…Misinformation about COVID vaccines, and vaccines more generally, has become so entrenched and normalized that it now regularly forms part of political platforms.
Given that vaccines, including COVID vaccines, are widely considered one of the greatest achievements of biomedicine – it has been estimated that over the past 50 years vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives – this is a deeply worrying trend. We need to recognize that the merger of politics and vaccine misinformation is doing grave harm….
given the strong, broad and international scientific consensus on the value of COVID vaccines, how did we get here? Obviously, there are many factors at play, but, alas, the embrace of vaccine misinformation is increasingly about ideology.
Political identity has become one of the most significant – perhaps the most significant – variable predicting vaccine hesitancy, the embrace of vaccine misinformation, distrust of relevant scientific institutions, perceptions of risk surrounding vaccines, and belief in the efficacy of disproven COVID therapies (e.g., ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine). Indeed, numerous studies have shown a strong and growing association between vaccination hesitancy and ideology. In the U.S., political partisanship matters more than race, age, insurance coverage or education in predicting vaccine uptake. Studies have consistently shown that those who identify as Republican are much more likely to not get vaccinated and to hold a dim view of COVID vaccines. A 2024 study found that even the reporting of vaccine adverse events is influenced by political identity, showing that in Republican states, “vaccine recipients or their clinicians” are more likely “to report COVID-19 vaccine AEs” than in Democratic states.
A similar trend can be found around the world, including in Canada. ….
…The harms of increasingly politicized vaccine discourse are not isolated to COVID. The hesitancy created by the spread of misinformation during the pandemic has spilled over to adversely impact the perceptions of other beneficial vaccines. A 2024 study found, in the words of the researchers, that “conservatives in the United States spread their negative attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines to unrelated vaccines,” including flu, HPV, MMR and chickenpox. Studies show that politicizing public discourse about vaccines can also heighten equity issues and make it more difficult to counter harmful misinformation….
…As of mid-August, about one in every 19 British Columbians were enduring an infection, with or without symptoms.
Although the media routinely dismisses all COVID infections as an inconsequential nuisance, that’s not what the science says. The virus remains deadlier than the flu and repeated infections can radically change your health.
Repeated studies show in the bluntest terms that the initial acute infection is only the tip of the iceberg. Even a mild bout of COVID can leave a legacy of blood clots, heart failure, diabetes, decreased brain function (see sidebar), long COVID (now affecting 400 million people worldwide) and immune damage that increasingly makes people more vulnerable to a plethora of infectious diseases and possibly cancers.
These problems can erupt three years after an infection and are especially prevalent in patients who’ve been hospitalized by COVID.
Which is why the U.S. immunologist and COVID specialist Dr. David Putrino emphasizes, “There is no such thing as a SARS-CoV-2 infection that does NOT have prolonged consequences.”…
on an annual basis COVID infections still account for 20 times more deaths than influenza.
The data is not complete but this death toll likely made COVID the second or leading cause of death in the country last month.
According to Moriarty’s data, the number of COVID deaths per infection remain highest in Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan because they have older populations often compromised by serious medical conditions. They are also served by shrinking health resources.
…According to an increasing number of researchers, immune deregulation triggered by COVID probably plays a significant role in the dramatic global upticks in infectious diseases. The suspects include RSV, a variety of herpes viruses, whooping cough (now burning up the charts in Canada and England), scarlet fever, dengue fever, fungal infections and tuberculosis. Forty-four countries have now reported a 10-fold increase in the incidence of at least one of 13 infectious diseases compared to trends prior to the pandemic.
Although vaccine hesitancy, climate change and permissive travel have also played a role in this microbial wave, researchers strongly suspect that COVID’s disruption of the immune system has made it harder for many people to fight other infections.
…Here, then, is where we’ve arrived. We’ve entered a vicious cycle where more infections generate more COVID variants. The new variants have become more immune evasive. At the same time society has generally abandoned masks, testing and basic public health messages.
We could slow and suppress the cycle by facing the challenge squarely. For example, by cleaning dirty air the way we once tackled the disease-ridden spectre of cholera-infested water.
But public health officials are afraid to talk about clean air let alone the obvious: avoiding infection.
Beating back COVID requires hard work, communal wisdom and clear policies that markedly reduce the level of infection in society.
To date we have chosen viral denial, dirty air and a triumphant reign for long COVID.
I don’t subscribe to the Globe and Mail now, so I can’t link to this article, but Picard always writes well:
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