Canada has a vaccine injury support program that has paid out more than CA$11 million to claimants; Ross Wightman was among its first recipients. This week on Deconstructed, Wightman shares his story with Ryan Grim. Days after receiving an AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, Wightman began to experience pains unlike he had ever experienced before. He was eventually diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that affects the body’s nerves. Grim and Wightman talk about his journey and support network, and whether new reporting from the New York Times about people who have experienced side effects from Covid vaccines signals a shift in serious media attention to concerns.
Transcript
This transcript is generated from audio recordings and may not be in its final form.
Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.
Now, The New York Times recently wrote a piece about that silence, and about the struggle that people who are in this vaccine-injured community are having, because so many of them were eager advocates of the vaccine. Urged people to get it, eagerly got it themselves, got it multiple times themselves, and are finding that when they talk to their friends and family about the injuries they received from it are getting zero sympathy. And forget about compensation; just no sympathy.
And so, today we wanted to talk to a member of that community who’s been one of the more outspoken folks in Canada. Very few people really want to talk publicly about this, but Ross Wightman, joining us from British Columbia, does so, and has agreed to do so.
And so, Ross, thank you so much for joining me today on Deconstructed.
Ross Wightman: Thanks for having me on, on this important topic that, as you mentioned, it’s out there, but it’s still not getting the due attention that I believe, and many others deserve.
RG: How did you come to be part of this conversation?
RW: It’s a conversation I obviously wish I was never a part of. I was just getting my information from the news and the health officials, like many, many people were at the time. And believed that this was going to be the best path moving forward, the safe and effective narrative. There were reports of some side effects — AstraZeneca was the poison I took — but it was being downplayed, how rare it is, and you’re still better to get it than to get COVID-19.
So, when it became available in and around my community, I went for it.
RG: You know, I have a pretty liberal to progressive to left-leaning audience, and I bet a lot of them are going to be like, “oh my goodness. What kind of crazy anti-science, anti-vax stuff is this that we’re hearing today?”
But, at the same time, AstraZeneca is no longer distributed in the North American continent.
RW: It would have been April 30th of 2021 when I had mine. And I believe it was July of that year — I could be wrong — that summer that it was withdrawn from Canada. In the United States, it never made it to market, because [Emergent BioSolutions], the plant in Baltimore where it was being manufactured, was actually shut down by the FDA for safety protocols, and cleanliness, and lack of efficacy, more or less.
It was distributed into the U.K. as well, and there’s a wake of destruction that it left behind there. I believe just very recently, too, it’s come out that AZ admitted that they knew it caused a certain kind of blood clot. “VIT” is the acronym. And I think it’s no longer on market at all, anywhere.
RG: Now, correct me if I’m wrong: this Baltimore plant was also the one that was producing Johnson & Johnson?
RW: Yeah.
RG: And so, people may remember that scandal, that there were tens of millions, as I recall, doses coming out of that plant. And it was then shut down for health and safety concerns by inspectors. So, again, we’re nowhere near on the controversial spectrum yet of anything that we’re saying here on this podcast.
But what, to me, is so wild is that, after they came in and decided that this was not a safe environment to produce vaccine doses, they still distributed those doses largely in Canada.
What was your experience like? How soon after which dose did you start feeling symptoms from the vaccine?
RW: Mine was about 10 days later, the day after Mother’s Day. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with back spasms, back pain, low back, kind of the end of the hamstring area. And pain like I’d never experienced before.
That wouldn’t go away for about three days, approximately. Ended up going to an emergency room twice in Kelowna. They would discharge me with some anti-inflammatories or pain medication. I really had no other presentation at the time, other than the severe back pain.
I would, maybe a day later, go to the emergency room, and we’re kind of in between two hospitals where we are about half an hour. So, I went to another one. Same thing. This all started on a Monday. And then, I believe, it was Saturday morning, trip number four, was brought on by facial tingling, and I was starting to get general weakness.
So, they admitted me quickly at that point. Did some blood tests, CT scan, a lumbar puncture. I had told them, you know, look, I’m 10 days out from my AstraZeneca vaccine, that’s the only thing in my life that has changed in the last 10 days, and I really don’t know what else it could be.
