In my daily job I talk to a lot of people. Although I'm a technical support-desk agent, you can imagine that sometimes the conversation wanders of to whatever's hot in the news, for example while waiting for modems, computers and other hardware to reset. For the past year and a half, the pandemic has been hot news, so I talk to people with all kinds of different opinions on it, and how it's being dealt with.
source: YouTube
The virus recently has hit close to home for me personally; my father in law has been infected, along with the rest of the nursing home where he's being taken care of. All the staff and all patients have been tested positive, and whenever I and the rest of the family want to visit, we need to pass through a screening room where we're wrapped in plastic and rubber, provided with a face-mask and security glasses. Although we're allowed to work at the office two days per week now, I've chosen to stay at home for now as a precaution; I don't want to limit the risk of spreading the virus as much as possible. My father in law is not doing well at all; doctors and nurses are very pessimistic about his chances of survival, so we visit every chance we get; every visit may be the last time we see him alive. If he dies, the cause of death will be registered as covid-19, even if he has already many pre-existing conditions; he's old, has suffered two heart-attacks, has pneumonia and so on.
Like I said in the introduction: I speak with many people every day, many of which start talking about the pandemic, the vaccines and government regulations, all by themselves without me even mentioning it. I can see that people are starting to get sick and tired about the whole situation, regardless of their opinion on vaccines or regulations. Today I spoke to a nice old lady whose interactive TV wasn't working. She was quite upset, because our Prime Minister would talk at a press-conference about the new state of the infections and possibly announce new regulations. This lady was angry with the many people in our country (The Netherlands) that refuse to get vaccinated. I'm old, she said, but I'd like very much to live a while longer without catching this horrible disease. This is the kind of remark I hear almost every day now.
But today I also talked to a younger woman, and while we were waiting for her set-top-box to restart after a software-reset, she got to talking about her job, and how she's not being paid enough. Turns out she's a domestic help, taking care of the elderly at their homes. I said how much I respect her for doing that kind of work, and she appreciated that a lot. I get tested for the virus regularly, she said, but some of my clients make my work very dangerous; some of them refuse to open up their windows before I visit them! So I asked why she hasn't been vaccinated yet. Well, she has a cousin who works at a laboratory, as an aid, and he said that it's impossible that a vaccine is developed in just a few months. And she refuses to act as a guinea pig. This kind of remark I also hear daily.
How do we get these two women to agree with each other? I guess that's the one million dollar question nowadays. And I have no answer. I agree with the first lady and can't understand the second one who uses purely anecdotal evidence, and doesn't even consider the possibility that maybe science has advanced to a point where vaccines can be developed a lot quicker. But hey, if I'm honest, there really is no way to know for sure if the current vaccines will or will not show negative side-effects in the long run. Only time can give us certainty. But then again, if it's a probabilistic game we're playing (which we are in any case), there's no contest; I'd bet on the vaccine 100 times over the increased chance of infection when not vaccinated. One thing is for sure though; the lies about the disease and the vaccines from the anti-vaxxer camp are getting out of hand. This is true now and throughout the history of all vaccines; search the internet for the fear and lies that were spread about previous vaccines, it's a nice exercise.
The below linked video is a deep dive into just one of the many anti-vaccination channels on YouTube. Most of them will never outright say that they're against the vaccine, and most of them have taken the vaccine themselves. Anti-vaccine vlogs simply make a lot of money. Shaun explains in detail how, by changing just a few words or leaving out a few sentences, news about vaccination and its relation to infection-rates is being twisted into a horror-story that shows how the vaccine is ineffective, when the article that's being "quoted" says the exact opposite. The fact that so many people believe the baseless nonsense that's being spread about the vaccines tells me that media-literacy is something to be worked on for sure. Please watch the video, regardless if you're pro- or anti-vaccination... Oh, and take a look at Shaun's channel; he's one of the YouTubers I've followed for years now, and one of the few who pours a lot of time and research into his productions.
Jimmy Dore's Anti-Vaccine Lies
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