I’m sometimes asked whether there is a spiritual purpose to some event, especially by people who are priest souls, which is one of the seven soul types defined by the Michael teachings. Priests are “wired” to seek the higher ideal in all things.
Michael has a very useful take on this question. They teach that the universe is half male energy and half female energy. (Some refer to these as focused and creative energies.) Male energy is linear and goal-oriented. It forms structures. Female energy is radiant (nonlinear) and process-oriented. It fills those structures with atmosphere in which new things can be created. They are essential halves of one whole.
Our lives are half male energied and half female energied. The male-energied half includes our life plan, the blueprint that we made largely before incarnating. It also includes new plans as well as revisions and additions made as we respond to changing circumstances. The female-energied half are the improvisations necessitated by the free will that humans (and all sentient creatures of reason) have. Free will helps generate the chaos half of life that gives us room to grow. If everything were the result of a predetermined plan, we wouldn’t have the ability to make choices and therefore learn and evolve. There would be no creativity.
From casually observing an event, there is no way to determine whether it was preplanned by the soul (or by many souls collectively) or if it was an accident. Two people could have similar-looking mishaps. In one case, it could have been planned on a soul level, perhaps to repay a karmic debt or to wake up the personality. In the other, it could have been chance, the result of not paying attention or the free will exercised by another person.
Some like to say that there are no accidents or coincidences, but if that were the case, there would also be no free will or creativity. There are some accidents and coincidences, and again, on the surface, it’s hard to differentiate them from those events that are part of our life plan. Accurate channels and psychics who go deep and understand that not everything “happens for a reason” can provide that information, as can our own unbiased intuitive access.
Michael speaks about “hazards of the physical plane.” In other words, due to free will (which has been part of human experience from the beginning) and other factors, “shit happens.” Some spiritual traditions have stories about a time before recorded history when humanity lived in greater harmony with nature (the Garden of Eden, for example) and therefore there was far less disease and suffering. Early chapters of Genesis in the Bible speak about people living thousands of years. Hindu texts say that we’re currently living in a Kali Yuga, an age of darkness and conflict when humans are out of alignment with the universe. There is disagreement about how long that will last, but the good news is that it’s temporary, like passing through bad cosmic weather. I believe that it is almost over.
In any case, due to this lack of harmony with the whole, we have high levels of disease, along with war and other forms of strife and suffering. This is nothing new. The current COVID-19 pandemic pales next to the influenza pandemic a century ago, in part because of how far we’ve come medically. Is it part of God’s plan for humanity? No. God is not a sadist. God is love. This, like just about everything else that occurs, is part of humanity’s collective creation. It is the culmination of all choices ever made and how they have interacted with nature, putting the environment out of balance. We have created enough growth opportunities on our own without God needing to step in and make more. Neither does God step in to stop people from doing terrible things. Even casual observation can confirm that it doesn’t work that way. We are each co-creators, and if things are going to change, we’re going to have to change them ourselves. There is abundant support available from non-physical realms, but we’re on the front lines.
Human influence occurs not just through actions but through consciousness. Fear-based consciousness, including hate, resentment, bitterness, judgmentalness, prejudice, etc., also throws life out of balance by lowering the vibration (energy). “When a butterfly flaps its wings ….” Natural disasters might still occur were humanity in an enlightened state, but probably much less frequently. As the Bible puts it, humanity has dominion over the earth—our consciousness is the single most influential factor in how well things go here.
For the soul, all challenges are growth opportunities. If everything were easier and more harmonious, we’d have fewer difficult choices to make and therefore we’d grow less. It would be like going to an easy school where we might become bored by the lack of challenges. We obviously don’t have that problem at the moment here on earth. If anything, many of us could do with a few more lightweight courses. But imagine all the lessons that could be gained if humanity dealt with COVID-19 in a sane, intelligent, alert, and creative manner. Alas, we have repeatedly proven ourselves to be slow learners due to being in what Michael and others refer to as the “waking sleep.”
