Column By John Young
I’ll never forget it: The moment that the sight of Minute Rice caused tears to form.
True, it could have been Rice-A-Roni. Could have been egg noodles or soy sauce. Of the secretion from my eyes, however, there was no doubt.
I’d just been freed from nine months of veritable home confinement. From a world turned upside down, things were turning upside up. I’d just been vaccinated against COVID-19 at the little clinic in our grocery store.
Amid the grocery aisles for the 15 minutes the physician had me wait in case of side effects, I pondered the upshot of my shot. It far transcended dinner.
Our family could be a family again. No more visits from our sons from behind a door or out on the driveway. We would be together. We would do Christmas in July.
Life could proceed — albeit with precautions and inconveniences.
Then came the politicization of something that had saved millions and continued to do so for generations: vaccination. Even worse came the diminishing and second-guessing of science and public health themselves.
The other day, The Washington Post had an excerpt of an article from July 4, 1976, featuring predictions for 2026 from then-science editor Thomas O’Toole.
Amid predictions about gene editing, “atomic-powered” hearts and more, he pointed to advancements in vaccines and cancer treatments “extending life spans to eighty from seventy.”
Talk about hitting it on the nose, Mr. O’Toole. The average lifespan hit 79 in 2024.
To that end, today’s Post editors had an ominous current-day aside: “A rising skepticism of vaccines since the COVID pandemic has led to a decline in immunization among U.S. schoolchildren.”
What in the world? Did the vaccine not do what it was promised to do? Was it a botched deal? More harm than good?
Garbage. It saved the lives of millions. It ended a pandemic that knocked on the door of every inhabitant on the planet.
True, it did trigger some people who believed only what they suspected, like the anxiety merchant this president appointed to be his secretary of health in 2024.
Over and over, people who bet their lives on anti-vax anxiety — or resisted on religious or political grounds — lost the bet. The cumulative toll was over 1.1 million. Staggering.
Meanwhile, the cottage industry of doubt cranked up amid the startling and swift development of the MRNA vaccine that stopped the pandemic.
“Millions killed and disabled by COVID vaccine.” Oh, boy — miles and miles from the truth.
A Poynter Institute analysis found mortality from the vaccine was less than rare. Meanwhile, adverse side effects were exaggerated by people who all along asserted vaccines themselves are dangerous.
Instead, they groped for and pitched non-remedies like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
Sadly, facts be damned. The quack brigade advances in the face of truth. Secretary of Health Robert F. Google Jr. – we won’t use his birth name here – leads the march, populating the department’s leadership with quacks and professional doubters and blunting research.
Recently, The New York Times reported the alarming trend of parents refusing Vitamin K shots for their newborns, injections that arm newborns with the ability to clot blood. Infants have developed internal bleeding without them.
The New York Times reported that an anti-vax group aligned with the secretary urges parents to decline this protection.
Meanwhile, our secretary of “war” – or is it “military excursions”? — invited a cataclysm when a pullback from required flu shots sparked a wave of influenza at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio with one fatality. Good job, Sir.
All the while, measles, declared eradicated on these shores in 2000, makes a comeback thanks to the doubt mongers and disinformation online.
Vaccination may be the greatest innovation in the history of medical science. Millions of us have lived that history since childhood.
Christmas in July. I won’t forget how we faced a global killer and came out the other side, ready to continue sampling life’s possibilities.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
