In "Celebration" of a One-Year Anniversary
Reflecting on what has happened over the past year.
Right now we’re nearing the end of August (and I still need to work on my August post!).
For most this is a time for kids to go back to school and a time to put away all of the patriotic decorations and pull out the pumpkin-spiced everything.
Seriously, what the hell is with all this?
But for me the end of August signifies something a little different now.
Now, from the title you may be thinking that this post is about my time on Substack. You would be partially right, although the time would be a bit off. It certainly doesn’t help that Substack told me that I’ve been on here for about a year 3 months ago (you’re rounding is a bit off, Substack…).
No, the anniversary I’m referring to is one that quite a lot of people have experienced when, in a just world, there would have been no reason for it to have ever occurred.
The anniversary I am referring to is my one-year anniversary since I was “let go” of my job for not being vaccinated.
So it’s a bit of a harrowing thing to think about, and it’s rather dismaying to think that so many people are likely to have experienced the same things that I have. To think that this sort of modern-day discrimination would happen to such a disagree would absolutely be incomprehensible, and yet here many of us are.
This has made this month rather difficult to put it lightly, but I think this makes it a good time to sort of reflect on what’s been going on, and how my feelings have changed in regards to science given the current situation we are being dealt with.
The Fairytale of Science
Before trying my hand at Substack I used to work in a lab as a lab technician. You could really come up with any name for my position, such as Research Assistant II or throw in as many words as you want to make it sound more formal or fancy. At the end of the day, I was a lab rat.
I was always drawn to the sciences, although during college I never knew what path I wanted to choose in life. I know, typical millennial response!
I first decided on becoming a medical doctor but I wasn’t that interested in the medicine aspect of science at the time. I’m pretty sure I also had a general disdain of people as well...
Either way I decided on getting a Biochemistry degree at university. Fortunately it was my university classes that renewed my love of the sciences, especially because of the class that all of the pre-med students hated: organic chemistry. Organic chemistry was sort of where everything just clicked into place for me, as it gave me my why or how explanation for the world. In fact, I loved it so much that my senior year was full of me taking graduate-level courses in advanced organic chemistry, biomedicinal chemistry, toxicology, etc. If it had organic chemistry somewhere in the class description I was taking it.
Because of that I decided that I would instead pursue a PhD, but let’s just say that life had other ideas in mind and that wouldn’t be the path I chose. I guess it’s a bit ironic since I wanted to go into medicinal chemistry and would have become one of those people synthesizing PAXLOVID or Molnupiravir if I was lucky.
Eventually I found my way into a lab a few years after graduation, and I ended up staying there for several years until I was let go for being “unclean”. Although I learned a lot there I was also given a first look at how science has a practice really goes down.
One thing that people, including scientists, don’t tell you is that science is a pretty thankless job. Science isn’t the glitzy endeavor that commercials or college pamphlets would make it out to be. Those stock photos of scientists looking into beakers are absolutely not what happens in a science lab. I’m not sure why these are the go-to images when trying to sell science to laypeople.
It’s pretty clear that many of us were sold a fairy tale when it came to science. It wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t super exciting or fast-paced. Science is, for the most part, boring and tedious. It’s like taking your office job and shoving onto a bench with a notebook next to super expensive instruments. And no, I didn’t really look at beakers unless we were making some sort of buffer solution, but that really doesn’t amount to much but weighing and pouring. Again, boring and tedious!
But something that never gets mentioned is how little science pays.
Unless you go work for big pharmaceutical manufacturers you’re not making anywhere near a viable living, and certainly not for a STEM degree that promised a decent pay right after college.
To put it into perspective, my lab was paying recent college graduates less than what Starbucks was paying their employees at the time. I should note that this may have been out of the ordinary compared to industry, but it doesn’t quite get much better unless you work for the likes of GSK, Gilead, Merck, and other similar companies- just to name a few big ones, but you get the idea. Research hardly pays much unless you’re designing new drugs.
Unfortunately, this also appears to be a consequence of over-saturation even within the STEM fields. As colleges and the public encourage more people to go into STEM the market can’t quite keep up, leading to more graduates than there are high-paying career opportunities. What may have been valuable work for someone with only a Bachelor’s degree at a time when many people weren’t going into STEM now has to compete with someone who has a Master’s, and in some instances someone with a PhD. My lab itself was filled with M.D’s and Master degree holders, and their pay wasn’t much better than mine.
