Scientists say that human coronaviruses were first discovered in 1965x. The viruses can cause respiratory infections and can lead to serious illnesses, such as pneumonia and bronchitis. Coronaviruses can compromise the health of infants, older adults, and individuals with heart and lung diseases, and weakened immune systems (National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, 2021x). To minimize the spread of covid, doctors advised us to maintain six feet social distancing, wear masks, disinfect objects and surfaces regularly, get vaccinated, and take some other preventive measures, such as stay-home while sick.
In the midst of all these, some people have managed to push themselves to a point where dying for nothing is more important than agreeing with scientific research; where playing a simple part (an obligation we owe to one another) in a community is less important than adhering to a fictitious book.
Religious anti-vaxxers say that one cannot serve two masters at the same time, which means any Christian who takes the vaccine proves that he doesn’t have faith in Jesus to save him from the virus. If necessary, they are willing to die for their lord and savior (who is not saving them right now from covid). We are glad that their blind faith still leaves them a little commonsense to not endanger their lives in many other ways.
They say their immunity comes from the holy spirit that resurrected their savior, Jesus Christ; Christians are not supposed to live in fear. Really? Unless there is an ulterior motive, we could have sworn that these Christians always look afraid of certain people and keep moving away from them; they are always afraid that the country is being taken away from them; they are always afraid of the secular world. Surprisingly, they don’t rely on Jesus in regard to these fears, they only rely on their other savior—gun. They pick and choose when to let Jesus take control over every aspect of their lives. By the way, if a Christian is affected with covid, does it mean the spirit that resurrected Jesus failed to help the Christian? If someone says that water is the only thing he needs to satisfy his hunger, and then drinks as much water as possible, but a few minutes later he is still hungry, that means it is time for him to quit making a fool of himself and get realistic. He needs food.
Some of them go further to say, the pandemic is a mark of the beast; the devil is behind it, so they are going to fight it with the blood of Jesus. Some others don’t even acknowledge there is a pandemic. They scream on top of their lungs that they only obey God’s mandate, not humans’. Of course, they have simply neglected the rational part of their faculties. Why are they against the coronavirus mandate, but at the same time comply with other mandates that keep society functioning well? Just about every social undertaking is laced with mandates for the benefit of every one of us. If you are in a rush to get somewhere, you are being mandated not to run through a red light even if there is no other vehicle around. You know what, we are beginning to believe that the issue is not really about mandate; it is about who is making the mandate. If it were from a human being whom these anti-vaxxers have deified, as faulty as he or she might have been, they wouldn’t have any problem complying with it.
Religious exemption—another pathetic excuse. They contend that the vaccine is made with an aborted fetus. First, if we fall for that, we have opened a gate that will be flooded with thousands of other religious gimmicks, which no one will be able to handle. There is no moral ground to approve exemption for one group and deny others of the same thing. In view of that, the virus will have a free pass to wreak havoc on the population. Second, we don’t know where they get their information, and they never come forward to prove their assertions. Okay, if this is all about moral judgment, where are their moral obligations to save a pregnant mother and her fetus from this dangerous disease? Where are their moral obligations to save fellow citizens who have weakened immune systems? Not that there is fact in their stance, but they seem to be barking at the wrong tree. They fail to deal with the social, health, and economic reasons why women abort. So, if something good comes out of an already aborted fetus, why are they having a problem with the innocent outcome? The fetus was going to be thrown out, anyway. It is not as if the pharmaceutical companies encourage or pay women to have abortions. Vaccines are not the problem. If not for vaccines, diseases like polio, smallpox, measles, chickenpox, and others would still be rampant today.
Even scientists in religious society say that, although fetal cell lines may have been used to develop covid vaccines, there is no aborted fetal cell in the vaccines. “It should be noted that today it is no longer necessary to obtain cells from new voluntary abortions, and that the cell lines on which the vaccines are based in are derived solely from two fetuses originally aborted in the 1960’s. … No correlation exists between the administration of the vaccine and the onset of Autism” (Pontifical Academy for Life, 2017x). What is also funny is that when pro-choice women say, ‘It is my body, I can do whatever I want with it,’ these anti-vaxxers would argue against that, but right now they are telling everybody to back off, ‘It is my body, I can do whatever I want with it.’
They say covid was manufactured to skew the presidential election. Wow, who has that kind of power, and why was it not used in other elections that favored these anti-vaxxers? What has covid got to do with the election? Did the law to have mail-in ballots come before or after covid? In a democratic society, shouldn’t everybody be advocating for early voting and mail-in ballots so that every citizen could have more access to cast his or her vote? You’ve got to explain why you wouldn’t want your fellow nationals to have a chance to vote. It seems, these days, some people want democracy to fail—it is no longer palatable for them. But what do they want? We, as one human race, have tried lawlessness, tunnel-view nationalism, pure authoritarianism, and other systems of government—they are really not for human society. That’s how we end up with democracy; those who examine it critically, often love it and use it, despite the fact that it sometimes goes against our personal impulses. Burgeoning democracies, even undemocratic regimes, around the world are watching democracy in action in America. If democracy fails here, it has no chance in most parts of the world. Unfortunately, some self-important people in other places, who have fascistic tendency, would have so many duplicities to learn here as they continue to terrorize their citizens, and the result will be complete mayhem around the globe.
