To vax or not to vax? That is the burning question currently dividing the world into three camps. These camps existed long before the creation of SARS-CoV-2, but the distinction between them was sharpened by the current syndemic.
I use the term ‘syndemic’ because it is more accurate than the word ‘pandemic’. A syndemic is a synergistic epidemic, or in other words: an epidemic with henchmen. These henchmen are underlying diseases, each of which is an epidemic in its own right, like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and compromised immune systems. They are the reason why some are badly affected by the virus, while others don’t even notice they are infected. If the medical community and governments worldwide were to focus on preventing these diseases rather than soothing their symptoms with (scandalously lucrative) therapies and surgeries, most medications and vaccines would become obsolete in postmodern society. The silence of virologists about the power of healthy nutrition and techniques to reduce stress is deafening. The scientific knowledge about that power is already there – it is the motivation to apply it that is lacking.
First, there’s the camp of those who blindly accept the alleged efficiency of the covid vaccine (which technically isn’t a traditional vaccine consisting of a low dose of a real pathogen in order to prepare the immune system for a higher load, but rather, an experimental injection of synthetical messenger RNA of which the consequences have not been tested and verified), and they do so because they proudly claim to ‘trust science’. What does it mean, however, to ‘trust science’? The phrase insinuates ‘science’ is one unanimous block, a worldwide network of like-minded people. It isn’t! Science is comprised of many scientists, individuals with opinions that often complement each other, but also criticise and contradict each other. And even if with the word ‘science’ they mean ‘scientific consensus’, why would that consensus be trusted a priori? Majorities can be dead wrong.
In the scientific sphere too, as in artistic and other spheres, there are archaists and rebels, conservatives and progressives. There are those who are satisfied with the academic status quo and those who find research results unsatisfactory and want to dig further, dare to dig further. There are those who want a pat on the back from their sponsors – because scientific research is a very expensive affair and often relies on sponsors – and those who want to conduct research selflessly. And it is the latter who make science evolve the most. Those who aren’t afraid to challenge widely accepted academic beliefs, nor to be the academic scapegoats. Like Galileo Galilei, who was bold enough to express the then-preposterous claim the Earth was perhaps not the centre of the universe. And that is was round! Today, a statue of this blasphemous madman is standing at the entrance of the Vatican Observatory, and we are well on our way to travel to Mars.
Just like Ludwig Van Beethoven broke with classicism and his musical boldness marked the transition to a new musical era, some scientists want to break with convention and enter unknown grounds. Beethoven’s innovations didn’t make him wildly popular among his contemporaries, but they changed the course of musical history. Without his politically incorrect compositions and rebellious melodic and harmonic innovations, the oeuvre of Liszt, Rachmaninov, Brahms, or Ravel would have sounded quite differently.
And without the impressive scientific record of the world’s most published scientist, the French doctor Didier Raoult, immunological medicine would have looked quite different today. Yet this man is today taunted and demonised by the media and politicians for daring to question the need for a covid vaccine and daring to successfully cure covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine. Both the drug and the physician are now blacklisted by the intelligentsia and labeled fraudulent by journalists who know absolutely nothing about science. They want to cancel him like the Protestants wanted to eliminate Galilei. Raoult is the medical Galilei of our times.
Back to the three camps. The reasoning of the first camp is based on their emotions. They believe first it is our moral duty to get vaccinated, and that refusal to do so is a sign of utter selfishness. They believe that the unvaccinated among us are the reason epidemics continue to exist. Some of them have shown to be mini-dictators who dream of injected the entire world population, even forcibly if necessary. A vaccinated obese person, in their eyes, is of lesser risk to his environment than an unvaccinated, fit person, even though it has been proven that the vaccinated can be carriers of the targeted pathogen and still transmit it to others! The actual causes of the syndemic are downplayed or completely ignored by this camp.
The second camp is the antagonistic counterpart of the first: here are the people who think that the chemical conductors and genetically engineered or unethically derived ingredients of vaccines are sufficient reasons to ban all vaccines. They are against the very concept of vaccination and believe that our immune system shouldn’t be messed with. This group includes all people who have undergone the negative effects of traditional vaccines, like the hundreds of Irish girls who experienced serious reactions of Guardasil, the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine, resulting in extreme trauma. Because the pharmaceutical company Merck refuses to acknowledge the causal link between the vaccine and the otherwise unexplained illnesses, these girls do not receive effective medical treatment. Some of the girls have become infertile, some now have the Guillain-Barré syndrome and are partly paralysed, and others have Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis, widespread infection of the brain and spinal cord. Many are now unable to attend school due to their debilitating health conditions. Denmark has no less than five centers for girls injured by the same vaccine. The HSE (Ireland’s Health Service) insists that the vaccine is 100% safe and refers to the parents of the girls as ’emotional terrorists’ spreading ‘misinformation’.
Those girls, and other victims of severe vaccine side effects worldwide, receive no compensation from the medical world for having to live with a new pathology, handicap, paralysis, or other consequences the first camp does not like to talk about. Vaccine inserts mention multiple side effects you would rather not experience: aluminum, for example, can lead to permanent brain damage, and the polio vaccine distributed by a software company owner paralysed hundreds of Indian children. The philanthropic billionaire is no longer allowed to enter India – a minor setback compared to a lifetime in a wheelchair. People of the first camp and so-called fact-checkers on the internet like to believe that the advantages of vaccines highly outweigh the risks. But who checks the fact-checkers, and why are thousands of medical doctors who openly doubt vaccines silenced by the Orders of Medicine whose members all belong to the first camp? And if it was your daughter endingup in a wheelchair after being vaccinated, wouldn’t there be a chance your skepticism you about vaccines would rise, and that you would switch camps?
And finally, we have the third camp. Here are the people who do not deny the benefits of certain vaccines, but are critical and do not defend the concept of vaccination at all costs, in the name of science. They believe that science is an evolving phenomenon and can bge conducted by biased individuals who may have conflictng interests, or flawed individuals who are capable of making mistakes.
I assign myself to the latter group and have decided not to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, and nor will I against any other variant of it. How did I come to this decision? My intuition, which was confirmed by the advise and opinions of several medical doctors from my social circle and abroad: one endocrinologist, one gerontologist, two dermatologists, and one allergist advised against it. I made a synthesis of their arguments, and came to a well-considered conclusion that I don’t want the vaccine. There are effective treatments available if I happen to catch the disease, and I’m happy to rely on those.
My decision of not wanting the vaccine confuses first campers, and sometimes even upsets them. I’ve been accused of being an ‘anti-vaxxer’ (which I’m not) spreading ‘conspiracy theories’ (which often turn out to actually have happened – history is filled with conspiracy theories), unwilling to protect the people I love, of ignorance, or even of being the reason pandemics will continue to exist. Bizarrely, the accusers are often the same people who regularly consume meat, dairy, and eggs, and feed it to their children, thereby playing a part in the largest pandemics on earth, and the very creation of viruses they vaccinate themselves against. Let’s not overlook the fact that the majority of all viruses that harm humans, originate in animal agriculture.
Not wanting the coronavirus vaccine is my personal choice and my right – a right that, apparently, not everyone is keen to grant to others. But I believe that right is a fundamental human right, the undeniable, necessary liberty to decide what happens to one’s body, and I will exercise it while I can.