It was a pretty big shock because what didn’t quite come with a fulfilling paycheck was supposedly made up for with the endearing nature of science. Essentially, the work we were doing was life-saving; if you screwed up, you may cost someone his/her life (and your job). If you did it well, you may have saved someone. And that’s sort of it.
So science may justify underpaying their employees by selling them on the fact that their work is for the greater good, or that they could possibly be making a difference for millions of people- just don’t ask for additional pay.
It was there that sort of red-pilled me to the idea of science. The idea that making a living in science doesn’t end at getting a degree, but requires a doctorate to possibly make decent pay was rather astonishing. If you’re not getting paid enough, just understand that you could be making a big change in the world! Do it for the love of science and not for the want of having a decent wage!
So coming into COVID I already had a bit of a growing disdain for science as a profession. No one in the public understands what you do- I certainly never told my family what I did because they wouldn’t understand. And if you did try explaining it you may just come off as arrogant.
But what COVID made different was that it aided in fleshing out the ideas and the principles of science. And when I mean flesh out, I don’t mean it in a good way.
What COVID showed is that the field of science is horrendously flawed. Science studies are severely limited, results may be manipulated, or results that follow a narrative may gain more traction than science that may go against the consensus.
What’s becoming even more pronounced is the fact that much of the research we rely on may be entirely falsified or heavily manipulated. Take one manipulated study, conduct another study that may manipulate the evidence a bit further, and you may come to a consensus built on completely fabricated data.
Joomi Kim posted an extremely timely article detailing how many of the current cancer research being conducted may be heavily contaminated by HeLa cells, meaning that the cancer cells researchers are examining may not actually be the correct cell lines. Such a high level of contamination can have deep ramifications for cancer therapy research if you find out your cell lines were derived from breast tissue and not lung tissue.
Even worse those boring, tedious days in a lab will be presented with a flashy reports that never even explain what a study did. That’s far too boring for the public; just present the remarkable results and let us all pontificate on what we are assuming to know.
As an example, I stumbled across this video from the Today Show a few months ago about a new cancer immunotherapy which showed 100% cancer remission in the patients who received it:
After watching the video did you know which new immunotherapy they were discussing?1 What mutation was being targeted? How did this immunotherapy target the mutation? What exactly is immunotherapy?
BORING! Tell us how this treatment led to 100% remission and let’s all ponder what this means for the future of cancer research.
It’s pretty much the presentation rather than the actual science that matters because that’s as far as the public will go in figuring things out. It’s why I have much disdain for such Facebook posts as “I Fucking Love Science!” that may take studies and exaggerate what the findings are. But it’s not entirely the fault of those that compile said reports, but also the fault of the media for making such reports in the first place.
This is pretty much how science is presented to the public; in a watered down, tasteless form that provides no subtle flavors or aromas for one to savor.
Then take that watered-down science and magnify it within the context of a pandemic and you realize why so many people have a complete misunderstanding of science. It’s because the image of science sold to the public is a only that; an image without any substance.
So for me I’ve had a growing disheartening trust of science that was only exacerbated by the pandemic.
Papers, Please
I realized I didn’t actually explain my “letting go” moment. I guess I got too caught up in shaking my fists at science to remember the initial purpose of this post.
In short, I worked at my lab job for several years. The pay was awful, and at many times the job became a bit too tedious. People would come and go, and in instances when people went I had to help fill in their roles. Sometimes it felt like I was doing the job of several people, but hey, I was a good employee- I was told enough at least, so maybe that kept me there for longer than I should have been.
I’ve mentioned before that our lab began performing COVID PCR tests2. I won’t go too deep into the weeds, but just note that many companies that took on doing COVID PCR testing were doing so because they were getting funding from the government. This was a big reason why you started seeing random pop-up PCR testing facilities. Biotech companies were being paid to set up more testing facilities so why not get in on the funding? I won’t state whether my lab was part of this funding cabal, but just know that part of our work transitioned into doing COVID testing.
