I'm very glad you wrote this post, my friend. Throughout the entire pandemic I had been very open-minded about the vaccines. I felt it should be a personal choice, as it is will all other vaccinations, and tried not to judge others for their decisions either way. Prior to Covid my wife and I both were against getting the flu shot because we noticed with, me especially, that I tended to get the flu more frequently and more severely when I got the vaccine. They pushed us to get it at work and gave it to us free but I stopped taking it around 2010 and felt much healthier because of it.

I think seeing what my Dad suffered through when he Covid in 2020 put a lot of fear in me and made me change my mindset. That, and the constant media coverage about how deadly Covid could be. After experiencing Covid myself, albeit a much less potent strain than my Father had, I doubt we will be getting any more vaccinations.

There is something so terribly sinister about this pandemic and I know in my heart that we'll never know the entire story but it just can't be gross incompetence. From what I experienced with my Father it seemed the long term care facilities were purposely inoculating patients with Covid. He was transferred to one of the facilities to help him recover from a knee injury from a car crash. They were placing all of the patients in one common room together for most of the day during the peak of the pandemic. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know that the virus would burn through the entirety of the patients quickly, and it did. Once a patient had Covid it was the facility's procedure to move them to another facility that housed Covid positive patients exclusively. From what my family witnessed they were being sent there to die. My Father was in the second facility for 2 1/2 days before I demanded he be taken to the emergency room by ambulance. He was so bloated he was unrecognizable to us. The hospital told us it appeared he hadn't been given food, water, or meds in almost three days and he was going into kidney failure. We all believe that if he had been given adequate care those first few days that he would still be with us. To add insult to injury the Governor of Ohio issued a blanket immunity to this facilities so they couldn't be sued, not that any amount money could ever replace my Dad.

I had a anarchistic-leaning mentality before this (mainly sparked by the 2008 Housing Crisis where we came close to losing our house but witnessed big banks getting bailed out with tax dollars) but after experiencing what I did during the pandemic with my Dad and experiencing Covid myself it cemented a few things into my psyche. I truly believe that each of us have to look out for each other because those larger entities that we've been lulled into believing that are looking out for our best interest surely are not, in most cases it is just the opposite.

When I say "look out for each other" I'm referring to the trinity of our loved ones' health -- physical, psychological, and spiritual. I've had people close to me completely changed by untruths from fringe and mainstream media outlets. These, once vibrant, curious, loving people are now full of hatred and simply won't tolerate anyone that holds an opinion different from their own. All they do is regurgitate what their media outlets tell them to. This saddens me more than anything. We must realize that most of our media has been weaponized and it's more important than ever to be able to think critically and sort through the falsehoods. It's so important to be able to change your mind when presented with a different set of facts that make sense. When society loses this mental flexibility, those in power will have the only tool they need to keep us divided and within their control and, at that point, we are all doomed.