There was no neurologist at that hospital. They consulted with the one in Kelowna just down the road. And he would later tell me — because I would see him later — and he said, yeah, I remember getting the phone call about you, I remember hearing about back pain, facial paralysis. My face was totally paralyzed within a few hours, which is Bell’s palsy, and the AstraZeneca vaccine, there were some Bell’s palsy reports coming about that at the time. And those three things quickly led him down the road of, let’s do a lumbar puncture. I think he has Guillain Barré syndrome, or GBS, just to shorten it up.
A lot of people with my condition really struggle getting a quick diagnosis, just because people present differently. I had atypical presentation; normally it’s ascending, kind of numbness and tingling from your hands and feet, and it works your way up, to complete paralysis for some people. It just all depends.
So, that stuff would come later for me, the numbness and tingling, but that’s kind of how I got a diagnosis.
RG: Is there any way to connect it to the vaccine? I can’t imagine there’s a test where you just run it and say, “oh, yep, this is linked up.” How could the medical profession handle that, and how did they handle that in your case?
RW: There’s three typical onsets for GBS, and one is some sort of viral infection, like an influenza or COVID, a type of food poisoning, and the other one is vaccination. Those are kind of the big three. There are some other outliers out there, but I only had one of those things happen to me.
So, I was tested for everything. You know, I had CTs, MRIs, I was blood tested; every morning I woke up with a needle sticking out of my arm, basically, for a blood test. The CDC was in my room multiple times a day asking me questions. And there was no other link to any other cause, other than the vaccine.
That’s where things would get interesting. People started to get uncomfortable; my wife and I were together for a few of my nerve conduction studies with my neurologist, and asking, hey, here’s where we are. I’ve been tested for everything under the sun. There are some reports coming out now in the media of AstraZeneca and Guillain Barré syndrome and/or Bell’s palsy, at least the facial paralysis. What do you think?
And, to a man, the same person told [us] twice, like, yeah, there’s no other cause, but would not put it in his report. Because, in his words — I’m paraphrasing here — but he basically told us that he had to check with his colleagues how to write it, because he had to be careful [with[ what he put out there. Which was when we really started to kind of question everything.
RG: You can imagine a sympathetic explanation for — not sympathetic from your perspective, or to you individually, but sympathetic generally — why the medical professional might engage in what is basically propaganda at that point. At the time, there was a huge public relations campaign urging the widespread uptake of the COVID vaccine. And there were a lot of people that really didn’t have any knowledge or information or reason to think that the vaccine was no good, going around making kind of making stuff up about it.
There was an entire campaign of hysteria that was burgeoning online against it. And my sense is that you had a lot of doctors who were very worried that real cases of injury, real cases of side effects would be used, then, by this kind of campaign to then discredit it more broadly.
What was your reaction to hearing from them that, well, we don’t really want to put this down in the file?
RW: I mean, the reaction was, pardon me? How can you not put it down if there’s no other conclusive evidence that anything else caused it? That kind of goes back to that whole anti-vax term which — I’ve thrown that around at earlier portions of my life. And I think that there was definitely some hesitancy to bring that up.
I also think that they had political pressure from their college of physicians, probably. I mean, I don’t know this, I’ve heard anecdotal stories, but I don’t know anything factual. I know there were some physicians that were being slandered in the media and the newspapers for speaking up from the beginning, just about— And not even radical views. Just like, hey, over here, I’m seeing some stuff happen and I’m not quite sure what I should do with it. And those people were being reprimanded by the college of physicians, and I know there’s a few in our province. I’m sure they’re globally everywhere.
But you could see how a person, a professional might be hesitant to speak up if they knew their career and income could be jeopardized, right?
RG: So, what was the reaction of your friends and family as this happened? I mean, on the one hand, you’ve got this major life-changing health situation but, at the same time, it’s flowing out of something they probably don’t want to think about. What was it like for you?
RW: I guess I’m lucky, in the sense that my family and friends and support network were amazing, and still are. Within my community, I haven’t had to deal with any of the latter. I don’t really have any people like that in my life anyways or, if I did, they’d be gone. So, I’m very grateful for that.
Very early on, when I was in the hospital paralyzed, I couldn’t move my legs, and [wasn’t] sure where things were going. My wife couldn’t come for the first week, and I’m just bedridden, and my phone was blowing up with phone calls and emails and texts and DMs, and all that. And all of it positive.
RG: How has it progressed?
RW: My injury? It’s not good. I have permanent damage. My hands are pretty dis-formed, I guess, and I have virtually no dexterity at all, and tremors in my arms. I have permanent nerve damage all over my body. Most of it is, if I’m wearing pants and standing still, it’s kind of a bit of an invisible injury, I suppose. But I have special carbon fiber orthotics I have to wear on my feet, because my feet — I virtually have no muscle activity from my knees down. Even kind of mid-thigh-down, I have severe nerve damage. Same into my forearms and whatnot.
