"Sideways for attention
Longways for results
Who are you going to cross?"
Marilyn Manson - KILL4ME
Before I get back to video games and science fiction, I do have to break my usual "no current events" rule for a comment on anti-vaccine paranoia. Three weeks ago I got my first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, which was a surprise as middle-aged men had previously been told we'd have to wait a few weeks longer. Apparently the health department spontaneously discovered some unexpected vacancies in its schedule. This can mean any of three things:
1) The health department here in Podunk never bothered to count its residents. Definitely within the realm of possibility for these yokels.
2) Someone torched a nursing home... sadly, once again not completely out of the question - but I checked and Metamucil's still selling so we're safe on that account.
3) "People" (to use the term loosely) are refusing to be vaccinated.
And, Last Week Tonight did a mildly amusing show trying to reassure people that "mRNA" is not a codeword for injecting you with X-Files-grade alien babies or whatever bullshit Alex Jones has been spewing. So, whilst we all sit back and enjoy the gentle rumblings of Edward Jenner spinning in his grave, I might as well add my irrelevant voice to the chorus stating the obvious: get your damn shots.
I won't try to convince you why the various vaccines are safe. For one thing, it's impossible to prove beyond all doubt that they don't contain all of the autisms, or devils or thetans or jabberwocks or whatnot*; for another, paranoia is not susceptible to carefully considered evidence. It's a reflexive flinch, an attempt to assert control over one's environment by defining a tangible enemy, in this case the evil** pharmaceutical corporations, and to borrow oneself importance from transmundane powers, instead of admitting to being a disposable, unwanted dingleberry clinging to society's taint, buffeted by the indifferently broken winds of chance.
I will however point out that as inherently anti-intellectual science denialism, anti-vaccine propaganda clings to that flimsiest pretext of ignorance. To reiterate my rant about neurophobia "I am sick to death of hearing phrases like "we don't know what the
long-term effects will be" from cretins who don't know what the
long-term effects will be without it either, who in fact don't know much of anything about anything."
- or -
if you'd prefer the same statement from a more credible source who speaks in conciliatory palliation instead of lycanthropic snarling, take it from Doc Shmerling blogging on this topic for Harvard Med. three months ago: "There are pros and cons to any new medical treatment. But remember there are also pros and cons to declining treatment."
To put it another way, if ignorance is your issue, then consider that while this particular coronavirus is a fairly new and therefore inevitably poorly-studied disease, vaccine side-effects are much better known. Take even the extremely unlikely (to the point of being hardly demonstrable) ten-in-a-million cases of allergic reactions or clotting. For one thing, that's still literally at least a thousand times less risky than COVID-19 itself. For another, you're trading an unknown risk (COVID) for a known one (jabbing yourself with an EpiPen) or in other words factoring an incredibly complex problem down to a known one.*** If "we don't know" were an honest point of contention, the champions of ignorance should be the first ones rushing into clinics.
Of course it's not. "We don't know" is a pretext to act like precious preening prima-donna, to puff yourself up pretending you're going toe-to-toe against Pfizer an' da gummint when all you're really doing is threatening to murder someone's grandmother by sneezing on her.
I happen to like my grandmother.
Get your damn shots you retards.
Hell, I'm three weeks past my first dose and I'm
no crazier now than I was last year.
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* The fearsome and surreptitious whatnot has been known to stalk prey for years before downing it by an inscrutable arsenal ranging from but not limited to railway accidents, heart disease, spontaneous combobulation and random acts of goad. Truly a magnificent predator, the whatnot, yet let us weep for its impending endagerment as science encroaches on its plentiful habitat of human stupidity.
** Note: I am not putting that word in scare quotes. Yeah... we know they're evil. It's just irrelevant in this case.
*** Sure, wolfman, that's how you're gonna relate to the paranoid imbeciles: algebra references. Can you smell the Pulitzer?
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