Some of them have come up with a weird conspiracy theory that there are microchips in the vaccines. Maybe they forgot that the doctors and our leaders who want us to take the vaccines are human beings too who have friends and relatives all over the place in society. We have seen them take covid vaccines in public; they are not asking us to go fix the moon or do something they are not willing to do; they are not aliens who are trying to insert microchips in humans. Commonsense tells us that to liquify a microchip would be quite difficult even for aliens to do.
Coronavirus is affecting the entire world, not just here in the United States. People in many parts of the world who have no access to the vaccine are begging for any vaccine with no question asked. Here, you have free access to some of the best vaccines but you wouldn’t take it due to your groundless cynical view of the government. It is not as if the government has nothing better to do so, it came up with this fear-mongering propaganda to rattle its citizens just for political reasons. It is not as if the government doesn’t have anything else to do with money, that it decided to come up with all these crazy schemes so it could get the opportunity to spend billions of dollars (which is not readily available) to combat a virus, which you contend, is less deadly than a common cold. It is not as if the government has nothing better to do so it collaborates with the scientists all over the world to manufacture these variants of covid, and these scientists simply agreed to do so. Government is putting travel-bans on some countries because of covid. For the fact that tourism boosts the economy, we are sure that banning tourists is not something the government would have done if this disease weren’t deadly—much more fatal than the common cold.
These Christians say that those who are urging everybody to get vaccinated so as to protect others, are not making sense as long as vaccinated people can still be carriers of the virus. What an odd way to view a problem! Doing something that helps is better than doing nothing; and thereby makes the situation worse. It is not wise to simply be an obstructionist. What viable solution are they offering to get rid of covid? Nobody should have the right to deliberately pass a deadly virus on anybody. The views of anti-vaxxers are hindering us from getting to herd immunity, and that has been slowing down the economy. For example, a hike in gas prices has something to do with not getting enough drivers to transport the gas. If there were herd immunity that wouldn’t have been the case. Do they not care about the economy anymore? Maybe if they are allowed to pay the hospital bills out of their pockets when they get covid, they would take it seriously.
I hope that these hardcore Christians don’t get covid, because they will contaminate their homes and workplaces with covid and infect family members, and then inevitably, succumb to the disease. Such a sad ending often puts a strain on family members and the government that have to pick up the pieces, taking care of the children left behind due to an avoidable tragedy.
For those who are fixated on something written more than 200 years ago, they need to understand that if the people who wrote the constitution knew something about covid and its ramification, so far, on almost every aspect of our lives, they would have used capital letters to enact a mandate that would help stop the virus; they would have been patriotic enough to care about their fellow citizens and the economy. Even if you live in an island alone, you are most unlikely to have the kind of liberty you are obsessed with right now; it makes no sense to be so rigid about some utopian freedom that is not available anywhere and if it is available somewhere, you won’t be able to live in it for long. The day a person is born into a society is the day he loses his absolute freedom—the kind you want to preserve at all costs.
People, please, don’t forget that covid doesn’t care whether you are a Christian or not; it affects everybody the same way. Just about every hospital bed in almost every hospital in this country is filled with anti-vaxxers who are dying of covid. These patients are now saying they have made terrible mistakes for not vaccinating, and are begging everybody to get vaccinated. People with other illnesses are now sidelined—another sad debacle, which these anti-vaxxers don’t seem to understand or care about.
How did things get so eroded that people now have to ask, ‘Who do you really trust: the government or the people at the top of the anti-vaccine movement who are benefitting greatly from spreading misinformation?’ Let’s see: Government is spending money to get rid of this virus while most of these church leaders are making more money by taking advantage of vulnerable society; church attendance is booming, thanks to covid propaganda. Government is down to earth dealing with reality while anti-vaxxers are up there lunching in their fantasy world. Statistics show that states with relaxed covid rules have more covid related deaths than states that listen to scientists about covid.
Let us beware of the characteristics of groupthink, which include the illusion of invulnerability. Religious leaders might think they are speaking for God, but they are not. If they believe their scripture is factual, why don’t they read it critically to prove their point? We know that if they ever do that, they won’t get past page one of the so-called scripture before they dump it in the dumpster where it belongs.
On the part of the government, we know you are doing something to combat misinformation and conspiracy theory. We have met a few women who believe menstrual cycle could be affected by covid vaccine. Please, keep on doing your best to educate the public about this and other distortions. Your counterpunch against every fake news must continue to saturate all over the country through every echo chamber at a lightning speed. Lies shouldn’t take root in anybody’s mind for even a second.
Modern Age Movement (MAM)
Universal Cordial Beliefs (UCB)
References:
National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. (2021x, Dec.). Coronaviruses. Retrieved from https://www.nfid.org/infectious-diseases/coronaviruses/
Pontifical Academy for Life. (2017x, July). Note on Italian vaccine issue. Retrieved from https://www.academyforlife.va/content/pav/en/the-academy/activity-academy/note-vaccini.pdf
