So let me start by telling my own story here, and then go on to how this is playing out everywhere.
My Story:
Monday I was in the ER.
I had chest pains on and off for a few days. Now having chest pain isn't terribly unusual for me, because in the years after my gastric bypass, I've developed all sorts of nasty problems with my digestion, from malabsorption to ulcers to bile and acid reflux. But this time there was no burning sensation with the pain, just a squeeze. Was it or was it not gastric?
Now in addition to all of this, I am exactly halfway through a wait to have some bloodwork done which will either verify or rule out a chronic condition which relates to blood clotting. I like to pretend that I'm totally cool with the wait, and after all, I haven't had problems so far, but the truth of the matter is, since my eldest daughter died suddenly with multiple clots in both lungs, I'm more than a bit anxious about it.
and then comes the kicker... I had the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Now perhaps I would have been less anxious (and less likely to have the chest pain) if I didn't get all worked up by Monday morning with all the helpful friends who were pointing out the news associating J&J with blood clots. By Monday I remembered that it had been my left arm and shoulder that had been hurting all week before the chest pains started). And the doubt and the anxiety crept in.
Now I'm NOT saying that anyone with chest pains (even myself) should not have it checked out. But I would have been a hell of a lot less anxious (and had less likelihood of exacerbating the problem) if I hadn't allowed myself to get all riled up by the wave of well intentioned "information". The possibility loomed very real in my mind that I was having blood clots related to the COVID vaccine, although I knew, in the part of me that was still rational, that it was overwhelmingly likely to be a gastric issue, due to my history, and a rational examination of the evidence at hand.
Breaking Down The Vaccine/ Blood Clot Situation:
There is an apparent correlation between COVID Vaccines and blood clots. There has not been enough research into it yet to say whether or not these clots are caused by the vaccine, however, it appears that the six cases in the US which occurred are pretty indicative of both the problem and the scope of vaccine caused blood clots in rare cases. While the news media first picked up on the clots in relation to AstraZeneca, that later pretty much disappeared from the public eye, and a wave of concern over Janssen (Johnson and Johnson's vaccine) arose.
The problem is, now it's very easy to imagine that our health issues, even some of the pre-existing issues, occur because of the vaccine.
So let's look at the numbers. We know that as of the beginning of April (the 4th to be exact) there have been at least 4 million doses administered. Out of that, 6 people were found to have blood clots. One person died. The vaccine has been paused while further study is done.
I have something I call the Skittles test for situations like this. COVID-19 is like a bowl of skittles. You have a bowl with 6 skittles. One of them is poisoned. It may or may not be enough poison to kill you. You have a second bowl with 4 million skittles. In that bowl are 6 that have poison. One will definitely kill you (this is an extremely high number, because of the small sample size we've had in the US of actual cases). So, if you MUST chose between one bowl or the other, (the chance of getting COVID or the chance of having a blood clot) which do you choose?
The problem here is that the media is now focusing on the 6 blood clot cases (especially the one death) rather than the 566,000 deaths in the US alone and the 3,100,000 who have died worldwide as a result of COVID-19.
Spreading Doubt and Fear:
The media focus on the rare dangerous reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines has had huge repercussions. Of course, newspapers and websites are often businesses, and they make money in subscriptions and clicks, so having a headline that prompts a big emotional reaction (fear or anger are most likely to prompt a reader to go to that article) is more important than accuracy, at least in the headline. And after reading the headline, the reader has often formed their own opinion about what the article says, and carries that bias into interpreting the article itself. This is especially true of individuals who are unused to reading and analyzing scientific literature.
We all know what an echo chamber social media has become. And often people click "share" because some headline confirms their belief, rather than because the article offered a rational, insightful discussion of the topic. We're also all a little raw after 13 months of having our lives turned upside down by the virus, and the ongoing and increasing stress by our social/political environment. It's pretty damn easy to get triggered these days.
For all the well-meaning individuals who sent me information about the J&J blood clot situation, I understand. And I know there are a lot of people out there diagnosing themselves or their loved ones based on something they read on the internet, whether it was something that was blatantly false, something that hinted at something or suggested that there might be a relationship, or something that was just taken totally out of context as a result of fear.
Now let's be fair. These things, these terrible side effects, DO happen, and not just blood clots. But they happen so rarely. Some of them are the result of some trigger of something inside our bodies that has lain dormant until the vaccine, some are allergic reactions, some may be stress responses. But the fact that they are rare does not reduce the anxiety.
