I’m glad you asked.

You’re smart not to simply trust me because I wrote some things on a website, but I hope after I explain myself you’ll consider me a trustworthy source of information.

My name is Karen. I’m not a medical doctor, nor am I an immunologist. But I am a scientist (biochemist/biophysicist by education, molecular biologist by training). That means I do things like reading scientific articles for fun. It also means that unless something has solid evidence, I don’t buy it.

In my occupation as a safety consultant, I’m often asked to measure risks versus benefits, and it’s something I do routinely in my daily life. I’m also frequently called on to offer safety training, meaning that I need to present some pretty complex topics in a way that non-scientists can understand them.

Because I’ve cultivated a fairly unique skill set, I wanted to make this page to put together evidence-based information on the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in language accessible to the typical layperson. There’s a lot of information out there, and huge swaths of it are based on nothing more than the opinions of the person who wrote it. Conspiracy theories abound, and it’s difficult to navigate different sites and sift through the bunk to find the facts. That’s why the only opinion you’ll find on this site is the one you’ve already read on the homepage – my conclusion after looking at the available evidence that it’s incredibly important for every eligible person to get the vaccine. Everything else I’ve written on the site is grounded in evidence and backed up with peer-reviewed sources.

Believe facts, not feelings.