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!