THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS
I’m resurfacing to report that I just got my (CDC-approved and doctor-recommended) Pfizer booster. As with the two original shots I got in February and March, the only down side is that I’ve become highly magnetic. I’ve had to replace all my metal cutlery with plastic to avoid flying utensils. It’s a small price to pay for not dying or being hospitalized or spreading a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease. Oh, and it was free, too.
I can’t help but think back to the summer of 2020, when the reality of COVID became impossible to deny but the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were still months away from readiness. It was then that Donald Trump blazed the trail that brought vaccine hesitancy into the mainstream, making it a political, rather than public health, issue.
Trump insisted on speaking at daily COVID press conferences, while actual medical experts squirmed in the background. He touted bleach, sunlight, hydroxychloroquine, anything random Facebook rumor, as long as it wasn’t endorsed by the medical establishment. The Very Stable Genius desperately wanted to be the one who discovered the cure for COVID.
Trump’s transparent eagerness to prove himself smarter than his experts turned out to be the Rosetta Stone that explains his cult’s fondness for off-label uses of veterinary products and household cleaners. They desperately want to outsmart the “so-called experts” – virologists, epidemiologists, and anyone else with credentials and an informed opinion. Some of them want that badly enough to die for it.
The poet e.e. cummings wrote, “there is some shit I will not eat.” Anti-vaxxers turn that on its head, insisting not only that they have a right to eat whatever shit they want, but that they also have a right to smear some on you. Their motto is: “My health is my business. And your health is my business too.”
Their rights supersede your rights. They acknowledge no responsibility to avoid harming others. They claim a right to risk contracting a potentially deadly disease. They have a right to become contagious, and to pass COVID to anyone they please. And they have a right to use scarce hospital resources as they choke out their last breaths. Owning Libs makes them happy, and the pursuit of happiness is their constitutional right, QED. Isn’t that what made this country great?
It took me way too long to figure this out, but it is clear that, for the fools and sociopaths that comprise Trump’s base, the efficacy of a medical treatment doesn’t matter. Rejecting masks and vaccines is a test of their faith, kind of like speaking in tongues and snake handling. Vaccines and masks are bad for … reasons, I guess. The only rational excuse I’ve heard was that the FDA had yet to fully approve any of the COVID vaccines. And now, they’ve lost that excuse.
But never fear, the anti-vaxxers will keep moving the goalposts. Early on, they said it was a fake disease. Whole lotta people dying of that fake disease, but OK, let’s game this out. If you come down with symptoms of this fake disease, they must be fake symptoms. Man up, snowflake, and save the hospital beds for people who are really sick.
Or maybe you’re very devout, and you’re convinced that God will protect you. Swell. But if that’s your position, don’t go to a hospital when you’re having trouble breathing. Stay home and pray. Out loud. While coughing on nearby loved ones. God will know his own, as your Puritan predecessors used to say.
(I wonder why, if they’re confident that God will protect them from COVID, so many of them are also gun nuts. If God is protecting them, why do they need that arsenal? What, they believe in a God who can stop a virus, but not a bullet? Apparently, their God’s powers are limited. Or maybe it’s their faith that’s limited.)
Or how about this? Maybe you think Bill Gates is using the vaccine to inject you with his patented “Mark O’ The Beast” microchips. OK, but prove it. Show your work, because the burden of proof is on you. There are anti-vax medical professionals with accest to vials of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine. Smear some on a slide and put it under an electron microscope. Show us the chips. Or shut the fuck up.
In the wake of President Biden’s COVID vaccination mandate, some anti-vaxxers are trying to play the sincerity card. Gosh, they’re really, really, sincere in their opposition to getting vaccinated. Maybe some of their stories tug at your heartstrings.
But consider the question from a public health perspective. Does an anti-vaxxer’s sincerity make him non-contagious? Or even less contagious? I’m skeptical, but I’m open to proof, if they have any. Which they don’t.
And if not, why should they get a pass? I mean, rabid dogs may be sincere as all get out, but they’re in the grip of a deadly virus and their very sincere bite will still kill you. Sincerity is irrelevant. It’s just another attempt at misdirection and gaslighting. Cynical or sincere, unvaccinated people are a public health threat.
The first responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens. That’s why we have smoking bans, seatbelt laws, and yes, all those long-standing vaccination requirements (chicken pox, DTaP, polio, hepatitis A & B, measles/mumps/rubella, and more) that Americans have been living with for decades. I want the governments I support with my tax dollars to protect me from these COVID sociopaths.
The Resistors and the Hesitators have had eight months to watch the vaccinated population NOT drop dead, grow extra heads, or have other unforeseen side effects surface. They’ve had at least that long to watch their fellow cultists get sick and die by the thousands. But instead of listening to experts, they did their own “research,” which consists of finding and repeating each other’s looney conspiracy theories. And then complaining that Mainstream Media doesn’t take them seriously.
In July, NATIONAL REVIEW published an article that reached peak both-sides-ism: “Vaccine resisters can’t be persuaded if they feel disrespected.”
Maybe so. But who cares? Why should I respect those idiots? This is just gaslighting. Insisting that persuasion is the only option amounts to holding smart people responsible for the behavior of stupid people; it’s tantamount to holding honest people responsible for the behavior of dishonest people. We don’t blame the bank teller if she can’t talk the crook out of robbing the bank.
Yes, yes, there are people with legitimate medical reasons to avoid this vaccine, and others – mainly children – who can’t get the vaccine yet. Those are good reasons. But folks with immune issues and children under 12 can also contract and spread the virus, so it’s important that they mask up if they’re not isolating.
I also kind of understand the vaccine hesitancy on the part of some minorities, whose treatment at the hands of medical authorities in the past has been disgraceful. None of which means they can’t get the virus and pass it on to others. Whatever their race, whatever their cultural history, whatever their reasoning – unvaccinated people are a public health threat. For me, that settles the issue.
A.R. Moxon put it succinctly on Twitter: “We’ll see real change affected when we stop being so concerned about whether we’ve changed the minds of selfish assholes…. Selfish assholes are making life difficult for all of the rest of us. Let's make a society where being a selfish asshole is difficult.”
Second the motion. Judging from their public posturing, many anti-vaxxers see themselves as freedom fighters, striking a blow against Anthony Fauci, or Bill Gates, or someone else in their extensive pantheon of bogeymen. But the only freedom they care about is their own. Their motto is “freedom for me, even if it means death for thee.” How many deaths will it take ‘til they know that too many people have died?