Commentary: Trust, Faith, and the COVID Shots

Commentary by Gamaliel Baer

As firefighters, we are trained to trust. We are trained to trust in our equipment. We are trained to trust in our officers. We are trained to trust in our training. Our lives and those we serve depend on that trust. Throughout COVID, I heard the phrase “trust the science” many times. I heard it from Dr. Anthony Fauci and other federal government officials. I heard it from my fire department and military branch. I heard it from friends and family. But what does it mean to “trust the science”?

COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Issues for Fire Service Leaders

Trust vs. Faith

Trust as defined by Merriam-Webster⁽¹⁾is the “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone, or something.” When a fire officer says, “you can trust me,” they are appealing to their reliability in decision making. When a rope-tech says that you can trust a rope system that they made, they mean that the components of the system and the physics behind it are reliable. The idea of trusting the science rests on the reliability of that science. When something is reliable, we can build on it, whether it is a relationship or an engineering project. If someone or something is not reliable, we lose trust. If someone or something has not yet shown a track record of reliability, we wait and see. The idea of science is that something is reproducible; if it is not, then it is not established science.

Faith as defined by Merriam-Webster⁽²⁾has a few different meanings. The first definition is an “allegiance to a duty or person.’ But when referring to faith in the religious sense, the second definition is closer to what we would expect: “belief and trust in and loyalty to God.” Now we have a problem because if we want to compare trust and faith, we can’t do that if the definition of faith is using the word trust. In Merriam-Webster, the second definition has a part “b,” which is a “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” The whole point of faith is that it is unfalsifiable. Faith does not require reliability or reproducibility. Faith is an acceptance of something that requires no evidence.

Trust in Equipment, Officers, and Training

Every third day I go to my station at 0600 to prepare for starting the day at 0700. I have been doing that for 15 years. Some days I might get asked if I can give early relief, but most days I’m not asked. But even though the prior shift knows that I show up at 0600 every day, if someone needs to be somewhere at a certain time, they will text or call me to make sure that my behavior is going to be reproducible.

When I start the day, I check the apparatus that I’m riding to make sure everything is where it should be, and that all the tools work the way they should. I’m checking for reproducibility, even though I trust the equipment because it has reliably worked in the past. When I finish checking my equipment and get to the kitchen table for transition, I pay attention to my officer the same way he is paying attention to me and my shift-mates. I know my shift-mates baselines. I know when something is off. I am checking for reproducibility. After transition, our crew does training. During training I go over something that I already learned to make sure I am capable of doing it again. I am checking for reproducibility of my skills. This is how science works. I can trust this science because it is reproducible, and I can build on it.

‘Trusting the Science’ of the COVID Shots

Vaccines have been around since 1796 when Edward Jenner successfully inoculated a young boy with cowpox⁽³⁾. Jenner noted that the Latin word for cow is vacca and the Latin word for cowpox is vaccinia, so he chose to use the word vaccination to describe his experiment. For centuries, vaccination had a certain meaning. Up until very recently, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had on their website that the definition of vaccine was “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease.”

The COVID shots that were rolled out in 2020 were introduced, and are still, under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) as experimental products⁽⁵⁾. However, because of the inability of the COVID shots to reproduce immunity, and the unreliability of the vaccines to stop transmission, the CDC changed the definition of vaccines to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”⁽⁵⁾ The change indicates that the CDC no longer claims that vaccines “produce immunity to a specific disease” but that now they simply have to “stimulate the body’s immune response” with no specific parameters on how effective that immune response must be, or how long it must last.

The idea of “trusting the science” is problematic. The scientific process does not ask you to trust an outcome. Just the opposite. Science asks you to consistently question and validate. Something becomes trusted after it has shown reliability and reproducibility. That thing that may have worked is tested again and used again until it doesn’t work anymore. However, the idea of trusting and testing something that has a reliable track record is completely different than the idea of trusting something before it has made it out of an experiment. Something that has never shown reliability or reproducibility cannot be trusted in the first place because it means there is no track record to trust. When Dr. Fauci and government officials told you to “trust the science,” they were really telling you to have a “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” They were asking you to place your faith in them and in the COVID shots.

Faith in The Eternal Alone

I submitted a religious exemption request to the U.S. Coast Guard that was rejected. I appealed, and my appeal was denied. I submitted two Equal Opportunity complaints that I am still waiting to hear back on, and I filed a complaint with the Investigator General of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and have not heard back from that. I also wrote to my Congressional representative (Kweisi Mfume) as well as to Matt Gaetz, since he was outspoken against the vaccine mandates and serves on the Armed Services Committee; nothing came of either request (I at least heard back from Congressman Mfume’s office, but I never heard back from Congressman Gaetz’s office). I am continuing to fight with a law firm called the Thomas More Society that is helping me, and many other Coast Guard members, on a pro-bono basis. If the judge overseeing the case has not issued an injunction against the Coast Guard from separating its service members who submitted a religious exemption request by December 1, then I, along with more than a hundred other Coasties will be separated from service.

