COVID and The Lunatic Fringe

During the past 2 years since the SARS-Cov-2 virus emerged as a global pandemic, I’ve been sharing news stories on Facebook. I faced, from the start, enormous and immediate pushback by anti-vaxers. They mocked, belittled, and ridiculed me. I didn’t stoop to their level. I presented the facts with my take on them. This anti-vaxx sentiment is rooted in fear and ignorance.

Imagine if, in the 1950s, a huge portion of the American population refused the polio vaccine for themselves or their children. Polio would still be with us as a scourge. Thank God for vaccines! The ignorance of some people is astounding! And then they try to spin it into a political/patriot issue as if they are brave freedom fighters for refusing to wear a mask, or for refusing to get vaccinated. I’m sick of all of them. This disease is deadly and I’ve lost too many loved ones to see anti-vaxxers lie about the disease that killed them.

Our childhood friend Chris Ordos died from COVID before the vaccines were developed. He was 51 and in great shape physically. He died within 48 hours of having trouble breathing. I’ve seen dozens of reports of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s who were healthy, yet died from COVID. This virus is not the same as the influenza viruses we see every year. It is at least 30-50 times as deadly. And the science is clear, the percentage of people who are vaccinated and develop serious enough symptoms to warrant hospitalization, or who die from COVID, are magnitudes lower than the percentage of people who are either hospitalized or who die who are unvaccinated.

The majority of Americans realize that the vaccines are safe and effective, with very few vaccine-related injuries, compared to the tens of millions of people vaccinated. What I call the lunatic fringe are the diehard Trump supporters who take their medical advice from their favorite politicians, or from their pastor, instead of listening to the overwhelming global consensus of doctors and scientists who specialize in virology. Such people are willfully ignorant, and literally cannot be reasoned with.

I saw on CNN cases of COVID patients in the ICU who were dying and they still denied they were sick because of COVID. At a certain point cognitive dissonance sets in and they believe the opposite of the media, educators, business, and most importantly doctors and scientists. When you attempt to debate them you see it’s futile. They respond with about a half dozen canned responses, which they heard their favorite political pundit or politician repeat. You can bring up sophisticated arguments, and literally, show them objective data that contradicts their narrative and they just dig their heels in harder and repeat the same tired canards! It’s extremely frustrating to interact with such people.

Trump, early on, politicizing COVID, and making it into a Democrat versus Republican issue, was a great tragedy and a serious mistake which some scientists have estimated makes Trump responsible for 200,000 to 300,000 deaths which could have been averted.

We’ve seen how deadly and unpredictable COVID variants can be, the first delta and now omicron. As the virus keeps sweeping through the global population and continues to mutate who knows what we might face in a future COVID variant. We need everyone to wear masks (these same people who opposed the vaccines are also opposed to wearing masks to reduce the transmission of the virus), social distance, wash their hands and get fully vaccinated. My parents, 2 sisters, and I are triple vaxxed with the first two shots and then the booster. Please, I urge you to take these necessary steps to protect yourself, your families and friends, and even strangers from this deadly and brutal virus. America has surpassed 900,000 COVID deaths with no end in sight. We could’ve had herd immunity by now if only those ignorant and deluded anti-vaxxers had taken the vaccines!! So disgusting.

I should also note how COVID has been handled in the Church. I still see on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, pastors railing against the vaccines as the prophesied Mark of the Beast mentioned in the book of Revelation in the Bible. I’ve heard pastors say that taking the vaccines indicates a lack of faith and a lack of trust in God. This is deeply damaging and very immoral. People have literally died because they trusted their pastor, who has a position of authority that they abused! This is wicked and we need to speak out against this, and refuse to tolerate it.

I’ve also read many crazy conspiracy theories saying the vaccines have microchips to track you or toxic substances like graphene, or that they are made from aborted babies. All of these are absolutely false! We need to confront these insane theories and denounce them when we see them.

The COVID virus may be with us for a very long time. Experts are saying it could become a cyclical virus, like flu, which we’d need to be vaccinated against every year to match the genetic structure of the mutated viruses. I pray that we once more will live in a COVID-free world, but if not, my trust is firmly rooted in the sovereign Triune God.

And contrary to what many on social media have told me, no I am not living in fear by being educated and seeing the benefits of masking, social distancing, and taking COVID vaccines. My beliefs about COVID vaccines are not rooted in fear. I am not fearful. I trust God and I trust the science He has blessed us with. Jesus would tell you to get the vaccine if He was on earth right now! LOVE THY NEIGHBOR!!! I saw recently thousands of truckers in Canada driving to the US-Canada border to protest the mandates in their country. This was dubbed the Freedom Convoy. It’s ridiculous, and if the stakes weren’t so high, it would be laughable. These truckers are not modern-day Minute Men fighting to preserve liberty. They are fighting to preserve ignorance, superstition, and an anti-science anti-intellectual worldview. You are not a patriot because you’re an anti-vaxxer or an anti-masker. Both of my grandfathers fought in World War 2 for this great nation of ours. They are true patriots, not anti-vaxxers!

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