In my last post I mentioned people who really truly wanted to get the vax. They’re happy. They got what they wanted.
What about the people who had the opposite and almost unthinkably harder path; those who didn’t want the vax and had the strength of will to hold out?
People who didn’t want the shot and also didn’t get the shot are happy with their decision.
Notice that people who deeply wanted the shot are happy and people who deeply loathed the shot (and held out against absolutely brutal pressure) are happy too.
Happiness comes not so much as a result of a medical procedure, it comes from the exercise of free will.
Life is not fair. You ought to know that by now but if you don’t have it tattooed on your ass so you never forget. Nothing about the vax was fair. Wanting the vax took no courage or effort but avoiding the vax never happened by accident for even one single human. It took a ton of personal will. None of society’s heavy hitters were on the non-vax side. Jobs were lost. Friendships were broken. To exercise personal agency in the non-vax direction was unpopular, prosecuted, and largely unsupported. This means nobody took that path by accident.
By now, everyone without the vax in their veins fucking means it. Every single person who’s vax free has personal agency. They’ve also got balls of steel. To be vax free required facing down social engineering, lies, propaganda, marketing, advertising, and political manipulation the likes of which I’d never seen in my life.
It’s still not over. The pressure still hasn’t let up. I still see pro-vax ads on YouTube. It’s still on billboards. I’m not sure why.
Anyone who could be swayed by an ad has been swayed by the ads.
Everyone on TV and Facebook and Twitter and every employer pushed the vax. There were (are!) ads on every form of broadcast, politicians insisted if you didn’t get an injection you were killing grandma, family court judges took custody away, hospitals isolated people on their death beds, doctors refused treatments, and churches claimed God wanted everyone to get the vax. This is one of the more unforgivable sins of the recent past. Churches (of most denominations) closed when people most needed spiritual support. An absolute failure of spiritual leadership!
Overall, it’s one of the hardest times to exercise free will I’ve ever seen. What a horror!
It would have been better if people were allowed to make their choice privately (as they make most of their important choices). That was stripped away. HIPPA regulations (created to protect AIDS patients a few decades ago) were utterly ignored. People tried to use walking around with bandannas on their face to ascertain other people’s compliance. When that wasn’t good enough governments created medical identification papers; immoral, illegal, and unforgivable. They did things over the vax that would be 100% prosecuted over other medical choices.
This was a bridge too far and in retrospect a lot of people acknowledge it. (Not that I forgive a mob for what they do when they’re in the thrall of being a mob.) Even now the pressure is just barely fading. Vax mandates in the military and so forth are only gradually ebbing; at the speed of reluctant bureaucrat.
Imagine an employer demanding ID related to other personal medical situations. Your boss wants a “ID card” with proof you’ve had or not had a procedure. “It says you wear contacts. You’re fired.”
Imagine the same “ID card” for abortion! “This document says you’ve had an abortion, you can’t enroll in college.” Such a thing would seem unthinkable yet “no vax, no college” was official, somehow legal, enforced, and it affected kid’s lives.
I’m forever amused (and warned) that the “our bodies our choices” crowd had zero fucks to give about any other bodies or choices involving the vax. People who freaked out when Roe v Wade devolved to States wanted a needle jammed or my public execution. They weren’t faking it and they weren’t subtle. I think they meant it. Never turn your back on people who can pivot like that.
Legal protections applied to other medical choices were completely ignored and that’s not just illegal, it’s evil. When you ignore laws, customs, and honor to subjugate someone, you’re doing evil. “Rights and protections X, Y, and Z don’t apply anymore because we feel like curbstomping this particular group today.” That’s the voice of evil. They could have said “We’re going to work this change through the legislature slowly and deliberately”. Had they done so there would have been at least some chance to maintain the basics of lawful society.
I keep coming back to how this medical issue became more than any other medical issue. Imagine a grocery store involved in other medical choices. “It says in our database that you purchased a hearing aid from a banned manufacturer. No food for you.”
Doctors were the worst. They have the most to answer for (in this world or the next). “I refuse your request for Ivermectin (which is known to be safe) because fuck you.” They tied compliance in one choice with all other treatment. Since when is this allowed? “Motorcycles are dangerous but you still ride one. I cancelled your oncology visit. You will die of leukemia because you didn’t do my bidding when I told you to stop riding motorcycles.” The government (both in USA and elsewhere) created profit motives to manipulate patients. Hospitals made more from a dead covid patient than a dead motorcycle rider. So, of course, we have data where “dead with covid” is commingled with “dead because of covid”. This is just what you’d expect. How else could an inhuman bureaucracy react?
Privacy was destroyed, dignity was shredded, trust was crushed, and every force in society in many different nations converged to force one and only one decision. Nobody stands up to that by accident.
Because the pressure was relentless, every refusal of the shot was with intent.
The personal feeling of making a choice is better than the horror of submission.
If you didn’t get the shot, you damn well meant it! Even if it was a dumb choice, it was not an unthinking one. To think is to be human. When anyone specifically makes a decision based on their own values and goals they have an internal locus of control. They are doing their best to be full adult humans. Vax refusers did not wimp out. They made their choice and they backed it up in a world against them.
Making your choice. Based on your values… feels right.
It’s a mark against everyone else that vax refusers were treated so harshly. Vax refusers did not deserve such treatment. Regardless, they made the right choice for their preferences and goals. A person earns pride when they act like a true human and make a personal decision from within. Perhaps there is no greater thing than to stand tall for your own beliefs.
Also, there’s an amusing twist. They have options that nobody else does! They can always change their mind. They could get the shot today. They can change their mind any damn time they want. Since they haven’t, you know they’re happy with the outcome so far.
In the next post I’ll ruminate about the sad, abused, beaten middle. People who didn’t have strong preferences either way. They all got an injection about which they were ambivalent.