Why I Trust The Coronavirus Vaccines

      The reason I trust the coronavirus vaccines -- and why issues with the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZenica vaccine were addressed promptly -- is not a matter of simple faith in science or wanting there to be a solution to the viral pandemic.  Nope.  Nor is it a matter of having much trust in the Federal civil service, which seems to run to "C" students and paper-pushing plodders, at least in the lower ranks.

      You see, the U. S. is at something around two-thirds vaccinated by now.  If the vaccines were doing horrible, horrible things to people, or if they do so in the future, that's over two hundred million Americans and the number is steadily increasing.  Two hundred million pissed-off people is plenty more than you'd need to find enough ready to string up drug company executives and researchers along the side of the road, one per lamp post.

      The people who work in and run the pharmaceutical industry are sufficiently smart.  They can do math; they can read history.  They know what's at stake, and how thin a shield Federal immunity would be under such circumstances.

      And yet they're not worried.  They're not setting up isolated, walled redoubts or buying private islands.  They haven't got private armies.  I've checked.

      Therefore, they are confident the vaccines are safe and will remain safe, or as safe as any other vaccine, anyway.  And that, I trust.  People have varying levels of civic virtue; their morals may be high or (alas, more likely) low.  But you can count on their interest in self-preservation one hundred percent.  Nobody wants to end up swinging from a light standard along the freeway, contemplating their own entrails.