Is there a more contentious issue today than the topic of vaccination? I would say lockdowns, but even nations who were once mad with lockdown-lust have recently admitted that shutting down civilization is perhaps not a sustainable way to live; for evidence of this, see the recent news out of Australia.
If there has been a poster child for the “COVID Zero” approach, it has been Australia and New Zealand. Sadly, my own beloved nation—the Great White North on the other side of the COVID-curtain—has also largely embrace lockdown lunacy. Nonetheless, even the most insane countries on earth have tacitly admitted that in order for society to not constantly teeter on the edge of suicide and despair, it might be worthwhile to consider allowing the obedient citizens to live their lives.
However, this newfound benevolence on behalf of our democratically elected demagogues is not without a catch; you see, there once was a time when there could be no freedom because it was too risky, but now we can grasp at a vestige of liberty if we just take our medicine. I imagine the reader understands that I am referring to the vaccine. I needn’t distinguish between the various vaccinations that are available for human use—you know full well what the vaccine is.
The vaccine is the be-all and end-all of the universe in the mind of the secularist czars that run our lives. It is the perfect tool for continual control, and it functions like a Pfizer-forged ring that ought to be tossed into Mount Doom. If you are so unfortunate to live in a place that has implemented a type of vaccine passport, you know very well what I mean.
If you are a vaccine heretic and you dare question the efficacy of a faux-approved inoculation that has resulted in the untimely death of numerous young and healthy people, well, you have just proven yourself to be an anti-vaxxer.
Such a charge may leave you scratching your head, as you have willingly taken every recommended vaccination ever offered to you since you were a child. This should be sure proof that you are not against vaccinations per se, but rather that you are weary of a new drug that has not gone through any real long-term studies. However, you would be mistaken if you thought that you retained the liberty to make informed health decisions for you and your family based on reasonable arguments derived from available data. (This is to say nothing of the moral problems with abortion-tainted vaccine offerings.)
Now, there are good arguments made by those who are both for and against vaccinations as a whole. However, whatever side of the vaccine debate you find yourself on, it’s irrelevant to a larger, more important, point.
I was raised with the now antiquated mentality that health decisions ought to be considered in light of risks and rewards; if you are confronted with an illness, you consider a medication that may or may not be useful and that may or may not have harmful side effects. In some cases, the risks of the medicine are greater than the risks of the disease, and this changes with each person. A classic example of taking a great risk to one’s health in order to beat a deadly ailment would be chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is a ghastly undertaking with awful side effects, but it does a good job killing cancer—it is worth the risk and side effects.
As useful as a person might believe vaccines to be, they should not be out of the realm of discretionary application by each informed person. I am not speaking solely of the vaccine but of vaccines in general. I recall a conversation I had with a good man years ago; he was what people call an “anti-vaxxer,” and he gave me a host of reasons as to why he was against vaccines as a whole. I had no strong opinion on the matter, so I listened. Arguments notwithstanding, I remember thinking at the time, “If vaccines work, and they protect people, then who cares if someone else wants to take a risk and not get vaccinated.”
I cannot understand why people get so angry about the topic of vaccination; if they work…they work. Can you imagine how stupid a person would seem if they were mad at you because you didn’t want to take an opioid for pain relief. Imagine you told someone that you didn’t take strong painkillers because you had a weak stomach, or they made you feel overly dizzy; what an absurd scene it would be if the person said, “Oh, you must be one of those anti-pain-management extremists!” As if not taking Vicodin is somehow proof that you don’t believe in Tylenol.
This is the mentality, however, that rules the day regarding the vaccine. So much so that, recently, Justin Trudeau—a poor man’s French-Canadian Joe Biden—could be seen screaming to a crowd at a campaign stop about “unvaccinated” people putting the “vaccinated” at risk. One might even argue that tin-pot Trudeau is himself an “anti-vaxxer,” as he seemingly believes that the vaccine does not work; if he did believe it worked, then he of course would not be worried about the unvaxxed masses putting the BioNTech Brahman class at risk.
But you see, it is not about whether or not the vaccine even works; it is about whether or not you believe in the vaccine enough to show your allegiance to all that it represents. If you question the narrative and think for yourself, you are not only a heretic, but you are also an anti-vaxxer.
Even if you have been vaccinated but still don’t believe in vaccine segregation by way of “passports,” then you, too, are an anti-vaxxer. We might take solace in this sign of scientific progress because at some point, as long as we can walk and chew gum while doing our times tables, it is likely that we will all be anti-vaxxers.
[Image Credit: Unsplash]
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