I was treated early on with IVIG, which is intravenous immunoglobulin therapy. That kind of stops the body from attacking the nerves. That worked for a couple of weeks, then it came back. I was treated with the same IVIG again. I would progress and then regress again, to the point where, kind of around then, the paralysis subsided, but that’s when my feet and hands started to be profoundly affected. So, I had to go to the ICU for eight days and get a plasma exchange that would finally reverse the— Not reverse, but stop my body from attacking itself.
I would leave the hospital in a wheelchair, barely able to use a walker. Very, very limited. We’re actually almost exactly three years out to the day of the beginning of my symptoms. And I’m somewhat independent; you know, I can drive now, again, and get around [in a] limited [way]. But there’s lots of stuff I can’t do anymore. And just dealing with the pain and discomfort and fatigue picture. You know, I don’t know what the percentage is, but maybe 10 percent of your muscles working in your body, but trying to do the same activities? That’s kind of what I have going on.
RG: When you think back to three years ago, and you think about that moment where your life took its turn, who do you blame, as you kind of sit with what happened?
RW: Yeah. It’s changed a little bit over the years. The main players are still there. I’m a little— I don’t know if “ashamed” is the right word. I’m disappointed in myself for succumbing to the pressure and the coercion that was being put out there. You know, do it for your grandparents, do it for this person. You’re selfish if you don’t.
But then, obviously, the people that were stuffing that down our throats, I feel like they’ve done everyone a disservice. Health Canada, for bringing in a tainted product, if that was the case, and that’s probably where it starts. And local government. And a little bit of disappointment in myself, for following along.
RG: In the community that you interact in, how prominent are Pfizer and Moderna folks?
RW: Probably half. The people that I talk to on a quasiregular basis probably have the others. Those are usually documented, or they’re part of the vaccine injury support program in Canada, like I am. But, man, there are so many other people out there with their own stories that went nowhere, or that weren’t reported. I think it’s, at most, 10 percent of any sort of adverse reaction are actually properly documented or reported in the system.
RG: It is interesting. I would encourage people who are listening to this to have conversations about this with people because, over the last several months, as I’ve talked to people about it generally, and oftentimes I’ll just meet friends and they’ll say, what are you working on lately? And I’ll mention this. And most of the time somebody will say, oh, that’s interesting, I have so-and-so. And a lot of times they’re almost embarrassed to even mention it. Whether it’s a high-school-going-into-college child who has tinnitus.
RW: I’ve got that one, too.
RG: Can you describe that? That sounds like just hell on earth.
RW: I guess it obviously depends on how severe it is. Mine has evolved drastically over the last few years. There’s a perpetual ringing in my ears, like after maybe you’ve been to a rock concert, or a concert, or something like that. When you walk out of there, there’s a ringing. But there’s also, I think it’s described as a “whooshing.”
RG: The whooshing was in The New York Times article.
RW: Yeah. It’s just kind of like a pulsating whooshing sound that is just always there. It’s worse when it’s quiet or you’re laying in bed, there’s no white noise or background noise. And if you let it get to you, it can be very, very bothersome and anxiety-inducing.
RG: What has the last three years been like trying to parent with GBS?
RW: It’s been hell. It’s hard to describe the last three years, you know? From them seeing me to going from a super-healthy fit 39-year-old dad. I was in the gym five days a week. I was walking, and just very active, to being bedridden, lost like 25 percent of my body weight, all muscle, with a Grizzly Adams beard laying in the hospital bed. To getting to where we are now. I mean, yeah. I’ve lost so much.
I can’t run around the yard with them or play with them, play catch. They’re both active kids. My oldest is into hockey and baseball. I haven’t really been able to partake in any of that stuff that we used to do together all the time. Can’t play Lego, because of my hands. Drawing, coloring. A lot of the time it just seems like I’m there. Like, oh, I’ll come watch you play Lego, buddy. And that’s hard. Who doesn’t like playing Lego with their kids, right? It’s fun. Not only is it a nice way to connect, but it’s a nice escape to just get into something and get your mind off of life, right, is being present with your kids or someone else. And that’s been hard. That’s the physical stuff.
