I took my 5-yr-old to get vaccinated a few days ago. This is NOT the story you might think. A 🧵:
We went on Friday after school to a pharmacy about 20 minutes away. The line was very long. A welcome sign but also frustrating. (Will come back to this) 1/n
The next day, I noticed my son blinking hard with his right eye, every so often. He had just had his annual physical three days prior and everything was normal. 2/n
I’d never noticed this behavior before and I asked him about it. Was something in his eye? No. Did he scratch it by accident? No. Did someone at school do this out of habit and he was copying them? No. 3/n
It was weird. A friend had told me not too long ago about some strange trend of people developing tics after Covid shots. Here is where I want to pause. This is important. 4/n
I’d never noticed this behavior before and I asked him about it. Was something in his eye? No. Did he scratch it by accident? No. Did someone at school do this out of habit and he was copying them? No. 3/n
It was weird. A friend had told me not too long ago about some strange trend of people developing tics after Covid shots. Here is where I want to pause. This is important. 4/n
I consider myself a logical thinker; I try to follow good, solid science instead of second-hand anecdotes. But I could see how easily someone might assume a causal connection between vaccination and whatever unexpected thing might happen in the few days or week after. 5/n
The thing is, I knew the shot couldn’t have been the culprit. How could I be so sure? Because my son never got it that day. The line was too long. 6/n
That’s why VAERS, while an important repository for finding population-level trends, is not the last word on vaccine safety, despite what anti-vaxxers might say. That’s why you can find reported “vaccine adverse events” like car accidents and swallowed pennies. 7/n
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