What is Obturation Media?
A worldwide media conglomerate? Clearly not. It's pretty much just a blog run by me (Jason McDevitt), a father, husband, scientist, inventor, and occasional entrepreneur. If you're trying to categorize me, I'm a dog person and a cat person. I think music peaked in the 70s and it was a lot more fun to grow up back then. I live a short bike ride from Jamestown Island, and while amazed by the daily hardships of the early colonists, I think a Colonial harvest meal of pulled pork BBQ, ripe persimmons, and fresh-pressed, unpasteurized cider is just about the pinnacle of fine dining even today. I'm missing three ligaments from my left knee down and still try to play soccer. I'm a PhD biochemist working to develop new medical treatments and also environmentally responsible shotshells.
Speaking of which, if you're wondering where the website name comes from, "obturate" is one of those rare egghead words that is probably more familiar to your average high school dropout than your average MIT PhD (at least among those dropouts who have loaded a shotshell or two and know that proper payload delivery requires good obturation). As it turns out, obturating media is my favorite shotshell innovation, for those wondering how particles of waste plant media like walnut shells can act as a non-Newtonian fluid under the extreme force of a shotgun to block the flow of expanding gas. As for the term's relevance to this website, I'll let readers come up with any metaphors on their own.
Anyway, as someone who has worked for big pharma, founded a biotech, and has a passing ability to read and critically evaluate biomedical science, I've been a somber witness to the accelerating politicization of science during the pandemic, and it has disturbed me enough to start this site. Maybe no one will read this site, and maybe I'll transition to writing about startups, or sports, or politics, or healthcare, or plastics and plastic pollution, or investing, or fostering kittens, or how much I'd like to be eating Pepe's pizza right now, or which Asian persimmons are best. Or quit writing at all, which is probably most likely.
For now, though, this website is about COVID policies, COVID science, and lifting the curtain on COVID propaganda. In particular, I discuss the issue of vaccine mandates, and the medically and ethically indefensible policy of mandating COVID vaccines for people with demonstrated natural immunity. I became quite energized by this general issue as a father of a son who had a dangerously bad reaction to his first dose of Moderna vaccine (not a slight on Moderna - I give them enormous credit for rapidly developing a vaccine that I think was very useful for some people). In spite of already being more protected than many people on campus who were fully vaccinated with inferior vaccines, my son was given the choice of taking his second shot or effectively being treated as a 2nd class citizen on campus. I work at a university, so I understand university politics, but it is incredible to see one of the nation's top universities (which has a medical school) "following the science", then closing its eyes, plugging its ears, and turning in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, they are not alone, but instead following a large crowd.
You may not agree with me on these issues, but if not, I commend you for venturing here, and hopefully you're willing to entertain different perspectives. Most people tend to go on the internet and read commentary that almost exclusively supports their existing opinions. Unfortunately, this has become one of the driving forces behind the polarization of American society: people are not sufficiently exposed to a diversity of viewpoints. In the words of John Stuart Mill: "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that."
If you're one of those folks who might be here reading the other side of the case, thanks for visiting the website. At minimum, if you believe John Stuart Mill, you'll leave with a better knowledge of your own side of the case. If any of you are triggered by anything you see on this site (and I'm not talking about shotshells), I have some built-in therapy below, just watch the all-action video of my dog.
I hope everyone enjoys and/or benefit from the website.