10 Ways COVID Changed How People Think About Health

Some lived in fear for three long years of contracting a COVID-19 infection, others lost their jobs as they resisted vaccine mandates, and many reported symptoms of long COVID or suffered vaccine injuries.

People are now looking back on the COVID-19 pandemic as a poorly managed public health crisis—and as we learn to live with the ever-mutating virus, it’s time to reflect on decisions made during the pandemic and their resulting consequences.

Vaccines, once seen as sacrosanct in modern medicine, have begun to lose favor with the general public since the COVID-19 pandemic response.

As early as June 2022, an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that the uptake of influenza vaccine doses has fallen in states that also saw low COVID vaccine uptake.

Authors of the study suggest that the two polarizing attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccines are influencing behavior toward other public health measures, and that those who approved of the COVID-19 vaccines readily took up the influenza annual vaccine, while those that declined the COVID-19 vaccines also declined subsequent vaccines.

“Safety concerns and mistrust of COVID-19 vaccines or government” may also have been associated factors, the authors wrote.

The pandemic response to COVID-19 saw many changes to public health. For the first time in history, emergency-use products were mandated and heavily promoted by the government and social media with little to no disclosure of possible health risks and informed consent.

Dr. Robert Malone, a biochemist and one of the inventors of the mRNA pharmaceutical platform, said mandating experimental drugs challenged basic bioethics.

It has since resulted in “push back,” against Big Pharma by the public, said CEO of Progenabiome and gastroenterologist Dr. Sabine Hazan.

Despite the continuous “safe and effective” narrative from public health agencies on COVID-19 vaccinations, emerging reports of myocarditis, pericarditis, immunological, and neurological symptoms, as well as an unprecedented increase in vaccine adverse event reports suggest otherwise.

A December poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports on COVID-19 vaccines found that 57 percent of Americans were concerned about “major side effects” of the vaccine.

Hazan said that doctors are getting more and more of their patients coming to their clinics, asking why they are falling ill after vaccination, and have had to challenge the safe and effective narrative.

“It’s hard to tell a parent who’s son was an 18-years-old athlete who died 4 days after a shot, that [the death] is not from the shot,” Hazan wrote to The Epoch Times.

For many, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorizing childhood mRNA vaccinations despite data showing questionable clinical efficacy was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In children aged 6 months to less than 2 years of age, mRNA vaccine effectiveness was 75.5 percent at less than 7 days after the third dose. However, the researchers gave an overall vaccine effectiveness range from negative 370 percent to 99 percent, meaning that the vaccine either reduced transmission by 99 percent or could increase the risk of infection 3.7 times in children.

A recent survey released on Dec. 16, 2022, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that 35 percent of parents oppose vaccination requirements for children to go to school—an increase from 23 percent in October 2019.

Repeated messages on masking, social distancing, and COVID-19 mortality numbers, have reinforced the fear of viruses and infectious diseases in the general population.

Prof. Linda Wastila from the University of Maryland, who has an expertise in pharmaceutical safety and policy, lamented that COVID-19 has normalized fear of contagion. People are coming out of the pandemic being diagnosed with “coronaphobia” and post-traumatic stress disorders.

While the concern of contracting COVID-19 has died down due to the declining virulence of the Omicron variant, the media and public health agencies have turned their attention to other viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza.

The mix of COVID-19, RSV, and influenza has been dubbed a “tripledemic,” fueling fears about RSV and influenza seasonal viruses that the public has easily coped with for many years.

“Having that public health emergency for COVID, which we’re still in, fuels those fears,” said Wastila, “People don’t know how to be normal now about viruses.”

Vanessa Steinkamp, a former AP government high school educator for 16 years, and currently a teacher at community colleges and high schools, said that masking requirements have dealt great emotional damage to children.

Compared to adults, children use more of their amygdala—the emotional center of the brain—rather than their prefrontal area, which is used for critical thinking. Steinkamp said that children seeing their peers masked sends the message that other people are a biohazard.

“It creates an anxiety, especially in kids and young teens that is very hard to reverse,” said Steinkamp.

Though masking requirements only remained until last year in her state, Steinkamp still notices that some children freeze up—shocked—when they are surrounded by other children. She is therefore concerned about children from other states who are still receiving warnings of potential masking requirements.

Infectious disease expert and former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. David Bell said that there are always going to be viruses and people need to cope with them.

“Once we’re born, there’s always a risk of dying that comes with being alive. But that doesn’t mean we’re in an emergency because we’re alive,” said Bell.

Trust in public health has fallen since the pandemic, and health experts believe it will take a long time for it to build back.

Epidemiologist Prof. Harvey Risch wrote to The Epoch Times that he no longer trusts the major health agencies and medical journals “for any statements or reviews or policies or scientific results,” since none of them are scientifically objective.

A survey conducted by Pew Research showed that trust in public health officials has fallen from 79 percent to 52 percent from May 2020 to May 2022. Studies have also reported falling trust in the CDC.

There are many reasons behind this sentiment—public health officials have backtracked several times on their statements, whether it be on masking or vaccine effectiveness.

The narrative on vaccination started from stating that it would stop transmission, to acknowledging that the vaccinated can still get COVID, to conceding that health officials knew from the very beginning that the vaccine would not protect against infection.

