The Offspring’s Dexter Holland wants you to get vaccinated. And he knows what he’s talking about.
Next to supply issues, the biggest obstacle to getting through the pandemic is vaccine hesitancy. Far too many people either don’t want or don’t think they need any of the jabs. Note to those people: Don’t fall for all the disinformation and conspiracy theories. Most of them can be traced back to just twelve anti-vaxxers.
Instead, you might want to listen to Offspring frontman Dexter Holland because he knows a thing or two about epidemiology, including the actions of microRNA sequences, which are used by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. In 2017, he completed his Ph.D. in molecular biology with a thesis entitled “Discovery of mature microRNA sequences within the protein-coding regions of global HIV-1 genomes: predictions of novel mechanisms for viral infection and pathogenicity.” It makes for light reading. Only 175 pages.
Although Dexter’s focus has been mainly on HIV, his research is related to what’s been discovered about COVID-19.
He as on Q on CBC Radio One the other day. Here’s a transcript (via Blabbermouth):
“I went to school for this. I feel like I have a little bit of a background in it, and I do think it’s a good idea [to get the COVID-19 vaccine]. And whatever you think about all this, the truth is that we’re not gonna get back to normal until people get vaccinated; that’s just the reality of it. So why don’t we just get this done with so that we can all go to shows again and do the things that we love to do. That was kind of the reasoning behind it. And I do feel like it’s the right thing to do. I felt strongly enough to put this out.
“On a scientific or factual level, it’s frustrating [to see people who are vaccine hesitant],” he continued. “On a personal level, I understand. People are unsure about certain things. And there could still be some sort of crazy side effect that we don’t know about. I think that’s unlikely, given how many millions of doses have been administered. But besides that, there’s all this conflicting information on the Internet. Again, another sign of our times where people are getting just bombarded with all this conflicting information, and it’s hard to know what to do sometimes.
“With the vaccine, I know there’s a lot of belief out there that, ‘Well, these were developed too quickly,'” he said. “I think part of the story that’s not out there is that there’s a whole platform of technology that’s been developed over the last five years or so that was happening — the mRNA vaccines. They were working on this for flu vaccines over the last five — really, almost 10 years — but the last five years. So this great technology happened to be right on deck when this happened. And that’s what allowed it to be quickly adapted to the coronavirus. So it’s not as quick as everyone thinks.”
So listen to Dr. Holland. Get your vaccine.
The big orange lummox needs to make a similar statement for it to really matter at this point. Hopefully, Dexter’s words will help a few more people see the light.