I grew up a religious Christian and have attended church most of my adult life. But it saddens me to witness how many believers have turned to the worship of false gods. I don’t mean the world’s usual false gods of wealth, power and fame. I’m talking about the worship of the COVID misinformation machine.
As a country, we are allowing mass human sacrifice to this machine. At the time of writing this, the U.S. is averaging 2,600 daily COVID deaths. The overwhelming majority of these deaths are occurring in the unvaccinated and the deaths are preventable.
Recent data from December shows adults over the age of 50 who were vaccinated for COVID with a booster were 44 times less likely to die from COVID. I can attest to this. It is much less common for us hospital workers to see patients admitted with severe COVID who are fully vaccinated. The COVID vaccines continue to provide strong protection against severe symptoms especially if one has their booster.
Severe side effects to COVID vaccines also continue to be extremely rare and only occur in about 1-3 of every million doses. And I would also add that almost every vaccine side effect is brief and treatable. Millions of vaccine doses have been given in my state and I have yet to see a life-threatening vaccine related complication at my hospitals.
There are risks with any treatment but the benefits of our COVID vaccines simply far outweigh any risks. There is good reason: 96% of doctors surveyed by the American Medical Association were fully vaccinated as of last year.
In a certain sense, we have become the pity of the developed the world. Americans have been dying from COVID at double sometimes triple the rates of every other wealthy country since the summer. The biggest reason for the discrepancy is our lower vaccination rates. This is what false gods do, they bring about unnecessary sickness, death and controversy.
Almost every piece of COVID misinformation I have seen on social media comes from either an unqualified source or from someone profiting from the misinformation. If you don’t have the appropriate training and have not spent years of your life doing scientific research, it is easy to be swayed by the COVID misinformation machine. I would urge stronger consideration towards the scientific consensus and our nation’s top doctors instead of social media or cable-news personalities.
The peer-reviewed scientific research is so strong regarding the benefits vs risks of our COVID vaccines that I would be willing to stake my entire career as a medical doctor on what I am about to say: our approved COVID vaccines are safe and effective at preventing severe symptoms from COVID-19. And although breakthrough cases can occur amongst the vaccinated, the symptoms tend to be much milder and shorter lasting.
And as a believer in God, I would also say that those persuading the masses not to be vaccinated against COVID-19 are not inspired. On the contrary, they are encouraging others to sacrifice their very lives to a false god, which in my mind is the worst form of idolatry. Please listen to those who have been taking care of sick COVID patients, don’t take the unnecessary risk. Get vaccinated without delay.
Jordan Singleton
Jordan Singleton, M.D., Lehi, is an emergency medicine physician who practices at hospitals in Salt Lake and Utah Counties.
