Long-time resident Maria Cudequest has the right to publish whatever she wants on her EverythingCroton blog, whether it be fact, fiction, or opinion. But when, as often happens, she publishes content that is harmful to our community—such as vaccine disinformation or racist commentary—we will exercise our own First Amendment right to call her out on it.
Today, April 30, the EverythingCroton blog linked approvingly to an Opinion piece in the New York Post by Miranda Devine, a “conservative” Australian-American writer who has often been accused of racism and other forms of bigotry, and of spreading disinformation on a wide variety of subjects.
We know from Cudequest’s many posts on this subject, and from many personal conversations with her, that she is a proud “anti-vaxxer,” not just concerning the Covid vaccine but all other vaccines as well. The piece by Devine she linked to in her blog concerns early evidence (dating to 2021) that the Covid vaccine could have adverse effects, and claims that Biden administration health officials tried to cover up that data.
There is no question that when Covid vaccines (developed during the Trump administration, widely viewed as a major accomplishment) first went on the market, health officials exaggerated their effectiveness and downplayed the emergence of rare adverse effects. Nevertheless, the evidence is now clear that on a global scale, the vaccines saved millions of lives and reduced the number of hospitalizations dramatically.
What Devine’s piece does not at all mention is that five years after the events she writes about, we have a huge amount of scientific data showing not only that adverse effects are rare, but that in very large studies those who take the Covid vaccine have a much lower risk of the same kinds of negative effects, including myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and death from all causes.
The reason should be easy to understand: Infection with the Covid virus, and the possibility of debilitating long Covid, raise the risk of a wide variety of deleterious health effects that dramatically outweighs risks from the vaccine itself—including the risk of death.
We wrote about this last December, when the EverythingCroton blog featured another article by “conservative” writer Alex Berenson which claimed that the vaccine had been responsible for the deaths of some children who had taken it.
(We put “conservative” in quotes because today’s MAGAs are not conservatives in the classical sense, but, wittingly or not, increasingly revealed to be right-wing extremists reminiscent of a very different historical trend.)
We pointed then to evidence that Berenson and his main sources for these claims had it badly wrong, and that there was no real evidence for the claim.
In that same post, we linked to a number of broader studies about Covid vaccine risk, involving very large cohorts—tens of millions in some cases—of both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals around the world, that provide critical context for understanding the true risk-benefit ratio. These studies show that the risk of death from all causes—not just Covid—is significantly lower in vaccinated subjects. This is despite the fact that the Covid vaccine uses the fairly new mRNA technology, which brings new risks but also new and demonstrably greater potential benefits.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has sought to suppress such evidence, as a number of media outlets reported just recently.
Of course, the anti-vax movement that Cudequest follows avidly does not just oppose the Covid vaccine, but all vaccinations no matter how high the risk of disease to both adults and children. We have just experienced a major outbreak of measles, a disease with a high hospitalization rate, in South Carolina, with nearly a thousand confirmed cases. The vast majority of victims were children and teens who had not been vaccinated against a disease that was considered to be eliminated in the United States 25 years ago.
Now it is back, and failure to vaccinate children is the number one reason.
As we all know, here in Croton we have a large number of parents raising a large number of young children. They need accurate, up to date information about vaccines and other public health topics. To disseminate scientifically fallacious disinformation is a disservice to our community, even if it is protected speech.
If the EverythingCroton blog had only a small number of marginal readers, we might not feel it necessary to publish posts like this one. But in fact it has a large following, which it has earned by providing a great deal of information about what goes on in Croton over the course of many years. To that extent, the blog is a public service.
But the ideologically driven disinformation put out every day by its publisher, as well as the occasional blatant racism, requires a response, and we will continue to do that whenever it is necessary.
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Totally agree with your piece. The antivax movement is so disturbing. Having been a PA for over 40 years, I have seen the ravages of unvaccinated individuals, especially during the Covid pandemic. And the upsurge in measles cases is beyond belief. Infants are not able to be vaccinated until 12 months, and are especially at risk. There is so much in medicine for which there is no treatment or cure. Let's do everything we can to prevent those horrible diseases that are preventable.
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