CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD - It was one of those half-hours when strangers are thrown together and begin to chat. After all the standard, polite commiseration about how complicated life had become, one fellow said, "I'm young and healthy. Do I really need to get vaccinated? Who will tell us the truth?" A woman in the same area seconded the "young and healthy" line with a similar level of skepticism about the vaccine.
Now I should mention that these people did not come across as rabid right wingers or conspiracy mongers. They appeared to be fairly average, perhaps a touch conservative compared to the average Angeleno or City Watch reader.
Of course, I responded, "I'll tell you the truth," and I did. I don't think it had much effect.
But a couple of thoughts came to mind after the conversation, the "what I should have said" moment.
The first thought was fairly obvious. Being young and healthy is great until you're not. The young and healthy can come down with an infectious disease and suddenly be unable to breath very well, or have blood clots, or become paralyzed. Someone else reminded me of the young and healthy Broadway actor who lost a leg and eventually his life to Covid-19. The news is full of stories about people who mocked the vaccine (and even the reality of the disease) and now are in the ICU or waiting for a lung transplant or just plain dead.
So there is nothing particularly protective about being young and healthy. Seemingly robust young folks are still dying of the disease, even though it's largely preventable.
Logic has been turned upside-down
But the underlying illogic in those comments took a little longer to parse through. These young folks were speaking as if there is some controversy about the safety of the vaccine. What other possible reason could there be for their remarks?
So my next thought would have been to tell them, "The shot is easy and painless. You can walk into the drug store and get it."
But most people have heard the nonsense being spewed by the professional anti-vaccine propagandists and a particularly nasty group of Trumpists who feel that they have to tear down the scientific community. Since there are now two sides to the "get the vaccine" story, the people I was chatting with are left in a muddle.
Not everybody can be a molecular immunologist. The rest of the world is left with having to make the decision, "Who do I trust? Who can I trust?"
So when this young and healthy man asked me, "Who is going to tell us the truth?" it was a remark coming from the context of all the anti-government propaganda that has been coming at us since the Viet Nam conflict and more recently picked up by the right wing noise machine.
The people I was chatting with can't quite verbalize what this pseudo-controversy is all about, so they will mutter something about how we don't know what the long term effects will be. I want to say, "Well, one long term effect is that I never got polio, even though I know several people who did and still have long term effects."
Somehow these folks make the decision to ride in a car and drink alcohol, even though both of these have potential effects. life is full of risks, and the risks from vaccination are paltry in comparison. And yes, there have been a small number of cases of myocarditis (which mostly resolve fairly quickly) but compared to the three-quarters-of-a-million dead in the United States alone, the comparative risk is extraordinarily low. It's not zero, just like the long term risks of drinking and driving are not zero.
But the problem is that it's hard to have these waiting room conversations when you can't start lecturing about real science, or use statistical terms like confidence interval, or even begin to communicate the difference between a ten percent chance of being injured in an auto accident vs. a one-in-a-million chance of a serious vaccine issue.
Put it this way: When I rolled up my sleeve for the first shot, I understood at some intellectual level that I might be that one in a hundred thousand case, whatever that side effect might be. I also got in my car and drove home after getting the shot, which probably had a higher risk of side effects.
Working both sides of the street on the subject of expertise
There was one other thought which came to mind. Most of us have experienced the debate over gun control. One standard argument on the pro-gun side is that the anti-gun critics don't actually know anything about guns. They will point out that the term "assault weapon" is kind of a joke because there are rifles that shoot the same rounds as those scary looking "assault weapons," yet are perfectly legal.
Actually, it's a not-unreasonable point. If you are going to spout off about something, you should have some basic background in the subject matter. I'll buy into that, although I would argue (and have, in these pages) that the relevant subject matter is the weight and velocity of the bullet and the rate of fire. But yes, these are relevant issues and if you want to join the debate, you ought to know the minimum.