When I submitted my request in 2021, I thought deeply about how to align my request with my faith. There are many ways to address a religious objection to the COVID shots, and at the time that I wrote my request there were many templates that existed. However, I also wanted to ensure that my request was durable. In other words, I had no desire to write a request that could be undone the minute the technology of the COVID shots changed. For example, the most common religious objection I read about was the use of aborted fetal cells. But what happens if they no longer use fetal cells for COVID shots?

What I knew for sure was that I did not trust Dr. Fauci, the government, or the COVID shot when it came to my personal health. I most certainly was not about to put my faith in any of those entities. I needed a timeless foundation for my exemption and the answers to what I needed were contained within the 10 Commandments. It was almost as if they were written with the timeless defense of faith in mind.

The second commandment is found in Exodus 20:3-6⁽⁶⁾. It commands believers to have faith in The Eternal alone. It specifically states not to have any other gods or to put your faith in any object of any manner or likeness. I was not going put my faith in any person, government, or experimental COVID shot no matter how bad the pandemic would get. Even if the COVID shot stopped infection and transmission (it doesn’t) and was no longer experimental, my faith does not belong in any object of any manner or likeness. If it works, then it’s a matter of trust and reproducibility and it would be obvious to anyone.

My personal experience has been that everyone I know who has taken the COVID shot has gotten COVID-19 at least once. Additionally, everyone I know who did not take the COVID shot is alive and well. I should note that I have taken all required military shots (minus COVID) and shots required for public schools. Besides the flu vaccine, which seems to be hit-or-miss, I have never gotten sick from the virus of any other vaccine that I ever received, and I don’t know anyone who has.

The fifth commandment is found in Exodus 20:12⁽⁷⁾. It commands believers to honor your father and mother. There are many ways to adopt this commandment to reject an experimental drug. Most parents told their kids not to use experimental drugs. In my case, my parents also taught me the importance of personal health; “Health is wealth.” I would be dishonoring my father and mother by taking an experimental COVID shot that we have no long-term health and safety data on yet.

The ninth commandment is found in Exodus 20:16⁽⁸⁾. It commands believers to not bear false witness. You can bear false witness with words, in writing, and with your actions. If I would have taken an experimental COVID shot, I would have been bearing false witness in all three ways. The saying “actions speak louder than words” captures the powerful way in which doing something that you know is wrong can be bearing false witness to others, and potentially further the behavior.

As a military member, I took an oath⁽⁹⁾ to “defend the Constitution…against all enemies, foreign, and domestic…and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of which I am about to enter, so help me God.” The third commandment is found in Exodus 20:7⁽¹⁰⁾. It commands believers to not misuse the name of the LORD. Having served in the Coast Guard since 2012, I had never faced a situation where I felt that I was not “well and faithfully discharging my duties.” The third commandment is commonly misunderstood that people should not swear using the LORD’s name. That is a misuse for sure, but the larger issue is to claim to be a person of faith and then act in a way that is unbecoming. I took an oath that states “so help me God,” to defend the Constitution and faithfully discharge my duties. Therefore, to not defend religious freedom, which is outlined in the First Amendment of the Constitution, and to take an experimental medical product for which we have no long-term safety data for, and encourage others to do the same through my example, would be to have misused the LORD’s name.

Final Thoughts

Trust is something that comes when we have observed a pattern of reliability and reproducibility. And even when something appears to be reliable or reproducible, the scientific process urges us to check again. That is why we check our equipment, keep tabs on our shift-mates, and retrain on things we have already learned. Science is a continuous process of verification. Despite the phrase made popular by President Reagan—“Trust, but verify”—I will never put my trust in an experimental medical product with the hopes to verify that it worked later. To believe in something with which there is no proof is faith. Faith is something that we place in The Eternal Alone, and never in a human, or object. I think the word that best describes why people took an experimental medical product was not trust, or faith, but hope.

Dr. Gamaliel Baer, EdD, MSM, is a firefighter/EMT and special operator for Howard County (MD) Fire and Rescue. He currently still serves as a U.S. Coast Guard Reserve officer and is the Maryland State Lead for the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. Dr. Baer is the founder and chair of the International Academy of Fire and Emergency Services Scholars (IAFESS), a group of firefighters and EMTs who have terminal degrees and are dedicated to stewarding the profession through scholarship and mentorship.

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This commentary reflects the views of the author and not necessarily the views of Fire Engineering.