Dr. Megan Ranney:
There are two parts.
The first is, of course, we want people to be able to ask questions and get trustworthy answers. There are times where we don’t know the answer yet. We’re still researching or exploring, and we should be honest when that is so. But sometimes we do know the answers, and then we need to share that closest approximation of the truth that we have.
So I don’t think anyone’s saying that we shouldn’t be asking questions. What we are saying is that the asking questions should not be accompanied by violent rhetoric that implies that public health professionals, scientists, or health care providers are somehow out to cause harm or deserve to be hurt or killed.
The other side of that, of course, is to acknowledge that football does cause injury, including CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. We know that. That’s why we have changed helmets and padding and all kinds of things. Was it football that caused that man’s mental illness that led him to then go to New York City and shoot up an office building?
That link is unclear. And so I think, in this case, can vaccines or certain vaccines sometimes cause side effects? Of course. Is the risk greater than the benefit? No. For the vast majority of vaccines, certainly all that are FDA approved, we know that they are the safest and most effective way to prevent illness.
And, finally, even if this person did experience a side effect from the COVID vaccine, which does sometimes rarely happen, was that the cause of his mental illness? We don’t know, anymore than we know whether or not it was CTE that caused the man to shoot in New York.
But what we do know is that the answer to being sick physically or mentally should never be violence against another human.