As I like to say, I like to think I am not prone to irrational stress or anxiety. And yet, last night, as I held my lottery tickets in my hand knowing damn well that the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against me, my heart raced, and my mind imagined the "what ifs". For the moment before I saw which numbers had been drawn, I could actually believe I'd won, that I was a millionaire, that I could by my kids homes and have food security and the medical care I wanted... all the while the small rational part of me was well aware of how unlikely, nearly impossible, that was. We are not conditioned in this society to respond well to large numbers, which is why we think that "things are better now" with COVID despite the fact that we have many more cases than we did when we entered lockdown.
Other People's Stories:
The problem is, now it's very easy to imagine that our health issues, even some of the pre-existing issues, occur because of the vaccine.
So let's look at the numbers. We know that as of the beginning of April (the 4th to be exact) there have been at least 4 million doses administered. Out of that, 6 people were found to have blood clots. One person died. The vaccine has been paused while further study is done.
I have something I call the Skittles test for situations like this. COVID-19 is like a bowl of skittles. You have a bowl with 6 skittles. One of them is poisoned. It may or may not be enough poison to kill you. You have a second bowl with 4 million skittles. In that bowl are 6 that have poison. One will definitely kill you (this is an extremely high number, because of the small sample size we've had in the US of actual cases). So, if you MUST chose between one bowl or the other, (the chance of getting COVID or the chance of having a blood clot) which do you choose?
The problem here is that the media is now focusing on the 6 blood clot cases (especially the one death) rather than the 566,000 deaths in the US alone and the 3,100,000 who have died worldwide as a result of COVID-19.
Spreading Doubt and Fear:
The media focus on the rare dangerous reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines has had huge repercussions. Of course, newspapers and websites are often businesses, and they make money in subscriptions and clicks, so having a headline that prompts a big emotional reaction (fear or anger are most likely to prompt a reader to go to that article) is more important than accuracy, at least in the headline. And after reading the headline, the reader has often formed their own opinion about what the article says, and carries that bias into interpreting the article itself. This is especially true of individuals who are unused to reading and analyzing scientific literature.
We all know what an echo chamber social media has become. And often people click "share" because some headline confirms their belief, rather than because the article offered a rational, insightful discussion of the topic. We're also all a little raw after 13 months of having our lives turned upside down by the virus, and the ongoing and increasing stress by our social/political environment. It's pretty damn easy to get triggered these days.
For all the well-meaning individuals who sent me information about the J&J blood clot situation, I understand. And I know there are a lot of people out there diagnosing themselves or their loved ones based on something they read on the internet, whether it was something that was blatantly false, something that hinted at something or suggested that there might be a relationship, or something that was just taken totally out of context as a result of fear.
Now let's be fair. These things, these terrible side effects, DO happen, and not just blood clots. But they happen so rarely. Some of them are the result of some trigger of something inside our bodies that has lain dormant until the vaccine, some are allergic reactions, some may be stress responses. But the fact that they are rare does not reduce the anxiety.
As I like to say, I like to think I am not prone to irrational stress or anxiety. And yet, last night, as I held my lottery tickets in my hand knowing damn well that the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against me, my heart raced, and my mind imagined the "what ifs". For the moment before I saw which numbers had been drawn, I could actually believe I'd won, that I was a millionaire, that I could by my kids homes and have food security and the medical care I wanted... all the while the small rational part of me was well aware of how unlikely, nearly impossible, that was. We are not conditioned in this society to respond well to large numbers, which is why we think that "things are better now" with COVID despite the fact that we have many more cases than we did when we entered lockdown.
Other People's Stories:
This part is the hardest for me to write, because I want to present them without the people involved feeling judged. In part, this is why I started with my own story. The problem is, with so much focus on what's "wrong" with the vaccines, people who have genuine and sometimes long standing health conditions imagine that having a vaccine has caused their condition, their decline, or, in some cases, a death.
My neighbor recently lost his daughter. They had spent the day before she died (she was a long time asthmatic) with her, and had gone out to dinner. Then the next day, she had a severe attack and died. "She had been vaccinated only a few weeks before" her father hinted, darkly.
Now neither he nor his wife will directly say that her death was caused by the vaccine, and both admit that she was a long time asthmatic who was prone to some severe episodes, but when they mention her death, they also mention her vaccine.
