The Unthinking Hordes

H/t Greg Perry

As a student of human behaviour, one of the things this pandemic has made abundantly clear to me is that a significant number of people are ill-equipped to think. Whether through a lack of education or the sometimes cruel play of genetics, there are those amongst us who, no matter the evidence, will insist that their misbegotten notion of reality is the 'real truth.' This is particularly evident in the anti-vaxxer crowd.

Because such people can 'think' only in the broadest of terms, they often resort to hysterical and grossly inappropriate language and historical allusion. This has not escaped the notice of columnist Michael Coren, who begins his piece, There's no vaccination against human cruelty, with a fond memory of his great aunt, who he called bubba.

It wasn’t until long after she died and I was a teenager that I was finally told bubba’s story. She had been in a death camp, and the mark on her arm was a tattoo. The Nazis sadistically scraped them into the flesh of their chosen victims so as to dehumanize them before they were tortured and murdered. She survived, but many of her family and friends did not.

The reason I mention this is because of an increasing and repugnant fetish within the anti-vaccination crowd. Their hysteria, rejection of science and truth, and sheer irrationality are surely self-evident. Now they are comparing their experience to that of the victims of Nazism. They speak of the entirely ethical and admirable COVID vaccination campaign as being “Nazi-like”; they casually throw around the word Holocaust; they even wear yellow stars at demonstrations, and display that image on their social media pages. The yellow star that my bubba was forced to wear.

Coren rightly regards such antics as abhorrent. 

How dare they? How the hell dare they! They insult — they desecrate — the memory of those who suffered and died, and they do it with an obscene absence of self-awareness, empathy and sensitivity. They are using genocide as a cheap political ploy in their crazed campaign, playing with the horror of all that screaming and weeping. Once again, how the hell dare they!

This pandemic will eventually be overcome, and the victors will be the scientists, the medical staff, and the vast majority of ordinary, good, ethical people who were part of the great and communal movement to help save all of us.

But those who blithely trod on the mass graves of the persecuted will not suddenly disappear. Their malice and their arrogance will continue, waiting to be awakened and empowered in some future crisis.

The human condition has always lived with this brokenness — this virus, if you like — and that’s not going to change. Alas, there is no vaccination against cruelty. But while we may not be able to expunge this nonsense, we can at least be aware of it. Fanaticism and ignorance can have truly terrible consequences.

Jesus famously said, "Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do."

I, and countless others, will find forgiveness of those who cause so much pain, suffering and death very, very difficult to muster.

 

Why The Anti-Vaxxers Are Despised

Some seem to have a difficult time understanding the vitriol directed at the strident anti-vaxxers. I hope the following helps clear up any confusion they might be feeling.

A 30-year-old Ontario woman diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer has had her surgery postponed indefinitely and says it could be too late to save her if the procedure keeps getting pushed back.

Woodbridge, Ont. woman Cassandra Di Maria was diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and has undergone 17 rounds of chemotherapy since then.

"Now, I'm waiting on my next big surgery," Di Maria told CTV News Toronto on Thursday. "I have no idea when this surgery will happen and I'm at a standstill."

In order to undergo the surgery, doctors told Di Maria in late October she needed to stop chemotherapy for a few weeks so her body would be strong enough to handle the procedure, which was originally scheduled for December. 

She said in December she received a notice saying the surgery was being postponed to January, and then later was told that date was cancelled too.

In an e-mail viewed by CTV News Toronto, a representative from Mount Sinai Hospital told Di Maria her surgery was cancelled because of "the situation with COVID-19" and that "everything is getting cancelled at this point."

I assume the point is clear. Di Maria's chances of survival are monumentally reduced by the selfishness of some of her fellow-citizens. 

As well, some letter-writers offer their withering views of those who are causing our health-care crisis: 

Mounting data shows that unvaccinated people are several times more likely than vaccinated folks to catch COVID-19, experience more severe symptoms, become hospitalized, need an ICU bed and ultimately die from COVID-19.

In this whole process, they tie up a disproportionately larger share of our limited health-care resources and enable the pandemic to rage on more than it should have.

At some point, difficult decisions must be made by our leaders so that those unvaccinated (without medical reason) face the consequence of their choice not to get vaccinated.

