Are you an anti-vaxxer or a no-vaxxer?
The former is staunchly opposed to any form of vaccination, think Robert F.Kennedy Jr. The latter reserves healthy skepticism against vaccines that, according to top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, neither guarantees immunity nor prevents transmission of COVID-19 – a global pandemic which has so far, a reported 99% survival rate.
According to polls, about one in four Americans say they don’t plan to take the coronavirus vaccine. Count me in as a no-vaxxer.
Despite my personal qualms about this entire pandemic, I have not estranged myself from reason. Talking to conventional doctors, spiritual doctors and holistic medical professionals, believe me when I say I’ve tried to inform myself about the vaccines.
Yet my suspicions have only intensified.
Being a Gen-Xer, which isn’t that old by the way but indulge me if you will, I was raised to treat health as a personal responsibility. As a kid, having the flu meant staying home and far away from the other kids.
Oddly today, it appears that vaccination is embraced as the status quo. If I was sick and went to the office, my colleagues shouldn’t blame me for the incoming coughs and sniffles. “Hey, you should’ve got the vaccine” is enough for me to go about my day as I so please. Where’s the sense in that?
I’ve been in thrall of certain theories involving UFOs or the deep state, guilty of letting my mind run off the reservation every so often but I’m far from a harebrained conspiracist.
With misinformation and propaganda continuing to circulate, I have only re-examined my relationship with the truth. Are official narratives, particularly as they pertain to the vaccine, irrefutable? Are facts no more than perceptions contextualized within our respective ideological worldviews?
Let’s take a closer look at the facts, shall we?
For one, the vaccines listed on the FDA website appear to be approved. Yet the finely worded print that escapes most is the vaccine was only authorized under emergency use, bypassing the standard regulatory process which requires trials and stages of testing. The way I see it, getting vaccinated now amounts to no more than signing up for an experiment.
It’s disappointing to see Americans so willing to mortgage their personal health for so uncertain a return be equally quick to chastise those that won’t. I take care of myself, work out frequently, eat healthy and get plenty of sunlight, antioxidants and the vitamins necessary for building a healthy immune system. Outside of the vulnerable populations who are more susceptible to the virus, has everyone else magically lost faith in their own immune system?
For those who nearly bought the farm the first-time round catching COVID-19, I can’t fault their caution nearly as much. But shouldn’t the rest of us be trying to separate wheat from chaff and really understand the implications of introducing a foreign element into our bodies?
Though rightfully hailed as a monumental achievement in medical science, the rapid invention of the COVID-19 vaccine in so short a time seems a little too good to be true. Adding the fact that its efficacy is yet unproven and knowing it was fast-tracked for approval, should we not be at least concerned?
After Joe Rogan was absolutely bodied on Twitter and forced to walk back his no-vaxxer take, I can see how positively entrenched the vaccine is in public health discourse. Anything that runs counter to the official CDC crafted narrative is automatically dismissed as either misinformation or a conspiracy theory.
On a Quite Franklin discussion with board certified OBGYN Dr. Christiane Northrup, she allayed similar concerns about COVID-19 and the vaccines. But most illuminating was her critique of the modern Western medical philosophy of screening. Constant testing only prime doctors to be looking for obscure problems when there aren’t any to begin with, she says.
If you are one of those yelling quackery at Dr. Northrup’s claims, immersed in the climate of fear which we currently live in, remember that even the government’s best doctors and trusted medical experts can get it wrong.
Finally, there’s the cloak and dagger tradecraft that has long attended operations in the shadowy environs of big pharma. The last time big pharma made its presence felt in the Midwest where I’m from, I saw the opioid crisis rip families apart along the Appalachia and rust belt. Some of it still hits a little too close to home.
Is it crackpot thinking or at least plausible that these vaccines are veritable cash cows for these corporations for years to come?