The facts about the vaccine still matter

I wrote a letter to the E-R regarding important facts that appear lost within the contrived controversy surrounding the Covid vaccine. My letter simply stated that a virus must be taken seriously or we risk deadly consequences for huge numbers of people.

Examples— Smallpox, Polio, Ebola, HIV, and the Spanish Flu to name a few. Secondly I acknowledged the debt owed to scientists for developing vaccines that thwart the Covid virus. For anyone unfamiliar with this enormous accomplishment, I suggest a very readable nonfiction book by the eminent biographer, Walter Isaacson, titled “The Codebreaker.” The story tells of Jennifer Doudna, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work in the development of gene editing, a technology central to the creation of the Covid vaccine. The book presents Doudna’s academic career, chronologically outlining the pathway she and other researchers took to advance the understanding of molecular genetics which made the Covid vaccine possible. The book shines a light on the unbelievable imagination, intelligence and motivation of these scientists and their amazing work for which we all enjoy the fruits.

Someone subsequently rebutted my letter, making a convoluted argument that the existence of a very small number of people with health conditions precluding their receiving the vaccine somehow diminishes the value of this indispensable tool. This meaningless diatribe clearly illustrates that those owning an untenable bias against the vaccine have no valid argument and can only react by attempting to discredit the facts surrounding the issue.

— Arlyn Beneke, Durham