By Jill Chapin
Fear. Irrational fear. It is more insidious and harder to irradicate than Covid.
Why? What has happened to our once inquisitive-minded, independent thinking, skeptical, can-do Americans who once fought a formidable enemy in our 18th century revolution, who overcame our fear to fight in two world wars, who rose up and got on with our lives after 9-11, and who had the fearless grit to rebuild after natural tragedies in the wake of floods, fires, tornados and earthquakes? These challenges were met, not with a fearful can’t-do mentality but with a tenacious determination to overcome our doubts and get on with our lives.
No more. Far too many of us have acquiesced our once savvy cynicism and replaced it with a paralyzing panic, brought about mainly by our media who have instituted near-total blackouts of opposing scientific findings in regard to this mutating and increasingly less deadly omicron virus.
What has happened to our outrage at the shutting down of free speech? Does no one care anymore that we are being force-fed what network news wants us to hear? They even have us parroting catchphrases such as a pandemic of the unvaccinated that freely do the work that we used to pay advertisers to do for us. The media has done a superb job of mocking and denigrating otherwise respected doctors, scientists, epidemiologists, treatments and reporters.
But what too many refuse to believe is actually available on such trusted sites as the CDC and other corresponding agencies around the world.
For instance, are you aware that the CDC states on their own website that for many months, they have stopped sharing with the public the number of fully vaccinated who later get covid unless they are hospitalized or die? But since they also readily admit that the asymptomatic vaccinated can still pass the virus on to others, why don’t we demand that this data be available to us? Without it, we have no idea if we are at an exponentially greater risk among the vaccinated than we currently realize.
Also, if we would take the time to check out what is happening in South Africa with their low percentage of vaccinated people, you’d find a chart of skyrocketing cases coupled with a dizzying drop of covid deaths, both of which has omicron written all over them.
Another example: I passed along the following information to many American friends and family that Iceland and Scandinavian countries had put a pause on the Moderna vaccine for younger people in the face of safety concerns. Not one had heard this before. Yet my nephew in Belgium knew. Wouldn’t this be a significant piece of reporting to inform us of this development in other parts of the world? The incestuous nature of circling the wagons to keep out new information should be far more terrifying than the virus. Why are those who are apoplectic about us losing our voting rights so unruffled about the media blackout of a balanced presentation of covid issues?
Psychiatrist Mark McDonald wrote in his book “United States of Fear” the diagnosis that we are suffering from mass delusional psychosis, driven by an irrational fear of what is now a highly contagious but rather mild omicron virus. He sees us as having been groomed by government, corporations and powerful people toward this now illogical fear addiction. The reason for them doing so is embarrassingly obvious: Without fear they can’t control us, they can’t rob us of our freedoms, which they are eroding daily with useless mandates for what is now essentially a virus that is morphing into a cold.
Someone once wrote that fear is not real. It’s a product of thoughts we create. Do not misunderstand – danger is very real. But fear is a choice. Like Franklin Roosevelt said – the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Having our fears validated and reinforced by others does not foster an open-mindedness to opposing data. We used to be better at sifting out the truth. But now the powers that be have too many of us convinced that they have the truth and the rest of us don’t. In reality, both sides have helpings of truths and falsehoods, but we don’t seem to want to bother with sorting things out.
Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome from 161-180 AD, said something that still rings true today. He said that the object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape from finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Make no mistake – pushing for more vaccinations even as scientists acknowledge their waning usefulness with omicron, coupled with the increasing evidence that this two-year-old pandemic is on its way to becoming endemic anyway – this is the kind of insanity the emperor would have had in mind.
(Before publication, I asked a friend for her opinion of this piece. She said it sounded like it was written by a republican. For the record, I’m a registered independent who almost always votes for the democratic candidate.)
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