MAY 30, TUESDAY

MY SHINGRIX VACCINATION

This afternoon I got the first of two Shingrix shots to prevent shingles. I’ve known about the shot for several years. It was said to be very effective in preventing Shingles which itself is somehow connected to having chicken pox as a child, which I and everyone did when I was young. But the two shot dose cost $200 and so I put it off until it would be covered by insurance (during which time I could have, because of cost, contracted shingles), and this year it finally is covered and so I am getting it at no charge to me, but I’m sure a big charge to someone. But just before I went down to get the very painless shot I was glancing at the news. Everytime I glance at my email to see if finally I am about to get the tax refund I am dreaming of, I get sucked in by the news of the day. Today the news is the somewhat uncertain passage of a bill to suspend the debt ceiling and to avoid a national default of paying the national debt which will send us into a recession. The news sucks me in both because of the drama playing out and a mild fear that my retirement investments (some of which are investments I’m sure in pharmaceutical companies making me complicit) will lose value if the bill to suspend the debt ceiling fails.

Somehow I think the two are connected: my Shingrix shot and my getting sucked by fear into looking at the news. And both relate to a conversation we had with Mihir, the doctor friend in Johnson City, Tennessee a few days ago.

Mihir was in charge of the coordinating health providers in the Johnson City area to deal with Covid during the pandemic. In spite of high levels of Covid, Tennessee didn’t have a mask requirement in the public schools so as a doctor and a parent he took Prisha, his daughter, out of public school and put her into a private school where there was a mask mandate.

He said that there were a great number of deaths from Covid around Johnson City and that a large number of these could have been prevented by masks, social distancing and vaccinations, but that in the rural areas around Johnson City, fundamentalist preachers and politicians warned people that Covid was a made up threat and that vaccinations were harmful in themselves.

So how to untangle this for myself. My getting sucked into the news is partly because of the drama of the debt ceiling fight and the fear that I will be hurt. This sucks me in again and again during the day, a total waste of time each time since I can do nothing about it. But the news, especially when it plays on my fears, is addictive. And that must be true of MAGA people as well. The warnings of the preachers in church and the politicians on the social media are stimulating and MAGA people can’t stay away. Fear is stimulating. And that leads to them righteously avoiding shots and then dying.

I am getting stimulated by the news as well, but the only news I see is by Democrats and is antiMAGA. It comes at me all day long. It is addictive. I am no different from the Fox MAGA people, our addiction is the same, only my fears are different and I listen to different people, people whom I trust.

I trust doctors and pharmacists, that is why I was down there for my shot. I’ve had shingles once, a very mild case that was caught before it got started by a doctor who had just written an article for the newspaper about shingles and recognized the few itch spots I casually asked him about as being shingles. So I know I could get it and don’t want to get it again.

But my trust in the American Medical establishment is beginning to crack more than a little. I don’t think I am being lied to about the best health practices and whether I should get vaccinations. What I am being lied to about is the way health care is delivered, particularly the costs. But lying about the costs prevents people from getting good health care.

I mentioned to Mihir that when I couldn’t get 90 days insurance coverage of advance supplies of medicines to take with me on the last three month trip, I discovered that the same medicines without insurance in India, where the medicines sold in the United States are made, cost 1/5 the cost of the medicines after Part D insurance here in the United States. He shrugged and smiled with resignation. I know that the pharmaceutical companies helped write the laws that Republicans voted in for Medicare Part D. The insurance is intended more to protect the drug companies than to help the people needing the drugs. It is the drug companies that are keeping the prices of drugs in the United States artificially high. The pharmaceutical companies are making enormous profits, part of which goes to advertising and lobbyists and politicians reelection campaigns.

I’ve written here about trying to find out why about six drops of an eye medicine that Kathe was required to get through the Memorial Mission privately owned hospital pharmacy when in the hospital 3 days for a blood clot was billed for $450 for the six drops when a whole bottle costs $30. I never got an answer.

I asked the pharmacist if pharmacists had always given vaccinations in the pharmacy. He is young and always had, but pharmacists didn’t give shots when I was young. But now, particularly, more so since the pandemic, he has been giving a huge number of shots. A flu shot, which apparently costs very little to make, brings in $40 to the pharmacy every time he gives a free shot. Vaccinations are a huge moneymaker for CVS Pharmacy.

I noticed that when I was signing up for a time slot for the Shingrix shot that the pharmacy was pulling a lot of information out of me and that they had a list of about twenty shots that they were encouraging me to get. The pharmacist said that there was a new pneumonia shot that was the best ever and that I should get it (free of charge, but a moneymaker, I’m sure, for the pharmacy). Big Pharma says they want to protect me, but at the same time as people were dying of Covid, Covid vaccinations and masks were making lots of people rich.

I trust the pharmacist as I trust my doctor. I am sure the new pneumonia shot is good for me to get.

“Isn’t pneumonia the old man’s friend?” I asked. “If I am slowly dying of dementia wouldn’t I not want to be protected from pneumonia, a painless way to go?”

“Not a choice I would make,” he said.

So I’ll get the pneumonia shot. But I can see that I am also in a tug of war between big Pharma who wants to make money off of me, part of the business elite, and the country preacher who rails against vaccinations and the politicians that ride fear to power. Each side has an ulterior motive.

I read this morning that the Sacklers, who made billions of dollars promoting and lying while selling opioids which killed millions of people have bought their way out of any responsibility by agreeing to give $9 billion to compensate people they harmed. That is a case where the country preacher would have been right if he had warned people about Big Pharma and medicines that were killing people.

Who is a person to believe? And with any news that frightens us being addictive, how can we help but believe? How much does it cost to produce a Shingrix shot (including development) and who got paid how much (including costs of advertising and lobbyists) so that I could get it free? And how much is my free (way overpriced) health care contributing through Medicare to the the national debt that caused the fear of default that made me waste time looking at the news this morning? If we wanted to lower entitlement costs as the Republicans claim desperately needs to be done, the cost of my Shingrix shot or Kathe’s eyedrops would seem to be a good place to start.