I have started visiting social media sites. I spend some time on KevinMD and on Quora. The first is addressed to doctors and medical professionals. Much of the content on Kevin MD is written by physicians and first responders who describe the stress of caring for people who are dying of COVID-19. Although this trend is lightening up lately. Now we are hearing about more normal things, like how to take care of people with cancer.
The second site, Quora, is addressed to the lay public. People from all around the world submit questions, presumably with the hope that someone knowledgeable will provide answers. As a doctor with decades of clinical experience, I can answer many of the medical questions.
Some questions are amusing. One question, from a male person, asked “Can men see OB-GYNs, or is it just women?” I answered that anyone with a uterus and ovaries is welcome. Some questions are dead serious, like how to deal with grief after the death of a loved one. I suggested a grief support group. Another question asked: How do we test COVID vaccines and tell if they are effective?
I gave an excellent description of how to set up a controlled study, comparing the number of vaccinated people who get hospitalized versus the unvaccinated. I added that these studies have shown a high degree of protection for those who have been fully vaccinated. I even cited my sources which were from the CDC and medical journals.
Then I made the mistake of reading the stray comments that followed the publication of this coherent explanation of the scientific method. One person in the peanut gallery said, to paraphrase: “The writer’s conclusions are biased. Skewed by the poison of scientism.”
This makes me reluctant to express further opinions on the site, especially any comments on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. I’ll be happier once we emerge from this dark tunnel of COVID-19, once we can stop arguing among ourselves about the value of science.
I can’t imagine a scenario where relying on the scientific method is a bad thing. Perhaps this commentator relies on voodoo or magic talismans in lieu of modern medicine and data. This raises the question of what is being taught in schools. For example, are they still teaching science? Something is seriously amiss if this level of skepticism is so prevalent.
Dr. Janet Tamaren 
From Dr. Wikipedia, Ph.D.:
‘Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only objective means by which people should determine normative and epistemological values.
While the term was defined originally to mean “methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientists”, some religious scholars (and subsequently many others) also adopted it as a pejorative term with the meaning “an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)”.’
The folks objecting to vaccines appear to conflate the evaluation of vaccines for effectiveness by double-blind studies and other scientific measures, on the one hand, and on the other hand whether people should be pressured to get vaccinated, whether by social pressure, economic pressure or government regulation. There is a whiff of unreason in refusing to get an effective vaccine, and one way to deal with the cognitive dissonance is to devalue the vaccine. That way, one is not refusing to do something that would help one’s own health or the health of fellow citizens — which sounds like bad behavior. If I can persuade myself that the vaccine isn’t effective, though, I am rational and not selfish or self-destructive in refusing vaccine.
We humans have a powerful need to avoid cognitive dissonance. The pressure of it hurts. So we are sadly good at telling ourselves the damnedest stories to relieve the pressure.
All that said, there is a difference between scientific evaluation of a vaccine (the only way to go, in my view) and evaluation of what measures the government should be entitled to use to get us vaccinated (complicated, multi-faceted, no double-blind can tell us how much power we want the government to have and when).
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