In any case, souls don’t really care whether the challenges we face were part of our life plan. They all can work in terms of giving us opportunities to test and improve our skills. The better we become at making skillful choices, the more joy we ultimately become capable of experiencing.
The world we have today is the one that we have collectively created. If we wake up to a higher vision, we can choose to create a more loving and harmonious one. If we don’t, we can choose to make it impossible for human life to continue on earth. Obviously, the former is far preferable. If we choose the latter, we as souls will have to find another planet on which to continue our grand cycle of growth in some other sentient life form. It won’t be the first time a creature of reason has had to do that, and it won’t be the last. But it would suggest that humans are pig-headed and unnecessarily remaining in fear-based false personality.
One of the main ways we grow is through creatively solving problems. COVID-19 is obviously a very big problem. Scientists throughout the world have worked together in an unprecedented way to find one solution, the various vaccines. We have collectively grown as a result. It’s not the only possible solution to the problem. There are usually several possible ways to solve a problem. It’s not perfect—nothing is—but at the moment, it’s by far the most successful one, and far better than getting a horrible disease. The same can be said of most vaccines, even if they have room for improvement and shouldn’t be overdone—young bodies especially may need time to recover from one before taking another.
I have had a longtime preference for holistic health solutions, and have kept pharmaceuticals to a minimum. However, the ultimate spiritual approach to all problems is to choose whatever works best, all things considered. I do my utmost to keep my immune system as robust as possible, but the healthiest immune system is often no match for virulent infectious diseases. I am thankful that we have these allopathic options.
Michael is fond of saying that “All is choice.” We are constantly making choices, and those choices have repercussions. We learn by observing them and hopefully learning how to make wiser ones in the future. The right to make choices is “sacred” but others also have the sacred right to make choices in response to the choices we have made. Those who choose not to take advantage of vaccines may be choosing to instead become severely ill and possibly die. They may be choosing to live out the rest of their lives with compromised vascular and respiratory systems, or to infect others, including loved ones, with a disease that possibly kills them. That could incur a karmic debt.
However, theoretically, if someone effectively solves the problem of COVID-19 without taking a vaccine, more power to them. That might simply entail scrupulous mask-wearing and sanitizing. Of course, there are a few people who have medical conditions or sensitivities that preclude them from taking vaccines (although those who can’t tolerate MRNA vaccines might be able to handle the other kinds, and vice versa). It is hoped that those who choose to believe that vaccines are generally unsafe (despite overwhelming evidence) have truly found and fully practiced other ways to keep themselves and others safe. If they don’t, they might be choosing, as Michael puts it, to “grow through pain” rather than through joy. We grow one way or the other, either through making reasoned, wise choices based on real facts, or through the “school of hard knocks,” perhaps sincerely believing things that are false. We don’t get do-overs in life. If a person’s chosen solution doesn’t work, illness or death can result. It’s true that even some of those who had booster vaccines have become infected, but very few without comorbidities have become severely ill or died.
Why do we sometimes sincerely believe false things? There are several possible reasons. We may simply be misinformed by what we assume to be credible sources. We are more likely to hold firmly to misinformation when it resonates with a bias we hold. Biases spring from unresolved emotional charges and faulty beliefs, such as festering resentments or a worldview that others are out to get us. We are usually unconscious of them. Being on a conscious spiritual and/or personal growth path implies working to become increasing aware of our biases and releasing them. Our biases limit our ability to be happy, so releasing them is in our best interests.
There’s also the Dunning-Kruger effect. From https://www.britannica.com:
In psychology, a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.
This is more likely to be a problem in our current anti-intellectual climate in which objective facts aren’t valued, and people are encouraged to believe things that feel correct to them based on their biases. A lazy, fear-based “Don’t confuse me with the facts” attitude creates closed mental systems that don’t allow in new information. There’s no point in arguing where there is a closed system.
From the soul’s point of view, “It’s all good,” in that growth can come from any choice. But from the human point of view, this results in a great increase in avoidable tragedy and suffering.
We can always choose love rather than fear.