I’m definitely not as happy as I used to be before, or patient, you know? Frustrated quite often. And I’d be lying if I said— I don’t take it out on my kids, but I don’t have as much patience as I used to, or might be a little quicker to snap or need a little bit of space. So, yeah. It’s been hard, and been hard on the family, for sure.
RG: One of the things that got me interested in pursuing research on this topic when people started reaching out to me was that I had a really mild experience of my own, and so I could understand where people were coming from, and mine was nowhere near what you’ve gone through. Was it around the same time? No, it would have been later, because it was a booster, a Moderna booster.
The morning and a half after that — not the next day but the morning after, I remember I was doing this like little 3K walk fundraiser for our local public school and, all of a sudden, my feet just started intensely tingling. And I was like, that’s weird. And it and it stayed that way, and I didn’t really even want to finish the walk, but I finished it. It persisted for several days, and then eventually started getting into my fingers a little bit.
And so, I started Googling. And people said, turmeric is good for this.
RW: Turmeric, yeah. For inflammation, yeah.
RG: And so, every night for many weeks before I’d go to bed, I would have this tea of turmeric and milk. And then I learned, oh, you have to have black pepper, in order to help get the properties of the turmeric out. And the only thing more disgusting than turmeric tea is with black pepper in it.
RW: That sounds gross.
RG: It was awful. That’s an indication of how much discomfort I was in, that every night I was willing to choke this thing down. And I don’t know if it helped or not. I still feel it a little bit, but it’s totally bearable. I can easily live my life. I can go about it, but it’s just constantly there and it’s a little bit annoying. I can’t imagine any other thing that would have caused it than the vaccine. And I’m somebody who publicly and privately promoted it, and still believe that it helped a lot of elderly people, certainly when it came to alpha, COVID-alpha.
But I’m curious how familiar my own story sounds, as you’ve gone through and thought back about the vaccine. Where do you come down on it, more generally?
RW: First thing, yeah, I’ve heard your story, I’ve heard that a few handful of times. That’s a common-ish one, next to heart palpitations. Those are two that I hear of quite frequently, I guess, maybe more than others. Those are the more common ones.
RG: And those were mentioned in The New York Times article, too. For listeners who think we’re crazy, The New York Times is —
RW: Well, we are crazy. But I think we were sold something that wasn’t necessary. I agree with you that it might have been beneficial for the elderly. But for the younger generations, healthier people with no underlying health conditions like myself, or maybe you. Maybe it’s just the circle that I roll in, but the only people I’ve heard of in my world that were hospitalized because of COVID either got it in the hospital, or they were going through chemotherapy, and they were uber-immunocompromised and they picked it up.
I could be totally offside here. I feel like healthy people, there are significantly more younger healthy individuals that have reactions to the vaccines than being hospitalized. I have no data. This is purely just what I have noticed over the last three years and having these conversations. I really don’t know anyone that’s been hospitalized. I’m sure there are, there most certainly are, but maybe that’s just because of the circle and the beliefs [in] my world.
RG: Have you had any success towards compensation?
RW: Yeah, we have a vaccine-injury support program in Canada. I’m the first person to have an approved claim. That’s not really how I wanted my 15 seconds of fame to come to fruition.
Yeah. So, it’s something. I know it’s better than what you guys have, and a lot of other countries in the world. It’s limited with its framework, and it’s a very slow, cumbersome, poorly run organization. It’s at arm’s length of how Canada— So, a company got the contract and they’re operating it, running it on behalf of the government.
So, it took me 12 months to get my claim approved. Most people, it’s 12 to 18 months to hear anything back. The communication within the program and caseworkers is, most of the time, atrocious. I think I’ve had six caseworkers so far. It’s common for them to quit. No one will tell you they’re gone; I’ve had this happen twice now. You know, you go two, three months without hearing a peep, and you later would figure out that, oh, John’s not here anymore. He left in November. I’m like, “oh, great. What’s going on with my file?” And you’re starting over again.
So, that’s really frustrating. I got a little clarity on my file yesterday, and a teeny bit of optimism, but that is usually an underlying source of frustration and angst. And, in my life, the feeling of having absolutely no control or faith in the system, that I know that my file is being processed appropriately, and my medical bill— Like, I’ve got over $50,000 in expenses so far, and a thousand to $2,000 a month in physio and other therapies. So, as you can imagine, that’s pretty stressful.
I didn’t get a paycheck for a year and a half. They do have an income replacement program, which I’m in, which is nice. There’s a limit to that.
