#antivax

From an allegedly serious and, uh, “factual” promotion video from a website¹ featuring “reliable, qualified and trustworthy” medical professionals from several countries, with, not surprisingly, radically negative views and opinions about the whole COVID-19 debacle, masks and vaccines. Especially the vaccines.

(Sections above in quote marks to imply sarcastic tone of voice.)

Just to take one of them, for example:

«There is nanotechnology present in this vaccine. Nanobots² in hydro-gels have been developed for military purposes. There are strong indications it could make you a controllable puppet by means of your own smartphone, connected with the 5G network³ and artificial intelligence. In this way you could lose everything that makes you human.»
— Dr. Johan Denis, homeopath⁴, “World Doctors Alliance”

Right. In terms of setting the bar high, this would be a challenge to any Limbo⁵ dancer.

The problem, of course, is that people are actually frightened into believing this hogwash and cluster of lies. Those in the video sound confident, use medical and technical terminology that may seem legitimate to the untrained ear, and it’s sometimes hard to spot whether these “professionals” themselves really believe in what they’re saying, or if they’re just enjoying the ride. This is a battle on two fronts: One to fight off the actual COVID-19 problem, and another to combat wilful and malicious disinformation campaigns such as that above. In as far as saving the world goes, we’re going to have to do it twice!

— Footnotes —

¹Link withheld to avoid tickling the filters the wrong way.
²Wait, I’ve seen this movie…
³I can’t wait! As long as there isn’t a connection fee.
⁴Hang on, when they said medical professionals… I thought they meant actual *medical* professionals!
⁵Indeed, even a skinny child would struggle to crawl underneath.

Guys, I wanted to let you know about a personal decision I recently made. I don’t really feel like discussing it, but I want to put my position out there. Please be respectful. This is a really long post, but please read the whole thing.

I’m taking the brakes off my car. This isn’t a rash decision, so please listen up.

A few weeks ago I saw a car accident - two people went through an intersection at the same time. Both slammed on their brakes at the same time and collided. Fortunately no one was seriously injured.

But then it occurred to me - if they had just gone through the intersection, they wouldn’t have collided. The brakes CAUSED the accident!

So, I decided to do my own research and what I found was *staggering*: Hundreds of people every year are seriously injured by unnecessary braking. One time, I was driving in the snow and I just lightly tapped my brakes and it caused my car to COMPLETELY LOSE CONTROL. My brakes could have very easily gotten me killed. Even more astoundingly is how often brake pads will warp and distort rotors, causing bumpy rides and squeaky wheels.

And you know what? I also found that decades ago brakes weren’t even used! People would control their vehicle’s speed with downshifting and engine braking. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but back when engine braking was used there were almost no automotive fatalities. There were NEVER brake caused car accidents.

After doing some more digging, I found a nefarious plot - Mechanics: The very people who we trust to work on and care for our cars - get PAID to install and change brakes! You might THINK they care about our safety, or our cars - but they’re just in it for the $49.99 brake pad installations.

So I talked to my Mechanic about taking the brakes off my car and I was disgusted by how poorly he treated me. He accused me of being ignorant, when I was the one that looked up how much rotational torque brakes can put on your rotors. He didn’t even know how much torque a rotor can take before being warped!!! He said “rotors are designed to be compressed, that it isn’t actually a problem” just completely dismissing me.

Then he had the NERVE to say that my personal choice had consequences, that I would affect everyone around me. Well I’ve had it with him, I’m looking for a new mechanic. The problem is that so many mechanics are bought and paid by the automotive industry that ALL of them are insistent about my car having brakes. Most of them won’t even look at my car for other reasons, saying that a brakeless car could cause damage to their shop and other cars. What a bunch of bullshit, they just don’t like those who believe in alternative braking techniques.

Now of course big government is getting involved, saying that I *MUST* have brakes. That this isn’t just about me, and that I could hurt people. What happened to personal freedom? What happened to liberty?

So all I’m saying is, do your research. Don’t just listen to the NTSB and big automotive. I made a personal decision for my family, we just said no to brakes. We’ll be using natural remedies like Gravity, and putting our feet on the ground to stop. After all, if that was good enough for me when I was on my bike as a kid, it’s good enough for my children in my car.

Please keep the comments respectful!

Legal Disclaimer: I am not a mechanic and should not be considered a valid source of information for automotive inquiries.

Spanish Translation provided with many thanks by Martin Romanuk:
https://www.facebook.com/mromanuk/posts/10153602421687782

Italian Translation provided by Loris:
http://locum.doppiopasso.it/io-sono-contro-i-freni/

German Translation provided by Sebastian Wallroth
http://real68er.com/2015/03/03/ich-bin-ein-anti-bremser/

So, I’ve been seeing a lot of ‘I’m sorry for hurting your feelings posts’ with regards to vaccines, and I thought I’d make it clear that I’m absolutely, in no way, at all, sorry for hurting any of your feelings if you’re anti vaccination and not telling me.

