Totally makes sense. I’ve had mixed opinions over time, although as a generalization would normally think it’s okay. I was lucky in that my wife had spent her adolescence reading medical textbooks (for fun - she’s a bit of a “hot nerd” lol) and then she spent a few months of 2020 deeply reviewing dozens of these vaccine studies, from a range of sources and providers (and financed by different & sometimes opposing entities). Even from the early days, she was very sure that this one and another (J-and-J?) were bad news, and both times was proven right. We also have a few people in our intimate circle with severe health vulnerabilities, so, especially when people were dying left and right at the beginning, we felt it necessary to proceed slowly and with extra caution.

The different vaccines all had their ranges of risk-to-efficacy balances, but those ratios were essentially changing all the time as new research was produced and a “new-to-humans” virus repeatedly mutated (as they tend to do). Combining all of this with an already polarized and distrustful population makes for an abysmal public health scenario, even if you could somehow remove the financial incentives, ulterior motives, and not-infrequently-horrible history around vaccine tests.

It was mind-boggling to witness people across the world trying to grapple with such a nuanced scenario, with continuously evolving and fairly advanced/difficult/confusing science, vehement public disagreement, and blanket statements coming from all sides, especially when trying to somehow make decisions that impacted peoples’ health (or mortality) from multiple angles: “Masks don’t work, wait yes they do, wait now you have to wear them, but only some masks protect you, all vaccines are safe and equally effective, actually some are better, actually some of them aren’t that safe, that’s okay it’s a better trade-off to get vaxed because the risks are low, actually that’s only true if you’re a high-risk individual, actually it’s better for all of us, actually that depends on your existing immunity level, etc etc oh yes and by the way please stay in your house until further notice” like holy fuck man… who could possibly expect any average citizen — regardless of intelligence, education, or demeanor — to handle it well?

I worked remotely on-and-off, focused on cooking and getting fit, discovered Bitcoin, and strengthened my marriage to a point where our relationship has ever been, and even with all of that, it was a very difficult couple of years, and I consider myself incredibly lucky.

It’ll be a while yet before out collective psyche heals from all the chaos.