your doctor or health provider is a good source of information, but in my view, I strongly suspect that they are likely not familiar or articulate in the case against the vaccine. I apologize if this feels like I’m leaving you hanging, but that’s all for now. Be well everyone!

    I am a physician, and I am not planning to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. I have more questions than I think will be answered by the time it is offered to me. I won’t rule out the possibility that I might change my mind as more information becomes available, but it feels both vulnerable and important to share my views. I think conversations on this topic are needed, and I hope that my writing contributes to healthy communications.

    My first question is whether the term “vaccine” is the right one for this injectable therapy. In my experience, when a vaccine is administered, it contains the antigenic component to which the immune system is sensitized. With this new mRNA technology, the antigen isn’t created until our own cells build the spike protein from the synthesized gene. I think a more accurate description than “vaccine” would be “gene therapy”.

    The metaphor that comes to mind, is that of Roundup-ready wheat. We have genetically modified those organisms with a gene that protects them from the poison glyphosate. Then, farmers can spray their fields with the roundup which kills all the plant life except for the genetically altered product which is grown as a commodity. I’m not saying the mRNA is inserted from the injection into our genome, just that it was synthesized and now involved in our cellular machinery. Still, I can hear the critics now, who believe that without our level of production of these commodities, that an opponent of Roundup must be against farmers and that the result of these dreams must surely worsen world hunger. Not so, I say. To bring the analogy back, I want patients to be defended from the Coronavirus with adequate vitamin D levels, with exercise and good sleep, stress management, and healthy relationships. I don’t want to ignore or minimize the growing death count from the Coronavirus. But I don’t think the new vaccine is the only option for defense.

    Back in the metaphorical territory, I believe, optimistically, in the opportunity of regenerative agriculture. There is a lot of hard work involved in raising crops in a way that nourishes both the land and our bodies, and the path forward I see involves a lot more of it done by a new generation who realizes that we need to get off the doomsday path we are on with fossil fuel use and environmental exploitation and degradation.

    There is more to say about the new “vaccine”. As a millennial doc, who finished medical school in 2016, I am plugged into the Facebook network, and I see proud selfies of so many of my former classmates and colleagues who are doing what they think is right to promote the public image of this product that is sold as “safe and effective.” I wonder how they know? Do they accept Pfizer’s and Moderna’s study results as presented? Do they simply trust Anthony Fauci or their professors and peers?

    When I look at the study, I see the heralded results of course. But I also notice that the study group was only monitored for 2 months. The tool they used to measure the difference in their treatment and placebo arms was the PCR test, which has its own limitations worth serious consideration. For now, I am just interested to know, what is the risk of autoimmune conditions down the road? Not 2 months down the road, but 2 years? Because remember, our immune system isn’t targeting the antigenic protein that is injected, it is targeting a protein that was created by our own cells. How does this protein get out of the cell? Does it not get tagged with any MHC “self” markers? Can we be sure that both the mRNA and the protein break down or are eliminated from the body after the injection? How long do those myocytes live with the active mRNA producing spike proteins?

    In another essay, I could talk about why so few physicians would speak out about the vaccine. I could talk about the ones who do and why they are so marginalized. For now, I’ll come back to the Roundup metaphor. Consuming those products won’t kill you. Some integrative doctors might talk about how glyphosate affects the gut lining and so on, but it’s not imminently dangerous to ingest their products. And, in my perspective, I don’t think it is a good idea. Which is where I land on the vaccine as well. I want to support the young people doing the hard work of biodynamic farming, or regenerative agriculture, aiming in the direction of a sustainable and thriving planet. I don’t think the Pfizer/Moderna product applied to 7.8 billion human bodies is a wise approach to the challenges we face.

Write something that takes a clear stand for something that you hold as sacred in the world that is getting threatened right now.

I’m going to decline the COVID vaccine when it is offered to me.

I am honoring my intuition, and not abandoning it to please others.

This is tied to a wound where in the past I wasn’t yet ready to make such a stand.

If this decision opens the door to my exit from conventional medicine, I welcome that opportunity.

My greatest hope, is that my courage reverberates to others, in a way that matters.

My greatest fear, is that I am not only wrong, but wrongheaded and making matters worse for everyone.

What’s true, is that I don’t have enough information to be certain. What’s also true, is that I am doing the best I can with the information I have.