Leave Jenny Alone: When Every Medical Event Becomes a Vaccine Debate
Author’s update: This has perhaps been the longest time from idea to starting to write, taking time off, writing again, and picking up the virtual pen and paper to get these thoughts ready to hit “publish.” So much time has passed that since then Lindsey Graham died, and of course the pretend coroners have labeled it “the jab.”
Before I get into it, let me make one thing an obvious priority.
Leave Jenny Alone.
Leave Jenny alone, and allow her to heal physically AND mentally from her cardiac event last month. My former run world crossed paths with my Long Covid biosphere when news broke of Boulder legend and University of Colorado Boulder runner Jenny Simpson had a cardiac event last month in Raleigh, NC.
Simpson (above meeting her in 2015 totally fangirling in a Brussels airport lounge on my way to Moscow,) three-time U.S. Olympian and Chief Running Officer of Fleet Feet was in Raleigh, NC taking part in a community track event hosted by Sir Walter Running, with runners of all levels encouraged to attend. The event featured a chance to meet Simpson.
Per Runner’s World, “On Tuesday, June 16, Simpson collapsed after pacing a mile group at the Sir Walter Pop Up Miles event in Raleigh, North Carolina. She suffered “a sudden cardiac arrest,” according to Fleet Feet, and had no pulse for a period.”
It’s normally an unspoken conversation in the run world, and that’s the rare cardiac event on a run or in a race. Whether it’s the rigors of a 26.2 mile marathon, or “all out” effort in a mile or 5K race, runners push their bodies and their heart rates to their limits sometimes (and quite uncommon) leading to a cardiac event.
I personally saw it coming, I didn’t get to “six Mississippi” before I saw someone typed on Instagram, “happy to hear (she’s doing okay) but can’t help but wonder if (needle emoji)?
I’m from a “you didn’t think about it at all” generation that immunized for everything. I was more afraid of my intimidating pediatrician Dr. Schiff and his needle, than side effects of the shot. We didn’t think twice if it was required for school or sports to provide documentation of vaccines. Many classmates carried the “ringworm-like” scar from the TB (tuberculosis shot.) I’m old but not old to have encountered polio—perhaps the best case study for the efficacy of a vaccine that wiped out a debilitating disease.
At this point, it’s hard to find a more divisive topic than vaccines other than perhaps the color of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The camps are firm and they’re digging in. In one corner, we have the likes of Dr. Neil Stone, Dr. Peter Hotez, Dorit Reiss, and most of my Long Covid Super Heroes in support of vaccines in general and in support of the Covid-19 vaccines.
In the challenger’s corner, you have to start with “Roadkill RFK Jr.” who blames his voice on a flu shot, and without qualifications and full of tin-foil hat conspiracies has become the “Grand Puba” of team “anti-vax.”
RFK Jr. who thinks that fluoride in tap water turns frogs (and kids) gay said all the right words in his confirmation hearing (see SBM “RFK Jr. and the Flying Monkeys above,”) but once in office he stuck to his anti-vax ways.
During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy promised senators that he would not alter the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including which vaccines should be available for free to needy children and which ones should be covered without a copay by private insurance.
Within a few months of taking office, however, Kennedy, a long-time anti-vaccine activist, fired all 17 members of the committee, replacing them with people who have cast doubt on vaccine safety.
Kennedy, who has made millions of dollars working with attorneys suing a vaccine manufacturer, took a hatchet to the childhood immunization schedule in January, slashing the number of recommended vaccines from 17 to 11. (CIPRAP June ‘26.)
Not only did “brain worm” dismantle the ACIP that he vowed he wouldn’t, he’s oppressing reports from his own agency that show efficacy in management of SARS-CoV-2 Per NBC News, U.S. health officials stopped the publication of a study on whether the Covid-19 vaccine was keeping adults from becoming sick enough to have to go to the hospital.
Putting RFK Jr. in place started the larger divide between the two camps of pro-vaccine and anti-vax—you could add anti-masking to that camp as well.
