Hi, friends!

If you are still undecided about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, please feel free to message me any questions. I'd love the chance to reassure you about the vaccine's safety and efficacy. (Please don't message me just to argue if you are already firmly decided against it, though.)

Also if you want to be vaccinated but for whatever reason cannot access the vaccine, please let me know that too and I'll do whatever I can to help.

Yes, I have a doctorate in acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, and yes, I've received a bunch of angry messages recently saying things like, "How can you call yourself an integrative practitioner when you're recommending the vaccine? You don't understand the medicine you're practicing if you are telling people to vaccinate!"

So here's the thing: The foundation of this medicine is that all things exist in a continuum of perpetual balance, and that all elements and actions impact all other elements and actions. Keeping this in mind, always, makes it clear that it's our responsibility to care not only for ourselves and our families, but to act according to the greater good. There is nothing in any field of medicine that suggests individuals exist in a vacuum. Choosing not to vaccinate is making that choice from an individual perspective when it should be made from a public health perspective.

Traditional Chinese acupuncture and herbal medicine have a huge variety of protocols and formulas that support the immune system. Absolutely we should avail ourselves of those, *and* of whatever other immune support serves us during a time of potentially deadly global contagion. The vaccine is one of those supports--like many immune-support protocols, there may be some side effects, but they are so tiny compared with the risks of the virus and so insignificant compared with the plausibility of ending this pandemic.

I recognize, of course, that there is a very small percentage of people who are medically unable to recieve this vaccine. The rest of us can show our love and commitment to those folks by getting vaccinated to protect all of us.

We can have this discussion in terms of TCM shop talk about wei qi and external pathogenic factors and kidney essence and all of it, but the end result is the same: getting vaccinated is the right thing to do, for you and for the rest of the humans in the world. It is the responsible, loving, humanitarian choice. Please don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

(Also: thank you to all the other pro-vaccination acupuncturists out there! I see you and I am glad to be out here walking the talk with you.)