Anti-Vaxxer

Disclaimer: I don't believe that "conspiracy-theorists" are dumb, crazy or mad. On the contrary: I wish more people were willing to think critically about the events in the world we all populate, especially those events that are orchestrated from above. Conspiracies are real, as they are no more than a secret arrangement between a few actors to gain political and / or economical power. We all believe those secret arrangements exist, so in a sense we're all conspiracy theorists...

If you believe, as I do, that the world's richest top 1 percent of the top 1 percent work, closely together to keep the rest of us poor and trapped in jobs we hate, and that they use their wealth to buy our politicians as to make a mockery of our democracies, you're a conspiracy theorist. Or maybe not... You see, this arrangement isn't secret at all. These modern robber barons meet out in the open and discuss their nefarious plans in public, like during their yearly meetings in Davos. And is their close association really organized, or do they have something the rest of us lack? I dare say yes, they do; unlike us they have strong sense of class awareness, and do what's necessary to protect their own class. And they do that for a great part by setting the rest of us, the workers, against each other.

So that was a bad example. A much better example is the Flat-Earthers movement. These people aren't dumb, they just, for whatever reason, choose to believe their own eyes... and nothing else. This is unfortunate, because science has taken great effort to prove that our planet is in fact an insignificant ball of rock, water and dirt, hurtling through infinite space at incredible speeds. This makes us small and takes us out of the center of Everything; I can imagine the attraction of believing we're special, that everything revolves around us, that we take up a special place in the universe. Also I can imagine it gives a feeling of belonging, the idea that you're part of a special group of people who know the real truth, and I can imagine them laughing at us crazy ball-Earthers who just don't seem to be able to understand what they do: that it's all a conspiracy meant to make us feel insignificant and powerless...

In contrast to the flat-Earthers, whose existence is unfortunate but ultimately harmless, the anti-vaxxer movement poses a real danger to real people. The funny (or not so funny) thing is that the modern anti-vaxxer movement is the result of a real life conspiracy. It was a British doctor who was hired by a lawyer to spread fear and doubt about vaccines who started it all. Two individuals, both out to make a bucket-load of money started it and they were helped along by mainstream media out for sensational stories, instead of well researched reporting. The doctor, Andrew Wakefield, whose medical licence has been revoked, published a study in 1998, in which he alleged that there could be a relation between the MMR vaccine and autism. MMR stands for Measles, Mumps and Rubella, all contagious viral infections. This is a combined vaccine against all three of these infections, which saves parents the trouble (and costs) of having their kids being inoculated three times. The paper was published in "The Lancet", a leading British medical journal, and Andrew Wakefield appeared in numerous documentaries, TV specials and interviews, all combining to give his study and himself credibility.

Eventually though this paper was retracted and the science was found guilty of being bonkers. Years of investigative journalism later, we now know that Wakefield doctored the study with the aim to make a lot of money with his own vaccine, one that he patented months before publishing his study. You see, Wakefield himself wasn't an anti-vaxxer; his goal was to spread doubt about the combined MMR vaccine and expressly advised parents to get separate vaccinations for their children, one of which would have been his own if his ploy would be successful. The entire story is too long for just this post, but the end result of this MMR vaccine controversy was devastating: real children died of measles because their parents refused to give them the MMR vaccine. To this day the relation between vaccines and autism is a hot topic in anti-vaxxer circles, when in fact the 1998 Lancet MMR autism fraud has been thoroughly debunked and is perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years. So please watch the video, it's almost two hours long but it's well worth your time in my opinion.

Let me close by saying that I do understand this latest wave of opposition against the covid-19 vaccine, or at least I understand where it comes from; I don't trust governments either and we have every reason not to trust them. But science and numbers don't lie. The Earth is not flat, and infections, deaths and hospitalizations decrease severely in populations that have been given two shots of the mRNA covid-19 vaccine. Let me leave you with an article from that same medical journal, The Lancet, in hopes that they've learned from their immense mistake in 1998. The article shows the results from the vaccination campaign in Israel, and you can read the whole thing by following the link:

In all age groups, as vaccine coverage increased, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 outcomes declined.
_{source: The Lancet, May 05, 2021}

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