You deserve to have your feelings hurt.

Your opinion, which you are absolutely entitled to, hurts children. It kills children. So I’m entitled to also have an opinion about you and your poor decision making. I’m entitled to mock you openly when I watch a video of an infant with whooping cough. Because without your beliefs on vaccines today there would be no whooping cough.

I don’t feel obligated to address your concerns with facts, because the facts are so clearly one sided there’s no way they rule into your decision making process. I’m not trying to persuade you because if every single doctor you’ve ever been to can’t persuade you, what chance do I have.

I won’t apologize for being such a hardliner. The 'mutual respect’ doesn’t exist between a doctor and an anti vaccination parent because there’s nothing to respect about the anti-vaccine (for other than medical reasons) position. It is selfish, and negligent.

You live in the first world. Everyone around you has vaccinated and you have clean running water and access to food and medicine, so you don’t feel obligated to take basic precautions that people around the world are literally dying to get. That is a luxury everyone around you has given you. You’re welcome.

If you don’t trust the medical field and/or your doctor’s opinion, why are you in the doctors office? Why don’t you relegate the entirety of your medical care to blog posts and people who 'do their own research’ while drawing statistically invalid findings from irrelevant data?

As the infection count (and suffering count) climbs as fewer people vaccinate, that pain and suffering rests *entirely* in the hands of people who 'choose’ not to vaccinate.

If you made the parental decision to not put your child in a car seat and your child was killed/hospitalized in car accident because s/he was standing on the front seat, you would not only be mocked and derided, but your remaining children would be taken from you and you would likely end up in jail due to neglect and you would DESERVE prison time.

You can 'make the choice’ to not vaccinate and I’ll 'make the choice’ to think you’re a terrible parent for it.

Over the past year of a global pandemic, there seems to be two main competing narratives of recent events that we have in the West. The first narrative being that COVID is a very real issue that we need to take action to fight against, the other that COVID is either completely fake, or greatly exaggerated for some sort of political gain, and any action the government takes in the name of fighting it is actually a sinister power grab. The first narrative tends to focus on personal responsibility, insisting that if we wear our masks, wash our hands, stay 6 feet apart, refuse to hug grandma, and listen to the experts everything will be fine. the people who refuse to comply are either dumb or bad, or both. 

The second narrative claims to focus on personal liberty, insisting that government overreach is killing small businesses, that public health orders to wear masks or get vaccines is some how tyranny and a violation of their “self ownership”, and liberals hate your grandparents for being old racist white people so they want them to die alone. Or something. Both these narratives have their flaws, and I would like to try and address both while presenting a more dialectical understanding of recent events.

The first narrative definitely gets the closest to the truth, but it really fumbles explaining much or providing a plan after it identifies the very real problem of COVID, and the need for a proper response to save lives. This concept that anyone who is anti-vax or anti-mask is just simply anti-facts, anti-science, and either bad or dumb or both is dangerously reductive *at best*. A lot of the time when I see people responding to anti-mask/anti-vax rhetoric it’s very dismissive, telling people to just shut up and trust the experts, because you are dumb and they are smart and essentially good people who only want to help us. But like, if you bother to actually look at history you can find *tons* of examples of supposed experts either lying or covering up information for corporate profits at the cost of the well being of the people. One easy example would be when tobacco companies used to insist that doctors actually recommended smoking, promoting their deadly cancer sticks as some how healthy.

A more relevant example would be the Tuskegee experiments, an experiment in 1932 where around 600 Black men were deceived into participating in the experiment under the belief they would receive free medical care, however, instead were used without informed consent as human test subjects. The objective of the study was to observe untreated syphilis, treatment was never part of the plan. This wasn’t only a massive ethical violation, but a prime example of how white supremacy can effect every aspect of society and even parts such as health care are tainted by it. The men abused for this “study” were told it would last 6 months, however it was extended to last 40 years, only cancelled after a leak caused public pressure to finally stop this barbaric “study”. Unfortunately 128 of the victims had already died at this point due to syphilis or related complications.

Now, A lot of the anti-mask and anti-vax crowd tends to be white. And I’m honestly not sure how many of them are very informed on the subject of the Tuskegee experiments. However, there is a very recent example that has almost definitely affected the typically privileged middle class white demographic particularly harder than usual where medical professionals deceived the public for financial gain, experts lied in their “studies”, and a lot of families are either still rebuilding from the fallout, or will never get back friends or family members they lost to the opiate epidemic.