That meant doing the regular work ON TOP of doing COVID testing. Again, I was told I was a great employee for trying to balance the two.
And that brings us to the vaccine scandal.
Because we were doing COVID testing my lab was considered under the “frontline workers group”, meaning that we were part of the few people to get first dibs on the vaccines. At first I didn’t think much of it, and in fact early on I was considering getting the vaccines.
Ironically, what made me decide not to get the vaccines weren’t actually any concerns over the actual safety profile, but was an aspect of the growing culture wars seeping into the world of COVID.
In essence, I decided not to get the vaccines because social justice began seeping into the policies for the initial distribution of the vaccines
It’s at this time we probably should examine why frontline workers were the first given the vaccines. Now, as I stated above my lab was doing COVID testing, so surely we would need the COVID vaccine first because we are likely to get infected3. That reason would probably expand to all healthcare workers as well.
But that actually was not the case. The main reason why frontline workers were given the first vaccines was on the grounds of racial and social equity, as frontline workers tended to be more nonwhite. As such, the first distributions of the vaccines were another way of dealing with racial disparities and inequities within healthcare.
If this sounds ridiculous, the Advisory Committee on the initial release of the vaccines states as such.
These tables below some of the most telling indications that our healthcare system was ready to screw over the elderly and millions of people on the basis of social justice:
The justifications given by the committee can be seen in Table 2 below:
And in a PowerPoint Presentation on the phased release of the vaccines the presenter showed how this push for racial equity beat out the elderly in receiving the vaccines first on the basis of ethics outlined above. You may have seen tweets circulating at the time which included this image from the presentation.
It’s worth noting that only one member of the committee thought that this policy was absolutely immoral that he voted against this rollout policy. This would be the only person to vote no among the 13-member committee.
It was for this reason that I found that the initial rollout was completely immoral. It absolutely made no sense why I and my other millennial peers had first dibs on the vaccines when my elderly parents had to wait 2-3 months for their vaccines. The hypocrisy of health policies that told us to stay at home or else we would kill grandma did not provide grandma with the initial vaccines because grandma was too white.
Remember at this time that most of us weren’t made aware of the concerning safety signals so I was oblivious to much of that discourse at the time.
Unfortunately, that was only the start of the issue. Pretty soon everyone in the lab got their vaccines and I remained rather hush about me not getting mine. I didn’t think it mattered at the time all too much, but talk of losing jobs were present online on places such as YouTube and Twitter. I think many people just had the thought that it wouldn’t come to their workplace…
But what really struck me was how many of my coworkers wore their adverse reactions as a badge of honor. It wasn’t that the vaccines would cause side effects in some, but that the side effects should be expected. I remember watching a doctor on YouTube make a comment that, “immunity never hurt so good!”, which is a pretty damning comment to make- I never experienced serious issues after getting any of my prior vaccinations, so why would such comments dispel any hesitancies?
It was almost like the novelty of this new vaccine technology overrode any concerns about the side effects. It’s like a new phone model that hasn’t had several generations to work out the kinks so you accept it for its flaws, only these flaws had ramifications on people’s health.
It was the tortuous groans of my coworkers- some of who had to take a few days off from work due to the fevers and pains- that actually did not do much to incentivize me, and rather instead made me much more hesitant.
And so it went for several months until summer when gossip happened around the cubicles that you can put in your vaccine ID on our job’s website to get a free day off. Again weird, mostly because I never took any days off from any prior vaccines. Even more weird that you had to put your personal records online in order to get one day off4 (Anyone else hear a police-state siren?).
But oblivious me didn’t realize that the day off was only part of the issue stipulation. In the email detailing this day off, what I didn’t realize was that there was a mandatory date for which we had to post our vaccine records online in order to remain employed; otherwise we would be put on unpaid leave.
“Great, this is what I get for never checking my work email!”, I probably would have thought at the time if not for the sudden stress.
And so at that time I had to do what most people other places did; I had to explain my vaccination status to someone higher up. I dared not have any of my coworkers find out- I think this was at the time where we just stopped having mandatory masking and I was probably going to jeopardize it for everyone if they found out how unclean I was!
