William Marvel: Inconsistency, Inc.

Before winter, I will make a long trip through the South, including some of the current hotbeds of Delta-variant infection. I’m told I’m not eligible for a booster shot until eight months after my second vaccination, or I would get one before I go.

With my humanities overview of science, I can grasp that the vaccine jump-starts an immune response through a cellular trick, rather than through introduction of a live virus. Like everyone, I also know that this particular vaccine was hurried through the customary approval process, and that anything new always carries a risk of adverse consequences that might take years to develop. Those offering unequivocal assurances that the vaccines are “proven safe,” as five Carroll County legislators did in this paper on Friday, might be more persuasive if they stuck to the strict truth that the vaccines have been proven “remarkably safe so far.”