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Monday, August 23, 2021

Vaccination Ruminations

Surfing and cogitating on this my Sunday morning...or Friday to everyone in the real world. Scrolling and taking it all in.

While I probably shouldn't be surprised anymore, I'm struck once again by the gymnastics (mental, not Olympic...although they are pretty awesome too) employed by a significant slice of the population when talking about the pandemic in general and vaccines in particular.


I don't even know where to start because the bizarre theories are a moving target. It's like whack-a-mole but with Q. It's exhausting.

Fauci did it. The Chinese did it. Immigrants did it. The Democrats did it. The doctors and hospitals are in on it. Bill Gates wants to track you. It's just the flu. You can't trust the CDC, WHO or Johns Hopkins. My immune system will handle it. God will protect me. Salt crystals and essential oils will protect me. Side effects. Equine worm pills work better. It's all a plot to depopulate the world and mind-control the survivors etc., etc. The list is long and ridiculous.

In the world according to conspiracy theory...Covid vaccines:

a) Weren't tested enough
b) Are experimental
c) Are made from aborted fetuses
d) Alter your genetic code
e) Cause sterility/pregnancy failure
f) Vastly increase your risk of really rare unrelated health problems
g) Make you sicker than the virus
h) Don't work anyway

Did I miss any? They're all wrong but if I say that it only proves to the true believers that I'm in on the plot or I'm a pathetic sheeple selling my soul to big pharma. Conspiracy is a self-reinforcing thing that scabs over every shred of evidence that refutes it. I miss the days when it was only about who killed JFK and how the moon landings were faked.

Look, I got vaccinated against CV19 as soon as the shot was available to me. I'll be part of the herd in herd immunity if we ever get there. I'll get the booster too if it becomes necessary. I've been vaccinated many times before and not one solitary thing has ever happened except I didn't get sick with tetanus, polio or any of the assorted childhood diseases that common vaccines protect against. My kids were vaccinated and turned out ok. I got a second dose of Moderna, a tetanus shot and a shingles vaccine in less than a month, a flu shot a few weeks later and other than a beat up left shoulder, went about my merry way without a hitch...just as advertised.

I guess I really am one of the sheep being led to slaughter by...the ever-present...THEM. THEY tried to control me and apparently it worked. 

Or it could be that I just looked around at the best sources of information available and got the shots. I'm not going to claim that 'I did my own research' before I got stuck. That's because I don't think I'm a doctor and I don't believe my real doctor is experimenting on me in a grand scheme of world domination. He's a nice guy who tells me to watch my weight and reminds me when I'm due for a colonoscopy. I trust his judgment on the state of my health and rely on him to "do no harm" 
If I'm willing to believe him if he told me I had a serious illness why would I doubt his assessment of being vaccinated? 
 
He's trained to understand the relevant medical research, something I'm not even remotely qualified for. In that at least I'm much like assorted politicians, pundits, pillow salesmen or Plandemic pushers bellowing conspiracy.

I'm a locomotive engineer by trade and training...not a physician or virologist or epidemiologist or any other -ist that makes a career out of studying this kind of thing. I trust those people to do the work that to me might as well be sorcery. 

I fully subscribe to Clarke's Third Law that states: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
It certainly is for those of us who haven't paid the dues in time and study to understand the nitty gritty in specialized fields of science.

I compare it to why I cannot and will not spend hours 'researching' why things like my cell phone, sound system and computer do what they do. It's sufficient that they work. My truck could be running on pixie dust and eye of newt for all I care. It starts when I turn the key. The point is most things in the world we live in do what they do without our intimate knowledge of how they do it. Vaccines are the same way.
 
I do try to have a very general idea of what's going on with a fair number of common things but there's a reason I can't build a new microwave from scratch...or give myself an x-ray or do my own root canal...I haven't made a career out of knowing how to do those things and it would be an insult to those that have to insinuate my knowledge could equal theirs. Why Joe Average would think he or his second cousin or someone 'the MSM refuses to cover' could be fully competent regarding something as esoteric as vaccines and claim to make educated judgements about them is mind boggling. 

I can watch YouTube till the cows come home (guilty as charged) and still not understand a profession like piloting well enough to land a jet or architecture well enough to design a building. Yet I have to believe those who work in specialized fields like that are generally competent, ethical and dedicated. You have to in our world or you'd go crazy...oh wait a minute...