The algorithm on social media—notably on X that used to be a bastion of strength for Long Covid has taken an ugly turn. Without asking, the likes of Tracy Beth Hoeg, Mary Talley Bowden, Steve Kirsch (aka Harry Balsach of Long Covid Jeopardy fame,) Harry Fisher (paramedic turned vax narc.,) and William Makis invade my sofa and bedroom with their “jab” messaging playing like Heavy Metal playing over concert speakers at Guantánamo Bay.
Makis quoted as saying on X, “All Vaccine mandates are unethical, unscientific and illegal.” He’s more notorious as a grift peddler of the Ivermectin Fenbendazole Protocol. He was kicked out of Canada (and lost his medical license,) and is re-locating to guess where? You guessed it, Florida. Perhaps an entire post on this cult treatment around cancer—I see it in support groups I belong to on Facebook for my stage IV prostate cancer.
I get it. You’re desperate, you think you’re going to die so you’ll try anything. We have had a casual dialogue about Ivermectin and Fenbendazole with my oncologist PA. She’d shared this week that she had one patient quit chemotherapy after one treatment to go on the “cocktail.” Downright criminal IMHO, but certainly posts that used to be blocked on the further devolving X platform.
The cannon balls are flying online between the anti-vax, and pro-vaccine online. I’m a bit of a contradiction in that I know people that have been vax-damaged, but I also believe it thwarted what could have been far worse outcome given the millions that perished from the virus itself.
On the far right; with plenty of conspiracy cork board yarn with influence by the likes of Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute, and the their manifesto; The Great Barrington Declaration (who advocated for herd immunity and no social distancing at the height of the pandemic.) The Great Barrington Declaration has a who’s who of conspiracy theorists like Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya (on his way to becoming one of the top Bond villains in RFK Jr.’s cabinet.)
Sprinkle in some Arnold Foundation (see Vinay Prasad; aka Vinay the Angry Conspiracy Bear,) and the RFK Jr. non-profit; the Childrens’ Defense Fund—the anti-vaccination nonprofit he chaired before his Presidential campaign and subsequent appointment to Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS.)
The nonprofit (Children’s Defense Fund) has filed nearly 30 federal and state lawsuits since 2020, many challenging vaccines and public health mandates. Kennedy is listed as a lawyer on some of the cases. A handful of CHD lawsuits target the federal agencies he would oversee at HHS.
“Before the pandemic, anti-vaccine groups brought cases or supported cases, but not to this extent. So this is a new thing,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California San Francisco who studies vaccine law. (NPR Dec. ‘24.)
For me personally, any mention of my Long Covid or (especially) cancer gets plenty of BOT attacks and anti-vaxxers that immediately blame it on the jab. I often share the graphic below as I got sick in January of 2020; long before vaccines were available. My biomarkers and tests showed I had a broken immune system long before I had my first vaccine. They then blame my cancer on the vaccine. I don’t understand why someone would attack a stranger with cancer and essentially say, “it’s my fault” that I have cancer because of “the jab” with the fact that there are zero studies tying the Covid-19 vaccine to cancer.
There are too many examples to list, but the anti-jab crowd ties every stroke, heart attack, or death to the vaccine most often immediately upon hearing of an event (see Dirty Harry’s post below regarding State Senator Larry Selders.) Talk about an ambulance chaser, there are too many to list from his timeline blaming the vaccine including a children’s cancer cluster, ‘Something must be causing it, right?"
It’s hard to pick the ugliest of the ugly, but perhaps it’s the above-mentioned Children’s Defense Fund, who is leading the lawsuit for Andrea Renee Shaw, naming her the lead plaintiff in two legal actions against the nation’s top society of pediatricians claiming that the organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, lied about the safety of childhood vaccines, per New York Times.
Then, last week, after a nearly 14-month investigation by the Payette Police Department, a grand jury indicted Ms. Shaw, 23, on charges of murder, claiming that she suffocated the children in an act that was either premeditated or taken in the course of aggravated battery, per the Times.
It’s been a whirlwind of chaos and inexperience under RFK Jr. with Makary in as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Makary out, Vinay the Angry Conspiracy Bear (aka Vinay Prasad) was in, was out, back in, and again out as Dr. Vinay Prasad served as the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). I’m beginning to think that this administration used my Long Covid Villains as a hiring shortlist of pseudoscience and inexperience within HHS. These misfits have only further propagated many vaccine myths now that they’re in charge.
