That hypothesis did not account for the effect of these
shots.
Many, if not most, of the people in my orbit who have allowed
themselves to be injected have done so for reasons other than health. Perhaps
their employer forced them to do it, or they wish to travel, or they want to be
sure they can attend some Bay City Rollers reunion concert.
Maybe it was just good, old-fashioned peer pressure.
Whatever the reason, these are not unintelligent or
illiterate people (in most cases) and so they have been aware for some time
that, outside of a specific and identifiable cohort, Covid is not a mortal
threat. This has been the finding of official sources the world over, yet for
some reason people still get huffy when you bring it up.
To wit, unless you are elderly, obese, or have some serious
underlying condition, Covid almost certainly will not kill you. Moreover, you
may have had it and recovered without ever knowing it.
Why, then, inject one’s self with some brand spanking new
concoction, the long-term effects of which are unknowable, and for which the
short-term effects – again, according to official sources that will nonetheless
ruin a pleasant evening to cite – are not good?
And why demand that everyone on the planet do as you have
done?
Are they Eve, making damn sure Adam eats that apple, too? It
is an honest question, difficult to answer, as the personality and perspective
shift in the recently injected makes them unreliable interlocutors.
For example, a neighbor of mine was, until recently, all over
social media, complaining about this or that demented Covid dance we have all
been obliged to perform. You know the sort of thing – you can no longer just go
to the bakery; you have to call ahead, wait in the parking lot, be signaled
from the doorway, run and touch the hood of the assistant manager’s Thunderbird
with your elbow, hop on one foot and recite the Gettysburg Address before you
can receive your marble rye, which is fired at you from a stadium t-shirt
cannon.
She was funny, despite her exasperation, and clear-eyed in
seeing this madness for what it is. Then she got the shot.
Her stated reason for doing so had nothing to do with health.
She is planning a vacation and did not want to have to quarantine on arrival.
That was it. And it was enough to make her a different person.
Suddenly, every bit of insanity was for our safety, and anyone
who did not follow her example was an “anti-vaxxer.” It was as though her
former self did not exist and, most alarmingly, she in no way acknowledged the
person she once was or the beliefs she previously held.
I am struggling with judging people who have taken these
injections, not because I know what the effects will be (I do not, and neither
do you, whoever you are) but because of their reasons for doing so and the way
they are acting towards everyone else.
It is not a question of intelligence or knowledge, since the
former is relative and the latter is impossible at this early stage. But the
about-faces and insults coming from the newly jabbed are worrisome.
Many people are smarter than I am. You may well be one of
them. But the people I see on my Facebook feed calling everyone else idiots are…not.
This is one of those instances, like finance and the Middle
East, where those with an interest want you to believe it is oh-so-complicated
and you could never, ever understand it. But in reality, when reduced to its
essence and stripped of jargon, the concept is rather simple. The questions become
bite-sized, even binary.
For example, as alluded to above, how can people be certain
about the long-term effects of these injections when they have only been
available for a matter of months? Again, it is an honest question and, if at
all possible, I would like an answer more substantive than, “Shut up, bigot!”
How about politicians and media figures who, when one person
was President of the United States, loudly proclaimed they would never accept
these rushed, suspect injections but, now that someone else has the job, insist
you must accept the jab or you can never go to Arby’s again? (Deal, by the way)
As the kids say, what’s up with that?
You don’t need a lab coat to see the discrepancy here, nor
does it make you a Q-Anon nutcase to wonder aloud. Anyone with a calendar and a
television can spot the inconsistencies.
The clanging illogic and head-patting maternalism were
evident when the Centers for Disease Control announced in December 2020 that
the injections were perfectly safe for pregnant women. How could they possibly
know that? With one administration on its way out and one more friendly to the
bureaucracy on the way in, had that changed things?
Those of us asking these questions are not trying to be
contentious for its own sake. This is a discussion we feel is worth having but
the Hyde-turn and invective coming from the other side make that increasingly
difficult.
We have seen this before. Covid is the new “climate change.”
Questioning conventional wisdom is met with accusations, insults, and demands
to know where you matriculated.
But despite the coming and going of every drop-dead doomsday foretold
by Al Gore, Prince Charles, and the Mayan Calendar, we remain well above
sea-level.
Set questions aside for the moment, then, and let us agree,
if we can, that there is much we simply do not know. Perhaps that explains some
of the panic and hostility.
My body-snatched neighbor was, in her telling, something of a
party girl in her youth. She laughs off concerns about the injections by saying
she’s taken a lot of naughty things in her life. But, as she surely knows, this
is not like getting a dicey batch of edibles.
For good or ill, this is for life. In her case, as in many
others, she accepted a bargain in exchange for getting her freedoms back. But with
variants, boosters, and shifting goalposts the world over, and no talk of normalcy
returning, the deal seems to be off.
She is left, then, with this mystery concoction within her
for the rest of her days. That may be a good thing. It may give her telepathic
superpowers, for all we know. But it may also end badly, and for what?
Ostensibly, for protection from a disease which, in her case, was as likely to
cause death as a freak folding-couch accident (no one ever thinks it will
happen to them).
All of this is before we get to the more recent questions;
the ones that will most definitely get you kicked out of a family gathering
(although that may not be a problem soon; want to bet that those of us who
celebrate Christmas will have to do so with the curtains closed again this
year?).
What about these “fully vaxxed” hospitalizations in the UK,
Israel, Iceland, and elsewhere? Are these shots weakening natural immunity, especially
in people previously infected with Covid? When the injected encounter the virus
naturally, will it hit them harder, as happened in animal testing? What role
have the injections played in facilitating these lettered variants? And what about these side effects that, despite Zuckerberg's best efforts, are being reported in large numbers? (I lead an active lifestyle, so blindness, amputation, heart failure and death would put a crimp in my weekend plans.)
I do not have these answers, nor do I pretend to. I am asking
in good faith.
Before I accept an irreversible treatment, on pain of having
to order my groceries online, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for straight
answers.
Theo Caldwell just wanted to be left alone. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com