RG: A limit to that over time? Or a limit to an amount per the year?
RW: Just the figure. Yeah. So, they’re all Canadian dollars, obviously. I think it’s CA$285,000, or 284 grand, is the injury indemnity lump sum payout. And then, income replacement is up to 90,000 a year. You could have been making double that but, too bad, especially if you’re self-employed. I was self employed. I wasn’t making 200,000 a year, but I didn’t have any sort of disability with what I was doing before my injury. If it wasn’t for family covering our ass, man. I’m sure people have lost their houses and homes, and have had to declare bankruptcy, and make drastic financial decisions, and life-altering decisions just because they have no money. And they probably have medical expenses, too.
RG: Did the recent New York Times article mark any shift in how the media is willing to look at this? Oftentimes, if The New York Times goes somewhere, it’s indicative of shifts in the ground that have been underway for a very long time, and The New York Times doing something on it just kind of puts a punctuation mark. That, OK, well, actually, we’re willing to talk about this at this point. At times, it’s just out there breaking news and doing good work without that kind of cultural shift going on first.
What’s your sense, as somebody who’s been consuming media about this issue for the last three years, of how it’s changed or hasn’t changed in the public perception?
RW: Yeah. I like that you mentioned that because, in the last few months in chatting with people, I’ve said, I’ve been saying [that] I think things are starting to move more. I’ve been getting a sense of it.
Part of that is just a feeling. I’ll get an uptick in DMs, or people reaching out to me, asking me questions. Either they’re vaccine-injured themselves, or they’re doing it on behalf of a family member or a loved one, or people just sharing articles with me. So, I think, like you alluded to there, I do think it’s getting out there more. And having a major outlet like that put it in writing certainly helps.
You know, you’ve got AstraZeneca stuff happening in the U.K. over the last couple of weeks, where they’ve admitted to it causing clotting. There have been a few other articles that have come up in even the month of May, here, that have kind of given me a feeling — and it sounds like maybe you’re the same — that there’s a little more awareness or, I don’t know if truth is the right word, but it’s getting the attention that it deserves.
RG: How do you think about that coverage? I can imagine that the hope is just kind of “to be seen,” to use the cliche of today’s era. “I see you, I feel you, you are valid.” It’s kind of a meme, almost, at this point, but being seen matters.
Do you hope that anything additional comes from that? That there’s some investment in research that can try to turn this around? Or is it more just about wanting this pain acknowledged?
RW: I don’t need acknowledgement, personally, myself. For me, my vindication was when I got that letter from the government saying you’ve been— Because all of the things I had been told behind closed doors — Like, yeah, this is what did it to you, but I’m not putting it on paper. Or, in our province, the medical health officer for our region basically was like, it could be, but might not be. That’s done, so I’ve got my validation.
For me, now, it’s accountability [that] is the big one for me. I want it out there, and I want people to know that it happened. I feel like a lot of these companies, they rush the product to market and didn’t do thorough testing. I mean, how could you in such a short timeframe, you know? The dollar pushed them to make the decisions that they did, and just to get it out to market, for the stock price and the shareholders.
I just want it out there so people know and the public know that maybe the advice, the narrative we were told was not the path forward. Nothing can be made right, but I just feel it’s important for — and I don’t know if we’ll ever get there — but just, yeah. We made a mistake, you know? I’d like to hear some of our elected officials say that. The AstraZeneca in Canada. “We made a mistake. Maybe we shouldn’t have brought it up here.” Just instead of deny, deny, deny, or not even talk about it.
RG: One of the parts that really bother me — I’m curious for your take on this — is that the result of refusing to look at the cases of side effects and injuries in order to build people’s confidence in the vaccine has had the paradoxical effect of actually collapsing confidence in the public health system.
RW: Yeah, that’s me. I couldn’t agree with you more. I see that all the time with friends, people I talk to. They just say that, and they’re like, no one is ever telling me to put something in my body again. And these are people that have had no issues, they’re relatively happy to get — or willing to get — the vaccines.
But yeah, you’re right. It’s done the opposite. And now, it’s maybe leading down to this vaccine hesitancy road, right? Where people are, like, I don’t know who I can trust. Like, I don’t know if I want to get my kids this vaccine or that vaccine. Obviously, I probably have even more reason to [act likewise] than the average person, but I hear it from friends that have been symptomatic post-vaccine, that they’re like, I don’t know. I don’t know who I can trust anymore.
