I have noticed in life that near-death experiences have a way to sharpen your mind and focus your priorities. When I was twelve years old, I accidentally inhaled some chlorine gas during a chemistry class at school. It tasted terrible, and the next thing I remember was my throat closing. The usual large gulps of air turned into a fight to squeeze each desperate gasp through a tight and narrowing airway.
I had asthma as a child, and, thankfully, a girl in my class spoke up to inform the teacher of this fact.
Observing that I was now turning blue, I tried to hold on and not let myself drift into unconsciousness as a teacher drove me directly to the local hospital. I also have to be grateful that at the time, there was a neighborhood hospital—it is gone now and had I been twenty years younger, and in the same circumstances, I would likely be gone too.
There is nothing quite like not being able to breathe. It is frightening beyond compare when the most basic human function is removed, and the light-headedness of a trip into death never seems far away. I was a small child, weak, frail even, but I had a mind like a steel trap, and I would never give in. I held on.
I survived.
The reason I am telling y’all this is that I have heard and read a lot of Covid-19 stories that have left those who survived feeling similarly.
I have personally lost one old friend, a young man in his mid-forties, to a Covid-induced heart attack—a tragic departure from this world of an artisan and craftsman of exceptional skill and talent. Another close friend, a woman in her early forties, has been left with permanent heart damage and scarring on her lungs due to the long-term effects of this nasty little bug.
It seems evident to me that as a society, we should do everything we can in our divided world, in this blue/red schism of insanity, to bring people under one roof of factual discourse as opposed to ridiculous, dumb, and unbelievably dangerous, political-hack bullshit.
We have extreme members of the Cult-45 literally dying in hospital beds and still denying the existence of Covid-19. In contrast, members of the leftist, anti-vaxxer-wanker brigade of eejits are just as bad. Worse even, as they’re the ones who pretend to carry the torch of self-righteousness and follow the science—they’re not.
I understand that sometimes people have adverse effects to vaccinations, but, really? The last I checked, death from Covid vaccines ran about 27/1,000,000, far lower than the average number of kids killed in school shootings each year. And we are all very aware that Americans don’t give a damn about that.
Looking at the numbers, what do we find below the fear-mongering, the politics, the media hype, and the nonsense?
Nothing.
It’s just another example of social media’s toxic influence on the least capable in society.
Vaccinations have been around longer than you think
By the time the English physician Edward Jenner started his work about 225 years ago, rudimentary inoculations for smallpox had been used in Asian medicine for centuries.
Jenner was not the first to realize that a small dose of disease could create immunization against a future more severe infection, i.e., the hazardous practice of variolation. I.E., inoculation by administering a small dose of the disease to a person hoping that they wouldn’t get full-blown sick.
However, Jenner was the first to fully understand the science of giving someone a shot of a less deadly but related disease like cowpox to create a future immunization against a more virulent disease such as smallpox.
By 1840 Jenner’s research was reported to and accepted by the Royal Society. After much deliberation by the medical establishment, the British government provided the vaccine using cowpox for free to the population.
[Fun Fact: Vacca is Latin for Cow, which is how we get the name vaccination.]
Once established, the smallpox vaccine was taken on a tour of the world to arrest the spread of the disease. Jenner was given awards and honors from allies and enemies of his country alike.
The French leader Napoleon, with whom the British were in conflict, released two prisoners of war at Jenner’s behest, saying of the Englishman that;
[I] could not refuse anything to one of the greatest benefactors of mankind
By the early 1970s, a horrific disease that had still been globally killing up to 50,000,000 people per year only two decades earlier had been eradicated worldwide due to Jenner’s vaccination. Some estimates have Jenner’s smallpox vaccine saving more than 1,000,000,000 lives before wiping the disease out for good and saving billions more.
For perspective, without vaccination, about 30% of people who caught smallpox died, while the rest would spend the rest of their lives covered head to toe in deep scars. However, those vaccinated had about a 1% chance of severe side effects, while their mortality rate was almost zero.
What about today, fifty years after smallpox was eradicated?
There have been many deadly and debilitating diseases on the verge of destruction by vaccines.
Polio is a crippling disease that can also be deadly. It has been eliminated in the USA and can be kept that way by the continued use of vaccinations in children.
I understand everyone loved FDR, but should we bring his disease back?
Measles is incredibly contagious and can be very dangerous for little children as it damages the lungs and tubes of the respiratory system. Once more, it has been pretty much eradicated in the USA, although it still exists abroad. Therefore, it is even more important to get those shots in these days of mass international travel, especially as measles is making a comeback in the U.S. due to a bunch of half-baked fecking eejits refusing to get their kids vaccinated.
Chickenpox is another disease that a simple shot can keep away. It is a nasty disease akin to smallpox that leaves the skin of the infected covered in blisters that scar all over the face and body. Nobody should grow up looking like that because their parent is a hippy.
Other diseases that need vaccinations to keep everyone safe have virtually been eliminated by way of almost side-effect free vaccinations include; Tetanus, Influenza, Hep A, Hep B, Rubella, Hib, Whooping Cough, Pneumococcal Disease, Rotavirus, Mumps, and Diphtheria.
Humanity has the resources and the technology to keep these monstrous little diseases at bay. However, we are being held to ransom by insane (and, no, I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say) domestic terrorists who are willing to let others suffer and die for their unlettered and religious or religion-lite political beliefs.
What’s the issue with anti-vaxxers?
As far as I can see, the anti-vaxxers fall into two basic but not unrelated categories. These could be the religious (either the actual god botherers or those who believe in unscientific claptrap) or the politically motivated.
In both cases, there is nothing to say. True believers are the type who troll the internet all day on conspiracy or religious sites and call it “research.”
So, they think Bill Gates or the government is tracking them (even though every move they make is already tracked and monitored by their phone), or they believe in something equally ridiculous like they are being marked with the sign of the beast.
See? Ridiculous in both directions.
On the other hand, the politically motivated are the type of morons who would rather die than accept that a person who votes differently from them could be correct about something. They also often think someone is monitoring them, but that is a paranoid delusion as not a single one of the fools is worth paying attention to for more than thirty seconds.
And vaccines don’t cause autism. They don’t. It has been disproven and debunked so many times that it is unbelievable that people still fall for that shite.
WTF is wrong with the world? Seriously, what?
Lastly, to be absolutely clear, vaccines are not making anyone sicker. Infant and child mortality is down to record lows, while life expectancy rises to record highs. We have a healthier society than ever, and vaccines have saved the lives of billions.
However, there is no helping some people. And, as Mama Gump used to say;
Stupid is as stupid does
So, what are we supposed to do about the anti-vaxxers?
I’m not sure. Let the herd cull itself? Maybe things would be better that way? If it weren’t for certain parents putting their innocent children at risk, I’d say let them have at it. But I can’t. I’m not that cruel.
As far as Covid-19 goes, we all understand that this particular bug isn’t as virulent as smallpox. However, at the time of writing, it has taken about 730,000 lives in the USA alone, which is one in every 450 Americans. Further, most of us know someone who died, even if some of us refuse to accept the cause of their death.
How much longer do we give it before the anti-vaxxer-wankers kill us all?
How long are we going to let the vapid and pretentious pretend that yoga and a superfood cleanse is enough? Or allow the undereducated and gullible to get away with saying it’s all a hoax? Or worse, the will of their invisible friend in the sky?
At some stage, someone has to say stop. We need adults running the world, not a social media playground full of low-information children shouting over each other. It is exhausting to listen to the endless nonsense, the lies, and the stupidity. All in the name of petty political or religious orthodoxy.
Viruses kill. Vaccines heal. So, for real, fuck your politics. Molloy