Before Vinay zipped out the door for the final time, he dropped that Friday afternoon “sucker punch” memo stating without substantiation that “For the first time, the U.S. FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children,” Prasad wrote. His encore was his row with UniQure ,claiming that their Huntington’s disease gene therapy; “that the trial would require some participants get a sham surgery, which they called unethical.”
The CDC itself is a rudderless ship with Jay Bhattacharya still wearing two hats since CDC Director Susan Monarez “left the building.” She was fired in late August 2025 by the White House after refusing to alter childhood vaccine schedules without rigorous scientific review.
As Matthew Buzzelli was relieved of his duties as The CDC’s Chief of Staff, this week, Jeremy Faust (Inside Medicine) writes that while the public “line” was that Jay Bhatt was Acting CDC Director;
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya frequently masquerades as the Acting Director, both in print and on television. In reality, he is, in the CDC’s words, “performing the delegable duties of the CDC Director.” When I recently asked an administration official whether Bhattacharya was Acting Director (despite the CDC’s website saying otherwise), I was told that “Jay is still performing the delegable duties” only.
Trump has nominated Erica Schwartz who has yet to be confirmed 2.5 years into the dysfunctional agency. Reviews are mixed on her Senate confirmation hearing. Mary Talley Bowden tweeting, “our next CDC director Erica Schwartz is an unethical moron.” Projection much?
Chaos is a bit of an understatement.
On the other side of the debate are those that advocate that the vaccines has saved millions of lives, and in fact (in the case of mRNA starting to show further benefits.) We discussed this topic among others with Akiko Iwasaki, Yale Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Disease, )recently on The Butterfly Pavilion Podcast (full interview HERE.)
Akiko does discuss some cases of vaccine damage on the podcast, “currently it’s not even recognized by health authorities…And so, but it’s also very inappropriate and wrong to now say that all long COVID is post-vaccination.”
As Akiko shared on the podcast and according to the American Cancer Society, “Vaccines are substances that help your immune system learn to fight off something that doesn’t belong there. We’re most familiar with vaccines that help prevent some types of infections, such as the flu vaccine. But vaccines might also be helpful in treating cancer, if the vaccine can get the immune system to see and attack cancer cells.”
Specifically, Melanoma: A phase 2b trial (KEYNOTE-942) showed that the combination of the mRNA vaccine intismeran and the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) resulted in 68.8% of patients remaining cancer-free after five years, compared to 49.1% with Keytruda alone. Phase 3 trials are actively underway. (source: NYC Langone.)
Pancreatic Cancer: Five-year survival rates for pancreatic cancer are notoriously low, but an experimental personalized mRNA vaccine trial showed that nearly 90% of patients whose immune systems responded to the vaccine were still alive up to six years after surgery. [1] (source: Memorial Sloan Kettering.)
Me personally, I’ll take the advice of “big name” cancer hospitals like Mayo, NYC Langone, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and my hospital; UC Health CU Anschutz Cancer Center) over Karen who heard something at her Mahjong game over the weekend and spit it out on Facebook.
As I continue to write this piece, I see online that tragically bassist Jennifer Finch of L7 passed away at the young age of 59 from brain cancer. My thoughts are with her family especially as I still battle my own stage IV cancer. A short scroll on the Rolling Stone tweet shows more than a few blaming the vaccine, fortunately falling short of the fans who mourned her death and whose lives were moved by her music.
So, where does the argument start to break down?
Let’s start with there’s no Biological Mechanism: The Global Vaccine Data Network and oncology experts confirm there is no known biological pathway through which mRNA or protein-based COVID-19 vaccines could cause malignancy.
DNA is Unaltered: COVID-19 vaccines do not interact with, enter, or alter a person’s DNA. Because they cannot change your genetic code, they cannot trigger the genetic mutations required to cause cancer. (I had to research this one further myself. Naively, I didn’t realize that Cancer doesn’t just change your DNA—it is fundamentally caused by changes or damage to your DNA.)
Decades of Research: The mRNA technology utilized in these shots was originally developed—and continues to be actively studied—as a therapeutic method to treat cancer and prevent tumors from returning.