The fervent push for vaccination and pharmaceuticals, despite the lack of transparency in their emergency authorization and health risks, have also impacted the public’s trust.

The loss in trust did not extend to merely public health agencies, but also to scientific research.

In May 2020, the highly reputable journal, Lancet, published a study that found taking hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine had no significant benefit for COVID-19, and instead increased the risk of arrhythmias. The study was later retracted after researchers found inconsistencies in the data. The researchers also allegedly refused to provide all the request data for an independent audit.

Hazan, who has been doing clinical trials for over 30 years said the study was “completely fraudulent.”

Hazan remarked that any doctor who has done clinical trials would know it is impossible: to evaluate over 96,000 people in a month, the study would have needed 1,000 coordinators and easily cost millions.

From November 2020 to February 2022, public trust in medical researchers has fallen from 40 percent to 29 percent.

The reputation of medical doctors has also taken a hit since the pandemic: a study in August 2021 found that 41 percent of Americans lost trust in their doctors with many citing lack of communication from their physicians on COVID-19 and vaccinations.

Board certified internist and nephrologist Dr. Richard Amerling, who volunteered at Bellevue Hospital in New York during the first wave, said that the pandemic revealed that many doctors would follow recommendations from health authorities even though it may harm their patients.

Health authorities across the globe recommended no early treatment for most of the pandemic, only recommending infected patients to admit themselves to the hospital once they could not breathe.

Amerling expressed his disappointment that many doctors “abdicated basic ethical duties to care for patients,” and said they should have researched treatment options for their patients.

He also criticized physicians who went along with the mass vaccination, “one-size-fits-all” strategy without critically evaluating data.

The pandemic gave power to words such as “misinformation,” “fact-checked,” and “anti-vaxxer.”

Labels were given without scientific objectivity, often with the intention to discredit the counter-narrative.

As early as September 2021, hematologist Dr. Vinay Prasad, then an advocate for mRNA vaccines, voiced his concern about the tribalistic behavior of certain health professionals in an opinion piece in MedPage.

Prasad noted that some of these health professionals were not aware of the science but were quick to use labels of “misinformation,” and “anti-vaxxer,” to shut down valid critiques and questions against vaccinations.

“We need to welcome new questions and invite ongoing, open discussions from medical professionals. If not, we risk poisoning progress,” Prasad wrote.

Fact-checkers, though employed to present factual information, have also dealt similar harms to shut down discussion.

Since fact-checkers follow the narrative of public health officials, in the flip-flopping of narratives, and amid research that becomes increasingly prevalent, they can also get their “facts” wrong.

In 2020, fact-checkers enthusiastically dismissed and vigorously attacked the theory that the Sars-CoV-2 virus came from the Wuhan virology laboratory in China—the mainstream narrative was that the virus had a natural origin. This November, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he was open to research on the theory, and fact checkers retracted their previous statements.

Vaccination is a personal choice, yet COVID-19 made it a talking point for politicians and health officials as an action for the greater good, splitting the nation into the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, the pro and the anti, the “sheep” and “conspiracy theorists.”

By August 2021, more than 50 percent of the population in the United States had been vaccinated.

With the majority of the country vaccinated, the push to vaccinate and the noncompliance from the unwilling fueled division between the two groups. Articles written for the vaccinated discussed how they should talk to unvaccinated friends and family, and parents online asked for ways to ask for vaccine statuses of their children’s playmates.

A study published in Nature on Dec. 8, 2022, discussed the discrimination and prejudice vaccinated people subjected to the unvaccinated.

The study surveyed over 10,000 people and found that vaccinated people thought of the unvaccinated as free-riders or incompetent, were concerned that the unvaccinated would infect them, and also had a greater level of antipathy toward them.

After the lifting of COVID censorship on Twitter in recent months, the voices of the unvaccinated or the skeptics have been amplified.

In light of emerging concerns over vaccine adverse effects, and possibly out of spite for the discrimination they faced, there are also growing concerns about blood donations from the vaccinated and worries about “vaccine shedding” from being in close proximity to a vaccinated individual.

The growth of focus on vaccine adverse effects has also led some people to dismiss the severity of COVID and long COVID.

Long COVID patient Hannah Camp Johnson who was affected by the disease since August 2020 said that some people would leave comments saying her experience is a result of vaccination even though her symptoms of seizures, encephalitis, rapid heart rate, hair loss, fatigue, brain fog, and many more were present prior to her vaccination in November 2021.

The ivermectin is suspended in a clear, apple-flavored jell-like paste. The paste comes in a capped syringe (no needle) and is extruded out per marks on the plunger. Each mark on the plunger for so much of your weight. I don't have the box in front of me, but there are directions based on your weight. The syringe is then recapped until next use.

For a visual, the amount I pushed from the syringe was about the size of a rubber pencil eraser...maybe a hair more. Really, just a small dollop. I didn't even bother with a spoon. I'd squeeze the paste out and lick the paste off the syringe. Wash it down with a gulp of water...not a strong taste at all. I intended to use the entire tube so there was no chance of spreading my COVID via the "licked" syringe.

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