As a skeptic myself, I find it strange how much skepticism you have toward fairly trustworthy “main stream” sources of information and how simultaneously little skepticism you have toward sources like Mercola, Facebook posts, and YouTubers. This false “skepticism” that pretends to care about “all sides” is dangerous.

I wish anti-vax ideology only hurt the adopters thereof, but unfortunately we’re all in this together. Of course I’m concerned about the safety of vaccines developed much faster than any other in history and with vast financial incentive for speed. But my reasoning for trusting the vaccine is pretty straightforward: (1) we all, even we non-immunologist scientists, have to rely on experts to interpret the evidence for us; (2) the academic peer reviewers of the published studies and the regulators at the FDA who all review the available evidence are the best experts we have (and have ethical codes and motivational structures that are fairly disparate and separate from the financial incentives of the vaccine makers); (3) the only people making noise against the vaccine are the self-fashioned “experts” of anti-vaxxer darlingdom, despite all declarations that their ideas are being marginalized by a corrupt system, etc., etc., are simple snake-oil salesmen who peddle products and of course their most insidious product: “alt”-ideology, fighting a corrupt system that renders everybody but them and their network of cronies “untrustworthy”; and (4) even if something unforeseen goes wrong with the vaccines, which is exceedingly unlikely, getting the vaccine still would have been the most reasonable decision.

Get a vaccine or maybe be partially responsible for the deaths of others and yourself – that’s the situation. There’s no credible reason not to do so in a society that is impacted by your decision. Today, the total US death count is 442,030. Starting the day you have a vaccine available to you that you’re refusing, you won’t know how many of the new deaths that day (yesterday 1,875 in the US) you could have prevented.