At the time I was told by higher up that they wanted to keep me on due to how great of an employee I was. Note that I am not one to blow smoke up my own ass- I already stopped myself from writing this multiple times because I hate talking about myself. Because I was such a good employee there were ideas to try to keep me on while I think about getting vaccinated.
So I was told that I needed to reach out to HR, who really only told me that I would be put first on paid leave until my hours were up then I would be put onto unpaid leave until matters were “sorted out”5.
Now, for people that were in this situation we know what this meant. It was a “it's not you, it’s me,” pronouncement from HR. But we know it was really me (er, us?) that they were talking about. This was just HR speak for telling someone that they have to go without outright forcing them out.
But given the remarks made by upper management I had to have a meeting detailing what HR said. Unfortunately, the meeting only amounted to me stating that I would eventually be put on unpaid leave until they sort things out.
And it was at that moment that my time in that lab was done. As soon as I made these comments I was told that they [the lab] couldn’t fill my role until I fully left.
That comment really hit hard. I mean, a few days ago I was told that I was one of the best employees, and now I was told that my position needed to be filled and that I would have to leave.
I probably should have been a lot more angry at the time than I actually was, but for me such remarks meant that, at the end of the day, I was disposable. It didn’t matter how great I was as soon as I became a hindrance in some fashion I was to be let go.
Because of that I decided to leave rather than fight. It’s hard to tell coworkers why you were leaving on such short notice without just wearing a giant UNVACCINATED sign on my forehead. I just told them stories of me finding a different job on one day or that I was going to take a long vacation on another.
Like science my future prospects were never settled.
That’s essentially how my job working in a lab came to an abrupt end. I would say that it was not all entirely bad. I did find one person to confide in and this person has become a very close friend. I do find it rather wholesome in that times of such divisiveness I was able to become closer with someone, but it’s a shame that it had to occur under such pretenses.
It’s also the main reason why I started this Substack. I had so many thoughts to share about COVID and it seemed like this was the upcoming avenue to do it.
In the end I was fortunate that where I live I was not required to show proof of vaccination to enter a majority of stores.
But even then there were quite a few times where things became very difficult. It’s hard to explain to family and friends why you left your job. It’s hard to explain why you can’t hang out with people because they don’t want to hang out with people who were “unvaccinated”. Many times it felt better to be silent than to speak up and expose your status.
During the few months after I left a very close friend had health issues regarding his family member. I won’t reveal much, but during that time I began helping out, and helping out brought a lot of dread in being asked for papers. The constant drives to the airport, the multiple hospital visits all came with some thought that at some point I would be asked to show my vaccination status or leave. It’s hard to tell your best friend and his family why you can’t visit their dying relative in the hospital because I wasn’t jabbed. Luckily it never came to that situation, but the thought crossed my mind many times and left me feeling anxious and fatigued. I guess that’s how it feels to be a social pariah.
Strangely enough, one recent issue was in me trying to find a professional groomer for my dog who just didn’t want to go to the regular groomer to the point she became heavily matted. Between all the bouncing phone calls in an attempt to find a groomer I realized that a few of the places I called required proof of vaccination for dropping off my dog. Nope, not my dog’s vaccination records but my COVID records. Quite the irony really, but it meant that I had to double-check all of the places I contacted in order to make sure they didn’t have such a policy during drop-off.
I suppose this has taught me a lesson in the dangers of othering others. It shows how we can lose our humanity when we denigrate others when in fact it’s our humanity that provides us with a shared experience. We are all human, with all the faults and desires that come with being human.
Welcome to my life
This whole post was intended to start off as some reflection over the past few year but I suppose it devolved into me telling my story. I’ve been meaning to do so for quite some time, only leaving a few sprinklings in my early posts but never outright detailing it in the way that I did here. Actually, there may have been one early post that did it.
I’ve had a few people ask me to have more “me” in my posts, and for the most part I don’t like to include myself in my writing. Like I said, I have a lot of trouble sharing my own personal story to the degree that I did, and when I do I constantly go back-and-forth wondering if it’s really worth it.
As to my current situation, I’ve really taken to trying to make this Substack grow as my job. There’s so many questions that need to be answered, and as time goes on I began to realize that there are many concerning issues on both sides of the COVID divide. There’s no doubt that COVID zealots fall into deep pools of tribalism, but I can see such levels of groupthink appearing here as well. It’s why my current writings cover the topics that they do in order to try to reel people back from ideology or devolving into collective thought rather than existing as individuals.
