Kos’s excellent diary on the “No More Silence” anti-vax nonsense hit home, since a family member has embraced at least the outer fringe of all this. At least on their website, they don’t come right out and claim to be anti-vax though it seems like their FB group is pretty up front about it, and they’re in some ways more nefarious than the RFK Jr.’s and Jenny McCarthys of the anti-vax world.
My niece had a rare reaction to the Moderna vaccine (anaphylaxis with severe facial rashes and chronic fatigue) and posted to the “No More Silence” website (not to their FB group to my knowledge) under her real name. I'll call her “Scarlett” here. Scarlett claims not to be anti-vax” but now is angry about “how this has been marketed" and that she is “pissed off at how this is being marketed to the masses while people are hurt, sick, and dead and those facts are being downplayed and snubbed by social media and unacknowledged by the outlets from which you get your information, and by the government and manufacturers themselves. ” She believes the COVID vaccine should be a “personal choice”.
I went to their website (not their FB group) and a couple of things jumped out at me. Most of the people posting there were telling their stories about how they were allegedly harmed by the vaccine, and most were like Scarlett: “we’re hurt, don’t ignore us, help us, and why aren't they telling us this could happen?” Only one video poster I saw, a guy calling himself Joe and claiming to be “a respiratory therapist on the frontlines of COVID since day one” and who claims to have had heart problems since taking the vaccine, was overtly anti-vax. There’s little information about past medical histories on several of the videos and written postings on the website, very little about possible medications the posters/alleged victims took before taking the vaccine.
One problem here is that the CDC and FDA are clear about possible side effects, including anaphylaxis, which is an extremely rare adverse reaction. The CDC’s very straightforward on this: if you have a bad reaction to the first shot, you shouldn’t get a second shot, but instead you should consult your doctor, and the remote possibility of severe reactions is something they advise about. Here’s the CDC’s advice, from their website:
If you get a COVID-19 vaccine and you think you might be having a severe allergic reaction after leaving the vaccination provider site, seek immediate medical care by calling 911.
Here’s how Scarlett described her experience with the first dose of the Moderna vaccine:
I received my first dose of Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine in early May 2021. I had what I thought was typical vaccine soreness in the arm. I had the shot in my arm and couldn’t sleep on that side for 3 or 4 nights. My whole arm was numb down to my fingertips for about 48 hours. The first day I experienced headache, body aches, swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, itching on my hands and feet, and nausea/vomiting/diarrhoea, which lasted for about a week. I also began experiencing lots of hair loss within a few days, which has slowed, but not resolved over 4 months later. The hair loss was accompanied by dry, scaly patches on my scalp. From what I understood at the time, some of these symptoms were typical, and several friends and family that had already received both doses of C-19 vaccine said their second dose was easier on them. So I went back for my second dose as scheduled, thinking this would be the same for me.
It’s important to note one thing here, and I love her dearly, but there’s no evidence that Scarlett followed CDC guidelines here: she should’ve consulted her doctor before getting the second dose. According to her account on this, she only went to the doctor after the second dose. I haven’t spoken to her, so it may be possible that she talked with her doctor after the first dose, but given the way she describes it here, I think it’s unlikely. This isn’t to diminish what she’s going through, but it does explain her experience, and it may explain the experience of others.
It’s hard not to sympathize with most of the posters on No More Silence’s website. Other than “Joe”, they seem genuine and tragic. That includes Scarlett’s case, and in her case at least we can get a pretty complete picture of why the second dose had such severe side effects. Most of the rest of the posters seem like very nice people — they probably are — but unlike Scarlett, we know very little about them aside from the fact that something bad happened to them or a family member, and they blame the vaccines they’ve taken.
What’s really galling about the website for “No More Silence” is that they present themselves as a patient advocacy group and seem to be more interested in being softly anti-vaccination. This is more about using people like my niece to sow discord about the vaccine. “Look at her facial rashes! Don’t want to get a vaccine, because that might happen to ME!” is the message they seem to be implanting into the site’s visitors. This isn’t to say that adverse reactions don’t happen — my niece’s experience is real — or that these people don’t deserve sympathy and help (they do). It is to say that this is hardly an unknown phenomenon, and these people shouldn’t be pawns for someone else’s agenda because of their very real pain.
One more thing about Scarlett: she has a child that’s less than one year old. I hope her animus against the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t push her into RFK Jr. territory.