But then, I chanced to hear some talk radio discussion and one thing became crystal clear. The person talking knew absolutely nothing about the complexities of immunology or vascular biology or cell surface receptors or, in fact, any of the other subjects that people who work in the field are expected to know. He didn't understand mathematics -- that was painfully clear -- and he didn't even seem to understand that there were whole realms of knowledge that he should have known in order to opine with such certainty.
The very same guy who will mock the anti-gun people for not knowing what they are talking about will then spout off about the Covid pandemic and the government's advice to get the vaccine. One of these guys actually said that he didn't know anything and didn't trust the CDC or the FBI or doctors. When you think about it, this was actually a confession of extreme ignorance. There are millions of people in this country who took college biology and additional hundreds of thousands who studied advanced biology and chemistry and physics. They have some background in which to analyze all the information coming to us, and equally important, they will have gained some sense that the public health officials are not trying to lie to them.
Some elected officials are doing their best to lie to us, that's true, but the scientific establishment is a little different.
But that's also something that it would have been difficult to explain in that chat among strangers. How can I convince them that there are actually trustworthy people in this life?
Continuing feedback on the city's attempt to turn neighborhood councils into reeducation camps
Since my recent article on how the city's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment and its Board of Neighborhood Commissioners are proposing to give extraordinary powers to the DONE General Manager, there has been a continuing uproar among the people with the most experience in the neighborhood council system. There are at least two former BONC commissioners who are part of the protest. It will be interesting to see if even one current commissioner expresses some concern. Meanwhile, I continue to get emails.
Funny thing here -- the mayor's representative to my neighborhood council has not replied to any of my several telephone calls.
And one more thing
I listened to the introductory training for new neighborhood council board members that was put on by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. I don't remember even one comment by any of the DONE representatives about the proposed power grab, or about their vision of maintaining discipline, or even a comment about how some neighborhood councils need to be helped. But then again, I didn't hear much about the function of neighborhood council as critics of government.
We actually heard more about DONE itself (there was an impressive chart of city departments and their interactions) but almost nothing about what it's like to participate in a board meeting, and even less about the idea of using the neighborhood council system to actually improve city government.
Put it this way -- I would have talked about how to make and pass a resolution urging city government to repair the obvious flaws in its 311 and 911 phone systems. Like, answer the phone please?
But to get back to the original topic, there was zilch about why the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment wants absolute and unappealable authority to throw their listeners off of the boards that they have just been elected to.
Still, there were lots of comments along the lines of "It is my distinct honor and privilege to introduce you to . . . " and then we would be presented to another DONE employee. There were remarks about "Your journey" on the neighborhood council path, a strange concept to say the least.
In short, it was an exercise in self-congratulation. The General Manager complimented her employees for the hard work they had done in putting their presentations together. In practice, the presentation was an extended PowerPoint where each successive presenter basically read the slide on the screen and went onto the next slide.
There were one or two exceptions over the course of the two hour program, but for the most part it was wooden. A two or three page written summary would have done as well. What I found missing was any sense of detail or example -- in other words, some real teaching. Things picked up a bit during the Question and Answer session, although the panelists seemed to be having difficulty in giving straightforward answers to simple questions. (If public comment is one minute per person, can the chair cut someone off after 20 seconds?)
What's bizarre about this training program -- it is, after all, supposed to be instruction for newly elected neighborhood council board members -- is that it is scheduled to involve two more programs that will go on until December. So you've got a few hundred new participants who have already started to attend meetings, and the introductory training ("onboarding" seems to be the current jargon) is scheduled to go on for one-quarter of their entire terms.
Real smart.
And One thing more
This whole equity policy that the city is enacting didn't go far enough for our city's distinguished electeds. Besides the DONE power grab, the city wants us all to be trained in equity and diversity and racism. DONE is working on bringing in programs that they will make us take upon penalty of (once again) being disappeared. The first such program is from a group at Ohio State University. Then there are two more in the works. So the city expects us to take these multiple hours of training without pay. I wonder if this would withstand a legal test. It is definitely a question we should ask the candidates for City Attorney.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
