OUT TO LUNCH
When I was growing up in England in the 1960’s and 1970’s it wasn’t unusual for the doorbell to ring halfway through a quiet Sunday afternoon. On opening the front door we would usually find two well-groomed young men.
No tattoos, no body piercings, short back and sides haircut and invariably wearing sports jackets and a collar and tie. Precisely the sort of look to inspire confidence in you and convince you that they weren’t there to whip away the family silver.
One would be carrying a bible and the other would be carrying copies of The Watchtower, the publication of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were keen to know whether we had let Jesus into our lives.
My father made the great mistake of inviting them in one Sunday afternoon to courteously hear their side of the story. Getting them out wasn’t so easy. They were a tenacious pair and one had to admire their faith but eventually we had to tell them either not today thanks or we’ll think about it.
The modern equivalent of the persistent Jehovah’s Witness is the COVID vaccine zealot who believes that those who don’t vaccinate will be damned. Have you let Pfizer into your life?
Last week the curmudgeonly Max (the Vax) du Preez Tweeted the following:
“Wow, astonishing that in August 2022 the antivaxxers are still with us, despite all the proof and science. I've had 2 boosters, I'm as healthy as ever and my recent Covid gave me mild flu symptoms, while several friends and family members have died”. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The term ‘anti-vaxxer’ has now been ‘weaponised’ (as the wokeys like to say) and has become, courtesy of the mainstream media, a term of hatred, designed to turn part of the population against another part of the population not completely unlike what the Nazis did with the Jews in the 1930’s.
When COVID first appeared back in March of 2020 it was quite clear that nobody had a clue what it was all about. So the first piece of media advice was to wash your hands while singing happy birthday to yourself. This apparently was the required amount of time needed to kill all the nasties on your skin. Anything less than Happy Birthday and you would be a serious threat to your granny we were told. There was lots of extra information which turned out in time to be complete nonsense such as the ‘fact’ that the COVID virus could live for up to 72 hours on a stainless-steel surface.
I’m not sure who would have even bothered to do such pointless research but this factoid certainly scared the hell out of people using stainless steel handrails. Then came the lockdowns and curfews where we could only leave our homes for urgent stuff like food and medicine. Then it was masks and sanitisers, the closure of restaurants, gyms and all sorts of desperate measures to restrict the spread of COVID such as the banning of open toed shoes and rotisserie chicken.
We weren’t alone of course. A mass hysteria had spread around the world and many countries unquestioningly introduced all sorts of measures which were guaranteed to damage already fragile economies and lead to job losses. But where there is disaster there is opportunity so the lowest forms of human life discovered ways of making vast fortunes by exploiting the fears of the majority by charging vast amounts for stuff like protective clothing. When even your own Health Minister’s family is involved in a racket like that you know your country is in trouble.
The big breakthrough came in November 2020 when a vaccine had apparently been developed. You would have to be seriously dumb not to believe that the pharmaceutical companies would have been licking their lips at the prospect of flogging drugs to cure a global pandemic. It was the human equivalent of being a crocodile during the great migration in the Masai-Mara.
Politicians breathed a sigh of relief and approved the ‘vaccines’ for Emergency Use Authorisation. Put in plain English that translates to… we know it hasn’t been properly tested in the usual way, and over the standard period, but we’re desperate so we’ll take it thanks very much. How much do we owe you?
And thus it was that the miracle cure was rolled out towards the end of 2020 and even more so in 2021. Staff at the major media companies were called in and told that the official stance was pro vaccine and that is what you are going to heavily sell to the readers and listeners. If you don’t like it then start looking for another job.
Not surprisingly there were a few dissenters, many of them medical professionals, who questioned how a vaccine could be produced and tested for safety in such a short period of time. They were silenced, George Orwell style, and their voices were not allowed to interfere with the official narrative. Their videos were taken down from YouTube and they were mocked as ‘tin foil hat wearers’ by the likes of Ivo Vegter, Max du Preez and John Maytham.
Suddenly, to question the vaccine turned you into a loony and whether or not you had sound reasons for declining didn’t matter. You were labeled a conspiracy theorist who evidently believed that bits of Bill Gates were being injected into you and that you would get a magnetic arm and your brain would be receiving secret messages from 5G towers.
I never had any of those thoughts. My reason for declining/delaying the COVID vaccine had nothing to do with conspiracy theories. I simply wanted to apply the principles of beyond reasonable doubt and a balance of probabilities and it failed on both those.
Friends urged me to get the jab because I wouldn’t be able to travel and I might not be allowed into shopping malls or restaurants. The prospect of needing a vaccine passport once loomed large. I still couldn’t reconcile the idea of injecting what was, by the authorities’ own admission, an experimental drug into my body just so that I could get on an aircraft.
Now in the middle of 2022 we realise that many of the conspiracy theories of 2021 have turned out to be horribly correct. The reality is that the COVID vaccines are not vaccines at all but jabs that may, or may not, prevent you from getting a serious illness. Companies that hastily sacked the vaccine hesitant are now being forced to re-employ them.
It’s finally dawned on people that the fact that boosters are needed makes a complete mockery of the whole vaccine regime but the vaccinated still keep up the pressure on the un-vaccinated - even those who have already had the illness - claiming that COVID is a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’. Utter nonsense of course but if you’ve been jabbed and can’t be unjabbed it would be quite natural that you would wish to drag as many others along with you as possible.
I remain unjabbed and have no intention of changing my mind. I fully respect the decisions of those who were spooked enough to get a vaccination and wish them well for all their future boosters. I have never even tested for COVID and I have led a near normal life for the past two years and had no ill effects.
A couple of weeks ago 87 000 people crowded into Wembley Stadium to watch a football match. There was no social distancing, no vaccine checks and no mask wearing. There would have been a lot of shouting though. This was a mere four months after the UK nervously crept out of lockdown. This would have been known as a ‘super-spreader’ event previously and would certainly not have been allowed to take place in zero-COVID China.
My only sadness is that this is an issue that has divided families and friends. I’ve heard stories of childhood friendships that have broken down after fifty years because the vaxxed party irrationally believe their unvaxxed friends are irresponsible citizens and potential killers and refuse to meet with them.
Any attempt to point them towards evidence that the vaccines are not what they claim to be and that much of the relevant research data was hidden until a court order made it public is futile. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses they have an unswerving faith. And as for the frequently parroted ‘trust the science’ I would suggest that is the last thing you do. Particularly as ‘the science’ has changed rather dramatically over the past two years.