One solution might be to prioritize the ICU beds for the vaccinated patients when our ICUs are under strain.

When all ICU beds are full, vaccine-refusers will be moved to regular beds to make room for vaccinated patients.

Surely if they are so adamant about their right to what happens to their own body, they shouldn’t mind that little extra that may come with that choice: a bad case of COVID-19.

Tim Lu, Markham

 Bravo, François Legault! Finally, a premier who’s not afraid to make a bold decision.

It’s about time that unvaccinated people start paying for exacerbating the effect of the pandemic. They are disproportionately responsible for clogging our hospitals, for prolonged lockdowns and for putting their fellow citizens at risk.

There is absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t pay for it.

Some will argue that it’s a slippery slope or make comparisons with smokers, however there is no comparison to be made; if the smoker wants to kill himself that’s his problem, but when it comes to a very contagious disease, it affects all of society.

Persuasion doesn’t work as some were suggesting.

Now it’s time to talk money.

Claude Gannon, Markham

Hysterical protests and refusals will not end this crisis. Only fulfilling the requirements of good citizenship will.

 

UPDATED: So Little Time, So Many Benighted Souls

As I have written elsewhere on this blog, my patience for those who willfully embrace ignorance, who prefer the blunt hammer of dark conspiracy to the hard work of thinking, is non-existent. And despite well-articulated arguments that the way to reach such people is not through confrontation, abuse or disdain but rather empathy and discourse, the well-entrenched cynic within me suggests that such an approach is both very time-consuming and of very limited efficacy.

Time is not on our side in our current Covid pandemic.

But if one were to judge by anti-vaxxer news reports, it is all much ado about nothing.

Take, for example, the anti-lockdown rally in Brantford Ontario over the weekend, which saw possibly a thousand unmasked protestors, bitter over our current lockdown and standing closely together in their solidarity.

The consequence of challenging such a benighted but obdurate mindset is both ugly and instructive. Last week, Martin Regg Cohn wrote a column advocating mandatory vaccinations:

The logical alternative to never-ending lockdowns is to make vaccinations mandatory. Yes, mandatory — like mask mandates.

No, I don’t mean physically restraining people and forcefully injecting them. After all, we don’t forcefully apply masks to people’s faces, we merely forbid them from forcing themselves upon us unmasked and unasked.

In other words, he says there must be restrictions on the freedoms of those who place their wants and beliefs above the requirements of public health. Those restrictions would include bans on overseas air travel, entry to nursing homes, and crossing the border.

This is the kind of response Regg Cohn received:

• “YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM WILL GO FUCKING HYPERACTIVE UNTIL YOU DIE AND HOPEFULLY FOR YOU THAT WILL BE VERY SOON.”

• “I HOPE YOU AN YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY ARE FIRST INLINE TO GET PUNCTURED WITH THIS EXPERIMENTAL INOCULATION.”

• “How much did you get paid to run that PsyOp? ... End the lockdowns. End the mask mandates. Ban the vaccine.”

• “You sir, are obviously a shill for the pharmaceutical industry and should be shut down.”

• “Nazis didn’t give Jews the right to decide. Are you German? Have you heard of the Nuremberg Code? Created to protect against medical experiments.”

• “Your article of forced vaccines is not only disgusting but actually a crime against humanity! Who the f__k do you think you are? I hope that you get what you deserve, God is always watching for demons like you!”

• “How about we dump you off in a totalitarian country like China, where you can live anong like-minded sheep and dittoheads. In fact, perhaps North Korea is more your style.”

• “This is the largest mass extinction event we can imagine and you are helping pushing along all the lemers until they fall off that cliff.”

• “Do you have a monetary gain? Were you ‘asked’ to write your article by a member of the government or ministry of health to help them push the vaccine?”

• “You are an aggressive participant in slow motion mass murder.... Vaccine dependency is mass murder in slow motion. You are an uneducated buffoon … who is your puppet master?”

Jesus said that we will always have the poor amongst us. It is obvious that today, we must also add a few other categories to that observation.

UPDATE: At least the above-mentioned Brantford rally netted a few arrests.

Police in Brantford have laid 12 charges following large protests held amid the provincewide shutdown over the long weekend and say more charges may be coming.