COVID-19, VACCINES, AND FEAR
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
A great deal has already been said about the pandemic, but I’m strongly compelled to write this. I feel that we are missing the forest for the trees and need to look at it from a larger perspective, one that examines the role of unseen fear, so that we can perceive things in proportion.
I wrote a book, Unconditional Love in Politics. I try to be respectful of people whose beliefs differ from mine and to understand where they’re coming from. I am about as progressive as one can get, and believe that progress is a very good thing, but I also try to view each issue individually and look for the best solutions, including those that come from conservatives.
Still, there have been numerous studies that show that conservatives are more fear-based than progressives. That makes sense: by definition, conservatives want to keep things as they are (and reactionaries want to go back to how they believe things were). Fear of change is often a motivation. Also by definition, new agers (a label I proudly adopt for myself) want to help usher in a new age of higher consciousness, the opposite of conservatism—something based in love rather than fear. Yet today, many new agers are aligning with the MAGA crowd on COVID-19 issues. I believe that they share some underlying fears that these issues trigger.
Fear and anger (the flip side of fear) are useful mechanisms for mobilizing our resources in the face of a real threat to our physical survival, but when the threat has passed, we need to “shake it off.” Instead, we tend to store them, often over many lifetimes, and come to associate them with intellectual and emotional things that don’t actually threaten our survival. For example, if being harshly judged by others led to our death in a past life, we may now associate all criticism as a threat to our survival when it is not. The slightest criticism may trigger us. We allow ourselves to be continually triggered because that stuck energy is uncomfortable and wants to be released, but until we take responsibility for it and defuse it, we keep being triggered.
We all have unresolved fear and anger in our subconscious. An important part of being on a conscious spiritual path and developing greater self-awareness is to increasingly “photograph” and dismantle our old fears. By definition, the contents of our subconscious mind are unseen—we are not conscious of them. When fear and anger are triggered, they momentarily rise to the surface in our conscious mind, giving us a rare opportunity to examine and release them. However, because we have so heavily defended them (they’re going to ensure our survival, after all), we tend to become defensive rather than reflecting on them.
The expression “frozen in fear” illustrates how fear can prevent us from moving forward. Fear can also muddle our thinking—it’s hard to think clearly when it sends us into high alert. Worse, we may not be conscious that this is happening and assume that our thinking is perfectly reasonable.
A friend sent me a link to a video to explain her reticence about taking the vaccine. I had hoped I’d learn something. However, it was riddled with incoherence and holes in its logic. With irrelevant, highly suspect ideas, the speaker vastly overcomplicated what is, in essence, a simple question: Am I safer with or without the vaccine?
What unseen fears are being triggered that make propaganda appealing to so many people? I’m not sure, but I suspect that one factor is unhealed wounds around authority figures misusing their power, a common occurrence throughout history. Not only have we been victims of such abuse, we have also been perpetrators of it, something most of us would rather not consider and may be touchy about. But it’s not possible that all of us have only been victims; if that were the case, where would all the perpetrators have come from? “Oh,” one might say, “I’m one of the good people.” Unfortunately, much evil has been done by people who identify as being good. There are endless examples of this, such as the Crusades and colonialism which inflicted great harm “for their own good.”
It’s wise to have a healthy distrust of authority figures. Governments, for example, have mostly been about making the rich richer and the powerful more powerful. But governments can be a force for good, and sometimes are, if imperfectly (like everything else in the universe). If governments (and science) did nothing about the COVID-19 pandemic, the death toll would be far higher.
Even if it’s a tiny percentage, those who experience bad side effects should be studied to try to figure out why it happened so that others who are not good candidates can avoid being vaccinated. I’ve long been saying that relative to autism: Even if very few children who are vaccinated develop autism within forty-eight hours after the shot, that should not be dismissed. Those lives have been severely affected. They matter, and should be studied to prevent it from happening in the future. Maybe vaccines need to be introduced to children more slowly, and without preservatives and unnecessary adjutants.