Dangerous drugs like Oxycodone were being pushed like candy, with studies that “proved” they weren’t addictive or habit forming. Doctors were basically being bribed by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe more and more pills. There was a point where it seemed like anyone could take their kid to the doctor, and complain about their inability to focus, and get an ADHD diagnosis and some pills to fix them. A lot of people felt lied to and abused by medical professionals, someone who you were raised to trust as a friendly noble profession that had your best interests in mind. Big Pharma, to be clear, is literally a faceless monster that cannot care about human lives, and only seeks to create more and more profit for owners & investors. And unfortunately, the rest of the medical industry is pretty much reliant on Big Pharma & the Medical industrial complex, as it would be pretty much impossible to open a medical practice without any medicine or equipment. So I can fully understand why an appeal to the authority of the experts can easily get brushed off as “ignorant sheep” who trust “the man”, honestly.

But there’s a very big material difference between the opiate epidemic, or really most medical issues, and something like COVID & vaccines in general. And that would be that vaccination *relies on as many as people being vaccinated to actually work*. If only the rich and powerful can access a vaccine, the disease will not be eradicated, evolve and mutate, and eventually the vaccine is rendered useless. This means they have a very real material interest in ignoring their profit motive, for once. 

Something to consider would be the Black Plague & the change from feudalism toward capitalism. One of the major factors that destabilized the monarchy’s absolute power was the mass deaths of the working population. When there are hordes of hungry people desperate for work, they tend to have very little power to demand better conditions when they do find work, as they are easily replaceable. With a drastically lowered work force, the power balance between peasant & Lord was exposed, the peasantry was able to revolt, and over throw the Kings, and a new power relationship was established of worker & owner, which was progressive at the time, but we’re now at the point where the divide between the working class and the owner class is even greater than the old divide of serf and lord. 

Those who own capital, be it rental properties, a factory, or investments, have complete power over those who only have their body and their time to sell to those who own the stores & factories, to rent the homes they can’t afford anymore from landlords who hoard housing as a commodity to profit off of. We’re told if we work hard enough, we could possibly own something, too. And we’re just bitter and ungrateful when we complain. And we’re replaceable. But how would that change if the masses of workers were dying in the streets of a plague again?

 While wealth definitely creates a lot of privilege, and their experience of living through a pandemic is immeasurably different from ours, at the end of the day they haven’t yet lost sight of the reality that without masses of poors to exert their power over, their money becomes entirely useless. Which is why they’re willing to part with vaccines without completely maximizing their profits, though as vaccine patents & the West hoarding vaccines while the Global South continues to suffer show they still haven’t totally let go of their profit motive, and are definitely willing to let masses of brown people die to protect the profits of shareholders and investors at home.

I guess I can quickly address the conspiracy that vaccines are some how microchips to track you or whatever:

Smart phones.

They can already do that.

Now, with all that said, I fully do believe that masks & vaccines are effective, and that we all should use them! But I’m still incredibly critical of the way the government has handled this crisis. For one, it’s absurd to try and use tickets and fines to enforce mask mandates when the State has failed to distribute masks! Expecting it to be everyone’s personal responsibility to buy their own masks during an economic crisis is incredibly ignorant of the reality of just how desperate living from paycheck to paycheck can be. Free masks should have been provided, shipped directly to the people. Considering how many cases have been coming from factories & other brutal working conditions , the emphasis on personal responsibility clearly ignores how corporations are willing to sacrifice their employees health and well being to maximize their profits. Even in a country with free medical care, you have a financial incentive to try and just “tough it out” and hope its a cold if you live paycheck to paycheck and have no paid sick leave. 

I think the left is fumbling a real opportunity to  demand better and seize meaningful power that would make us a real force of change instead of a fringe ideology people mostly only hear about on the internet. There’s a lot of legitimate fear and anxiety over covid, the economy, and  even the idea of trusting experts that will never, ever be addressed as long as people just wag their finger and tell those who are scared that they’re just dumb and bad and they should be good and smart like us. Which isn’t to say that I don’t think there aren’t morally bankrupt grifters. 

I’m almost positive anyone leading any of these movements, selling their own brand of “patriot rebel” merch to the hordes of followers they amass is some kind of grifter. And I’ve been to the counter protests , I’ve seen the white power hand signs in the crowd. There’s definitely fascists who see this as an opportunity to capitalize on the fear and unrest, and see these movements as a perfect breeding ground for new recruits. But I’ve come to the realization that by letting them keep me responding to them, I’ll never actually be able to properly challenge their narrative. I’m frequently expected to defend the neoliberal hypocrisy in the covid response while I’m arguing with them, and when I try to explain my criticisms of neoliberalism they’re already gishgalloping to another talking point, and it’s impossible to actually present a nuanced argument that presents a more dialectical framework to understand these things. 

I realize now that we need to make our criticism and our demands loudly, and we need to be able to take the spotlight off of far right reactionaries preying on the fears and paranoia that they only see as nothing more than an opportunity for profit. There is no going back to normal when COVID is over. We have to decide now, socialism, or barbarism.