Dear Editor,
Regardless of what the media in general and the politicians think, people aren’t stupid. And for the record, I am not just talking about the media and politicians here, I am talking about the media and politicians globally.
The debate rages on every day whether to get vaccinated or not. The pro vax side will tell you it’s the only way to save the world and to trust big pharma when they tell you it works and it’s safe. Sure, normally it takes years to develop and test a vax and true, we did this one in about 3 weeks, but you can believe us when we tell you it’s safe and it works. The anti-vax people will tell you there isn’t a shred of genuine credible scientific evidence that says the vax will stop anything and besides, what about all the people it’s killing? And that’s not counting the wack jobs that will tell you that the vax is strictly a way for government to establish mind control, genetic mutation and track you everywhere you go. So, who do you believe and why do you believe it ?
Do the media help you ? No. they merely repeat whatever good story that will get them some attention, ratings and circulation numbers. Some PhD scientist says that the vax will prevent every virus known to man and grow your hair back as well? The New York Times and CNN are happy to give it front page coverage. Some other PhD scientist says that your heart will explode in your chest within 30 minutes of getting the vax and that if it doesn’t then you will grow a third eye in the middle of your forehead anyway and the Times and CNN are happy to give it front page coverage as well.
The government scientist guy who is supposed to have all the definitive answers says on Monday that everybody on earth has to go into quarantine for two years and the media sell that as the ultimate truth, but then 24 hours later the same guy says, “Well, a 24-hour stay-at-home self-isolation is just as good unless you have to go out for like coffee or a fundraiser or something.” The Washington Post parrots that as the new ultimate truth. This is the supposed noted scientist who is in charge of all U.S. policy and changes his mind literally every day about what he thinks will work. Most days he can’t even remember what he said the day before.
The U.S. military says, “We vax everybody so we are ready!” and three days later one of their fully-vaxed ships is down and can’t sail because they have a comprehensive outbreak on board.
The U.S. government says on one day that the nation is has millions of cases in hospital and that the system is in chaos and the next day the President’s press secretary and the New York Times say that there is no one in hospital at all. That, in fact, overnight, everybody got better and went home. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but not far from the complete blithering nonsense that comes out of the White House these days.
Now for a bit of reality. Government says, “Get the vax and then wait five or six weeks (or whatever it was) to get the next one. We know this is safe.” But now, “That that didn’t exactly work out,” they say, “Oh wait, three weeks is really okay, and remember when we told you that two shots would do it? Well, there is this new booster thing and what we really meant was that it was going to be two shots unless someone somewhere told us that you needed more.”
And government and the media are absolutely mystified why people are skeptical about this whole vax thing.
Well, here is the news flash for you and it is mind-numbingly simple. Nobody believes a thing you say anymore. You have been so comprehensively wrong so many times and you have changed your mind and the rules so many times with no results that you simply have no credibility on the matter any longer.
The mask thing is complete nonsense. Everybody on earth knows it. It is probably the only thing that the scientists actually agree on.
You pretend that a few hand-washing machines at the entrance of buildings are doing something, yet a casual observer anywhere sees personal and intimate interaction 10,000 times a day.
The notion that “Anything is better than nothing” is nonsense on its face. Viruses spread exponentially. All you need is one infected person to miss any single hand-washing machine and in 24 hours he has passed that infection exponentially to thousands. You impose curfews and social distancing standards that are universally ignored because, simply, people don’t believe you and you have no track record of being right about anything or that they work.
Another news flash for you. People live in the real world. They don’t live in labs and test tubes and in theses written by theoretical scientists working with statistical studies. Maybe in a lab somewhere if you isolate your 10 rats from the other 10 nothing gets transmitted but in the real world with about 8 billion people you can just forget about that. They tried total isolation in Australia and it failed, and it failed everywhere else where it was tried.
The one shining example of what may actually work is Florida. They dropped virtually all the restrictions and nonsense and ended up with the lowest infection and death rates in the U.S. Maybe it’s time to do the same here.
In the meantime, my advice to the media , this newspaper included, is maybe try treating the info that gets fed to you with a healthy dose of skepticism for a change. When someone in authority changes the data 180 degrees from one day to the next, maybe just ask them why what was true yesterday isn’t true today anymore. If you want people to start believing you again, you will have to earn that trust back.
Now, for those of you wondering, I am vaccinated and boosted. Not because I believe or have any confidence in the propaganda but because it is a simple matter of expedience. I have to get on airplanes periodically and I don’t want to sit there and argue philosophy at some check-in counter. I want to show the card and move on. Will the vax kill me? Maybe, maybe not. And for sure there is no one I trust to ask that might actually have an answer I believe. If anything, it will be the whole hypocrisy of this situation that will likely see me dead.
Steven Johnson