This is also taken as further "proof" to my neighbor, who refuses to take the vaccine for "at least 3 years" because she won't "be a guinea pig".
Now there is no proof or reason to believe that this young woman's asthma attack was caused by being vaccinated. There's no proof that it wasn't. Because some things you have to have more evidence before forming a hypothesis.
Next is the story of a relative with hypertension. She has now found a single article online that seems to correlate high blood pressure with the vaccine. [Hypertension After COVID Vax No Cause for Worry, So Far: Disagreement over special precautions for people with high BP] The article has that "dark hint" factor to it that tints the expectation of those already with anxiety. But the article itself discusses immediate response to the vaccines "minutes after getting a COVID-19 vaccine" , like the allergic type reactions seen immediately after injection. There were nine cases observed during vaccination, and of those, staff did know that 8 of them had high blood pressure before the vaccine. The article also briefly mentions "white coat BP", which refers to higher blood pressure due to anxiety in a medical setting (which was iffy because of normal heart rates), and then refers to "continued monitoring" of patients with hypertension, which, of course, should happen for ALL patients of hypertension, whether or not they've been vaccinated. Although she has had high blood pressure for some time, she is extremely anxious about the possibility of the vaccine causing her even higher blood pressure. Her BP was found abnormally high at a specialist visit for another reason, but because it was post vaccination, there is suspicion.
Correlation is not Causation:
Here's an example: If someone had died in a car crash two weeks after being vaccinated, no one would jump to the conclusion that the car crash was possibly caused by the vaccination. Could it have been? is there any possibility it could have? Well, yes. But it's such a small possibility that we ignore it.
I have a friend who recently underwent a procedure for a skin tag removal. In the office, it was noticed that she had a small spot which turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma. The finding of the carcinoma correlated to the medical procedure, because that's when it was seen... when it was documented. But again, there is no reason to believe that the skin tag removal had anything to do with the carcinoma.
It's what I call the "dark hints" when it comes to correlation, it's pointing out the correlation, no matter how thin, that makes us think that there is causation.
Imagination:
On Monday I laughed and joked about the chest pains, and reiterated verbally to the staff and my youngest daughter that this was probably some new freaky gastric pain, because god knows I've had enough of them. Inside my mind, I was thinking of my eldest daughter, and the blood clots that had gone undetected in her lungs. I could almost see the blood clots passing through my inferior vena cava, waiting for the one large enough to kill me. Fear does that.
It was just about as irrational as the excitement and anxiety I felt over the lottery draw. Because it seems when the adrenaline starts pouring in, we start using the more primitive parts of our brain. Our amygdala is activated, and we are running on emotion rather than rationality. Then there are all the physical responses that go along with that: responses that relate to our vascular constriction, heart rate, sugar and insulin production, and yeah, stomach acid.
At that point, certain things can become self fulfilling prophecy in a way. I'm worried about my heart, but at the same time, increasing the possibility of a heart related issue like rapid heart beat and high blood pressure. I was also worried about my gastric issues, when that very worry increased the likelihood of an ulcer.
I'm not one to believe in "calling things into being" in the sense of some of the pop psychology woo, but I do know that you can make things worse sometimes by imagining them, if those things are conditions already related to stress response.
So what's the answer?
It was just about as irrational as the excitement and anxiety I felt over the lottery draw. Because it seems when the adrenaline starts pouring in, we start using the more primitive parts of our brain. Our amygdala is activated, and we are running on emotion rather than rationality. Then there are all the physical responses that go along with that: responses that relate to our vascular constriction, heart rate, sugar and insulin production, and yeah, stomach acid.
At that point, certain things can become self fulfilling prophecy in a way. I'm worried about my heart, but at the same time, increasing the possibility of a heart related issue like rapid heart beat and high blood pressure. I was also worried about my gastric issues, when that very worry increased the likelihood of an ulcer.
I'm not one to believe in "calling things into being" in the sense of some of the pop psychology woo, but I do know that you can make things worse sometimes by imagining them, if those things are conditions already related to stress response.
So what's the answer?
Look. I don't have one. The only thing I can say is that we're going to be hit with a barrage of information which we need to sort, and to evaluate as rationally as possible given the situation. I don't know how we can just stop being swept up in all this fear and confusion, except to stop, take a deep breath, and try to hold on to the truth of the numbers, rather than the dark hints of our friends, neighbors, and the headlines.
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