I Was An ‘Anti-Vaxxer.’ This Year, I Changed My Mind.
HuffPost
"Changing your mind, especially strongly held views, is hard."
Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when there were whisperings of “possible vaccines,” I was a hard no. Summer arrived, and along with the heat came all the rumors of possible side effects; I was still saying “No, I won’t get it.” Fall arrived and with it, another wave (I lost track ... was it the third wave? Fourth?) of infections and hospitalizations. The number of people dying from COVID-19 kept rising. I, along with so many others, realized that our hope of this pandemic ending with summer hadn’t come to fruition. It was around this time that I realized I might need to pay a bit more attention to all of the vaccine talk and instead of just shaking my head, actually learn more — and not from random people online, but from actual experts. So I still turned to people online, but this time, it was epidemiologists and immunologists who were experts in viruses and vaccines. These people truly knew what they were talking about, and I was feeling pretty desperate for that. I wanted unquestionable facts, real numbers and unbiased data. These were people whose stories and posts I would see and read daily and slowly, over time, I began to question a lot of the former beliefs I held about vaccines.More Related News