RG: Yeah. By not treating people like adults, you trigger that in people. And one part that I get worried about is, now we’re staring down the possibility of a bird flu pandemic, and they’re already working on a vaccine for that.
A lot of vaccines work. Even the best vaccines, there’s going to be a rare case of a side effect. You could have a manufacturing problem. Nothing is necessarily 100 percent. But we do know that lots of vaccines have been given out for decades, and have been studied on people. And are, to use their phrase, “safe and effective,” but people then lump them all together.
Especially with a bird flu vaccine which, by definition, will have to be moved pretty quickly — Although they’re good at doing flu vaccines quickly, because they do one every season. But I do think if we do see a bird flu outbreak that you’re going to see much more hesitancy than you saw last time. And bird flu, the current case fatality rate is something like 50 percent.
RW: I haven’t followed that at all. So, that’s news to me.
RG: COVID was less than a half percent.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
RG: And, still, tens of millions of people worldwide died. 50 percent is— You shudder to think of what that could do.
Now, it’s less contagious, and that level of fatality rate could easily, I think, push past most people’s hesitancy. Like, OK. 50 percent fatality rate? Yeah, just jab me with whatever you’ve got. Because it is unbalanced.
And that’s one of the things that’s so frustrating, looking back about the COVID vaccine. You know, I had one friend who said, if I got the polio vaccine, and then I got polio five times over the next year, I wouldn’t be very happy about the polio vaccine, even if it didn’t cause me any side effects. You can always say, well, maybe it would have been worse if I didn’t have it, it’s impossible for you to know. But, like you said, people who didn’t have underlying conditions—
And, today, now we’re down to, if you get COVID, I think, in the U.S., they’ve even done away with the five-day quarantine.
RW: I don’t think there’s anything in Canada. I think it’s all been gone for a year. It seems like it’s a non-issue, other than the texts that I still get telling me I’m due for my vaccination.
RG: Right. Which I imagine you’re not rushing to sign up for.
RW: No.
RG: Any final thoughts about how this has reshaped the way that you think about the world that you move through?
RW: Yeah. It’s been a liberating three years. In the sense of, I had a blind faith or trust in government and big corporations. And I was a steady, daily, multiple-times-a-day consumer of local — I use the term mainstream media, but that’s where I got all my news — and what I read and what I watched is what I believed. And some of that stuff is still good, but I’ve certainly learned that there’s more outside the box, and you’ve got to do your own research and digging, and talk to people. And if there’s anything good that’s come out of it, it’s been that. Just more critical thinking on my behalf, and gratefulness for the network of friends and family and community I have.
RG: For people who are like, well, why not have the pro-vaccine side on this show today, or why not have whatever else people might want on this, I would say: look, that’s everywhere. That’s what you’re looking for, you’re not going to have a hard time finding it. So, I wanted to give you a chance to talk about your story here.
RW: Obviously, I’m against COVID vaccines. But to say pro-vaccine or con-vaccine, it’s not even about that. It’s just about telling my story or hearing other people’s stories. And if you want to find out what’s going on at a job site, don’t go talk to the president of the company. You’ve got to go down and talk to the workers, the people that have boots on the ground in the trenches. Like, hey, what’s actually happening? And this is the stuff that’s happening and that’s out there, right?
So, people can do what they want with the information. That’s been a thing I’ve wanted, is just [that] everything should be reported and validated, and you go ahead and make that decision based on what’s out there. But don’t try and suppress, either way, the stats, right?
RG: Right. I think that’s exactly right. Because people can’t really make an informed choice for themselves if they don’t know that it’s even an issue that’s in contention, that it’s a question that people are asking. And if you ask the question, and you say, you know what? Good enough. Yeah. Hey, look, I’m 30, I’m healthy, but I want to get the booster anyway? Go ahead. Get the booster.
RW: Go right ahead. I get asked from time to time, and I say, you’ve just got to — Risk/reward, right? What’s the likely outcome if you get COVID versus the likely outcome of having an adverse reaction, and worse, a life-altering one, right? You do the math. You decide on what your health is worth, right?
RG: Well, Ross, I really appreciate you joining me. Thanks so much.
RW: Yeah, absolutely. Good chatting with you.
RG: That was Ross Wightman, and that’s our show.
Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.
If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. And, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show, so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review. It helps people find the show. Also, check out our other podcast Intercepted.
If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at [email protected].
Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you soon.
Comments
Leave a Comment