Kevin Roche responds

Over at Healthy Skeptic Kevin Roche has responded to comments on his Star Tribune column that I posted in “Time to get on.” Having posted his column, I wanted to add his response:

I must have really struck a nerve with this one. I don’t read the comments, a complete waste of time, but a number of you have passed on the gist of them. I am obviously heartless, which people must conclude because I care about we are doing to children and to minorities and low-income people. I am a diehard anti-vaxer, which you all know isn’t true, I am fully vaxed and boosted, and I have taken a lot of crap from readers in regard to my support of vaccines.

I am somehow getting rich off the epidemic. This blog costs me a lot of money to operate and you can all tell I haven’t monetized it in any way. I do own Pfizer stock, but that would make me a vaccine bobo and I would really be downplaying any lack of effectiveness if I was trying to help Pfizer.

I am making up the data. Not only does Dave Dixon do a tremendous job with the data, but we double check each other and Dave writes tremendous notes explaining exactly how he gets the data and what he does with it. We don’t use any data that isn’t directly from the state, CDC or other official source. We understand the data better than the Minnesota Department of Health does.

And apparently the comments continue in a similar vein. Which is why I never read the op-ed comments.

What really strikes me is how wedded many people are to having the epidemic and its restrictions last forever. What kind of mental illness is this? But I have made the point many times before that I have no intention of trying to change these people’s minds. This is belief and religion on their part, not data or science or logical analysis. I don’t even want to engage with these people. And they are a serious impediment to trying to get our society back to some kind of rational policy on the epidemic. Because they apparently have lots of time to spend writing idiotic and inane comments.

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