This is where MAGA logic begins to break down. F47 wants to get the Nobel Peace Prize for “Operation Warp Speed,” (helping bring out the initial Covid-19 vaccine) yet the “red hats” then say the vaccines weren’t tested enough, and rushed to the market. Nobody will debate the speed at which the unconventional timeframe the vaccine was introduced. At the time, hospitals were putting up makeshift morgues in their parking lots using refrigerated trucks so not-traditional approaches were necessary.
Having said that, vaccine testing and safety has also evolved since 2020.
Per McGill University article entitled, “How We Know that Vaccines are Safe,” “As scientific knowledge gets stripped down by lies and public trust in life-saving technologies falls, it will be important to go back to basics and remind our neighbours (sic. it’s Canada) how we know what we know. Vaccines are very safe and we know this because of a mountain of studies that have approached this question from multiple angles.”
First off, vaccines do not arrive on the market with zero safety data. Following testing in animals, a new vaccine is tested for side effects in a small group of people (20 to 100), followed by another clinical trial in 100 to 300 people, followed by the largest trial in 1,000 to 3,000 people. These numbers are just guidelines: when Pfizer tested their COVID-19 vaccine, it was in over 36,000 people.
So ultimately, there are “mountains of studies” from credible hospitals; not Front Line Doctors of America. The later I covered in my parody video “Mad Vax” from 2021; one of those Front Line Doctors, Dr. Stella Immanuel, worked out of a strip mall and espoused topics like hydroxychloroquine (shocking,) and “demon sperm.”
Fast forward six years, “what we’re seeing is a revenge tour” (Pioneer Works “Vaccines, Viruses, and Us”) when it comes to Covid-19, the pandemic, and accompanying vaccines.
“The jab” crowd will typically go after those with cancer, MACE (major adverse cardio events,) and related abrupt deaths. As a patient representative for RECOVER, I am part of a study that’s found “In this cohort study, receipt of the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine was associated with reduced risk of COVID-19–associated MACE, with reductions most prominent in those 75 years or older and those with comorbidities.”
In a JAMA published study, one of my Long Covid heroes, Ziyad Al-Aly;
In this cohort study, receipt of the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine was associated with reduced risk of COVID-19–associated MACE, with reductions most prominent in those 75 years or older and those with comorbidities. While the reduction in COVID-19–associated MACE was modest, the substantially larger reduction in all-cause MACE suggests that the vaccine’s protective association extends to the hidden burden of undetected SARS-CoV-2 and its sequelae.
So what we’re seeing is that Covid itself is the culprit with many health issues (including Long Covid) which is not a huge shock given the magnitude of the once-in-a-100-year killer virus. Again, on The Butterfly Pavilion Podcast episode with Akiko Iwasaki, she discusses the impact of the virus, Long Covid and cancer.
Perhaps we should go (sarcasm) to a trusted site; (or what used to be) Covid.org looking for information to make our own decisions. Click on it and you’ll be re-directed to a White House .gov site that’s, I’m not quite sure what it is other than perhaps conceived on a gold toilet in the White House late at night after a some Truth social rants.
It’s 47 looking menacing with big bold letters, “lab leak. the true origins of Covid-19” Did Infowars take over this part of the government? At the bottom of the page is a letter from Joe Biden next to a famous and meme’d face palm photo of Anthony Fauci. Curious, I went deeper into the rabbit hole to find the source of the photo, thinking it was perhaps the “bleach and bright light” treatment rant with Fauci and Birks both looking on in disbelief and embarrassment.
No. The photo is not from that day, but March 20, 2020. Five days after I first started feeling sick. F47 at the podium and (as usual) went off on a tangent talking about then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and referred to the Department of State as the “deep state department.” Because, with them everything is a conspiracy, a pizza shop cabal, and Anthony Fauci as a Bond villain.
It’s no wonder that with these sophomoric hijinks in the White House that the far right gobbles it up like a cherry pie at a F47 rally in a cornfield and the internet is aswirl with “Karen’s” that link any and all health issues to a life-saving vaccine.
Stop it already, and leave Jenny alone.
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