To Be A Fool

Thursday, January 01, 2026

Let’s talk about the COVID vaccines, because the rewriting of history is getting exhausting.

COVID was real. The deaths were real. The ICU overflow was real. The long-term complications are real.

What wasn’t real was the expectation that a brand-new virus would come with instant, perfect answers.

Here’s what keeps getting distorted:

1. “They said the vaccine would stop transmission.”

Early data showed reduced transmission, which was true at the time. Then the virus mutated. Variants changed how easily COVID spread. Science updated.

2. “The vaccines didn’t work.”

They did what vaccines are designed to do: reduced severe illness, reduced hospitalization, and reduced death. They were never magical force fields against infection, especially once variants emerged.

3. “Natural immunity was ignored.”

It wasn’t. But natural immunity comes after infection which carries real risks, including hospitalization, long COVID, stroke, myocarditis, and death. Vaccines aim to reduce harm without requiring people to get dangerously sick first.

4. “Healthcare workers pushed this blindly.”

No. We adjusted recommendations as evidence evolved, because medicine isn’t ideology.

Guidelines changed because data changed.

5. “COVID proved the medical system can’t be trusted.”

COVID proved something else entirely:

• Misinformation spreads faster than viruses

• Public health messaging is fragile in a politicized environment

• And science works best when it’s allowed to evolve, not when it’s frozen in screenshots from 2020

You don’t have to like how the pandemic was handled to acknowledge reality. But pretending COVID vaccines were some grand lie ignores the lives they saved and the clinicians who watched patients die before we had them.

Medicine isn’t perfect. But rewriting history doesn’t make it better.