Given that a few people have won their vaccine lawsuits some may wonder why I don’t try filing a lawsuit and sue. I’ve outlined why above; the pay sucked, and more importantly at the point that I was given that final response I realized that, if not now, in the future I could just be let go when made politically expedient. This was made pretty clear, and I wasn’t going to fight for a job that essentially wouldn’t fight for me in the end.
So that’s how it goes as of this moment. I’ve learned a lot over the past year, most notably that you must dive in and try to cut through all the bullshit that goes on in science in order to find some miniscule piece of truth.
Where the future will take this Substack I am not sure. A few months ago I made remarks that I wasn’t sure of the longevity of this Substack, and that by Summer I would probably have some idea of what would happen such as getting a new job or trying to sort out my life.
Call it stubborn, lazy, or what have you but there’s so much more to uncover. Being disillusioned and having the veil removed has spurred me to keep on researching. If not for others, at least for me because I can’t just settle for the mediocrity that we’ve been provided these past two years.
Anyways, this rambling has gone on a bit too long. But before I end this post I do want to thank everyone who has supported this Substack through the past year. Whether through likes, comments, shares, subscriptions or ko-fis (is that what they’re called?) I can’t quite grasp that so many people are out there willing to hear my perspective on things. It means so much to know that my writing has been impactful or that it’s been worth reading, although I should probably hold out on the latter portion of the sentence in case not many people have made it this far.
Hopefully, the next anniversary will not be one to lament but to celebrate!
If you enjoyed this post and other works please consider supporting me through a paid Substack subscription or through my Ko-fi. Any bit helps, and it encourages independent creators and journalists outside the mainstream.
The immunotherapy that was being discussed is called Dostarlimab. Dostarlimab is an IgG4 monoclonal antibody that acts as a programmed death 1 (PD-1) inhibitor. PD-1 serves as an immune regulator for cell death. High expressions prevent the immune system from targeting cells, and in the case of cancer cells high PD-1 expression prevents the immune system from properly targeting tumors by . Essentially, a mechanism designed to prevent constant targeting of cells may occlude any targeting of cells. One key cause of this expression may be mismatch repair (MMR) deficiency, which is the mutation discussed in the video. Mismatch repair is a mechanism to correct for deletions, insertions, or mutations within a genome. Deficiencies reduce the cell’s capacity to conduct mismatch repair, leading to the culmination of of mutations and eventually tumors.
The study can be found on NEJM:
Cercek, A., Lumish, M., Sinopoli, J., Weiss, J., Shia, J., Lamendola-Essel, M., El Dika, I. H., Segal, N., Shcherba, M., Sugarman, R., Stadler, Z., Yaeger, R., Smith, J. J., Rousseau, B., Argiles, G., Patel, M., Desai, A., Saltz, L. B., Widmar, M., Iyer, K., … Diaz, L. A., Jr (2022). PD-1 Blockade in Mismatch Repair-Deficient, Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer. The New England journal of medicine, 386(25), 2363–2376. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2201445
I’ve belabored my concerns over PCR testing quite a bit in old posts. Try scouring the archives or looking for PCR testing to see my qualms with the testing procedures.
At the time and for months afterwards no one actually got sick from working on the COVID testing.
I should note that since the beginning of the pandemic my job required us to check in with symptoms. It was pretty absurd because it wasn’t as if I was going to make a nearly hourlong trek into work only to be stopped by a sign at the front desk that reminds me I should stay home if I have a fever. Yeah, I’m pretty sure the fever would have stopped me from reaching that point…
We were given accommodations for people to work from home, but you can’t quite do lab work from home. Talk about an unsterile environment!
I just subscribed as I was kind of impressed by your 'One-Year Anniversary' post. I have been receiving your updates and want you to know how much I appreciate your honesty, candor, knowledge, and gumption! My hope is that you reach much more of the population needing the truth!
Thank you. It's a special thing, integrity, and I recognize it when I see it/read it. You are indeed fighting the 'good fight'.....I hope you get lots of paid subscribers, you are one of the good ones.