The Big Con - Time to Wise Up

A great quote, but unlikely from Mark Twain.

From @1goodtern:

Have you ever known someone find it impossible to realise and admit they were the victim of a scam? We're seeing it now with hundred of millions of people refusing to admit they've been taken in by a public health scam. They're at the stage of believing and trumpeting absolutely anything else, however implausible, rather than admit to themselves or anyone else that they were fooled into being tricked. And just to be clear: The public health scam was that it's ok to catch Covid and give it to everyone. Covid is bad, and repeat Covid is awful. 

It's similar to victims of abuse - but instead of being directly harmed by officials, we're just being put in harm's way over and over. 

Amendments by Dr. Lisa Iannattone

Jessica Wildfire wrote specifically about Vinay Prasad, who 

"penned a number of articles advocating against vaccinating children against Covid. He made a YouTube video calling it 'bad public health policy.' He also railed against masks, distancing, and even indoor ventilation. A number of public health influencers took up his message and discouraged it all."

Wildfire concludes that, because of these messages, very few kids in the states were vaccinated, but my own experience has been that finding vaccines was a struggle until my youngest turned 18. Now it's so much easier to get new vaccines as soon as they're out. But the nay-sayers definitely had some effect.

She adds that we have to become aware of the malicious disinformation circulating: 

"The public is buying it, maybe out of misplaced guilt. You don't have to feel guilty for being misled. You just have to wise up. 

Clearly, we're seeing a backlash against children's public health. It's being orchestrated by narcissistic public health influencers and rogue journalists. They've decided to build their careers by attacking real science and conflating it with 'woke culture.' They're doing it on purpose. . . . If you read Vinay Prasad's work closely, you notice something. He doesn't provide much evidence for his opinions. Instead, he goes out of his way to tell people what they want to hear. He manufactures public opinion. Then he uses public opinion as evidence to support his predetermined beliefs. . . . Prasad explains that parents shouldn't get their children vaccinated because... They don't want to."

This is where we are at in our cultural maturation. You should never have to do anything you don't feel like doing. It's a larger problem than with just Covid or 'wokeness'. We see it in new teaching rules that admonish teachers if they stress kids out in any way: by asking them to put away their game, or asking questions in class, or having a closed-book test, or asking them to back up their opinions with research. Our current version of compassion leans towards permissiveness instead of the type of caring that challenges them to grow and develop in a safe and healthy manner. The idea that what we build today, we reap tomorrow has been completely tossed in favour of continuous, immediate rewards. 

And here's the thing:

It's hard to accept that you've been duped. It might help that so many were sucked into and harmed by this scam, but not by much. What I'm seeing now is a massive doubling-down. It feels horrific to think that it's possible you've put your own children in harm's way by following public health advice and taking off their masks; it's terrifying to read that each infection increases the odds of long term disability, so it must be the case that all these kids in the hospital or actually dying are because of the vaccinations or because of the masks, themselves, or from those few weeks of lockdown a couple years ago. If we let in the possibility that it's this virus causing so much destruction to our children, then we have to admit we allowed this to happen. That's way too painful for most people to process, so I'm being inundated with claims about the harm caused by vaccines and masks by people who have, on their own, researched this stuff for years without the benefit of relevant education or a peer-review process. And they're not remotely swayed by the current scientific consensus. Facts don't matter.

There's a shortage of amoxicillin, Tylenol, and other medicines typically used for sick children. There's also a shortage of an honest recognition of how far we've been taken for a ride by those who will profit from people getting back to work despite still being contagious, and from people going to restaurants and bars and travelling, and from people sending sick kids back to school so they can continue to work. 

Mask, vax, ventilate, and keep strong in the face of holiday invitations from all the well-meaning friends and family who truly believe all this pandemic talk is so last year. It's not going anywhere soon.