Still, what has been sorely lacking in this debate is a sense of proportion, such as the millions of lives saved by vaccines vs. the few that suffer side effects. There can be side effects from any medical treatment, including those that are natural. We have to weigh the pros and cons to make good decisions in any area.
Science should not be worshiped. Scientists are human beings, too, with biases. Some science has more solid research and clear thinking behind it than others, and science periodically changes its mind. But the ideal of science, like that of journalism, is beautiful: a desire to put bias aside as much as humanly possible and observe objectively. The best scientists and journalists value truth above all, even if it means changing their mind and maybe confronting long-held assumptions. It is an approach that we can all benefit from in all areas of life.
Here’s the key information relative to the science behind COVID-19 vaccines: As of November, 2021, more than HALF OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS, four billion people, have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine—FOUR BILLION PEOPLE! Three billion are fully vaccinated. Severe allergic reactions have almost always occurred within thirty minutes after taking the vaccine, and happen fewer than five times per million vaccinated. Vaccinated people are eight times less likely to be infected and twenty-five times less likely to experience hospitalization or death than unvaccinated people. Do people really want to gamble with their health with these kinds of odds? Is making some kind of vague political statement worth possibly losing their life?
Like most large corporations, pharmaceutical companies are governed by greed and get away with a lot of bad things. But that is a separate issue from whether their products might be helpful at times. If they are making obscene profits from them, that’s another discussion, a political one about the undue influence of corporations over public policy. If pharmaceuticals and other companies hide data about harm they’re doing, that’s a similar discussion. But all eyes have been on them during this pandemic; if they’re never exactly transparent, at least it’s harder for them to get away with murder in this instance. COVID-19 vaccines have undergone the most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history.
The jury is still out on the cause of this pandemic, largely because the Chinese aren’t cooperating. We do need to know it in order to prevent it from happening again, if possible. However, whether it was a natural leap from bats to humans, a lab accident, or a deliberate nefarious plot is irrelevant to the issue of vaccines. We have this disease now, and if we want to greatly reduce our chances of dying from it, we should probably take one. To those who say that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu: According to the CDC, 12,000 – 52,000 people die a year from the flu. 375,000 people died of COVID-19 in the U.S. in 2020, and we surpassed that number for 2021 in November.
Scientists have been saying for a long time that with pandemics, it was not a question of if but when. The nature of our crowded modern world with a constant interchange of goods and people makes it inevitable, no matter what caused this one. There will be others; we need to learn from this one and be prepared for the next ones. What mass protection do we currently have beside vaccines? Would people really rather that they and/or their loved ones die or get severely ill rather than take advantage of the best solution we have so far? In an ideal world, natural methods or our own immunity would protect us, but unfortunately, this is not an ideal world.
It’s wise to keep an open mind about alternative therapies for those who get COVID-19, but we don’t have good data on how often they work, if they do at all. Isn’t it better not to become infected in the first place?
In the Michael teachings, there is a trait called the chief obstacle, the focus of our fears and illusions. There are seven. The most common one is stubbornness, defined as a fear of change. The fingerprints of stubbornness are all over the cry of many who say, “No one is going to tell me what to do! I’d rather die of COVID-19 than wear a mask in public places to protect myself and others from a horrible virus that I may be carrying unbeknownst to me.” Our obstacles convince us to work against our self-interest in the name of protecting us. When extreme fear governs us, it is hard to distinguish it from insanity—it makes us do crazy things that seem perfectly sane to us while we’re under its thrall.
I have several smart friends whom I like/love/respect who are decrying government “tyranny” relative to mandates for masks/tests/vaccines in public places. Although the U.S. is not the paragon of freedom that it could and should be, it’s easy to observe what actual tyranny looks like under authoritarian regimes and the enormous suffering it causes. It’s an insult to those languishing in brutal gulags for speaking out against injustice to call having to wear a mask in public “tyranny,” especially since the intent is to save lives.
Freedom has never implied that people are not restricted from actions that could harm others. One could just as easily and irrationally argue that stop lights to avoid hitting other cars are an infringement on one’s freedom. The only difference is that we’re used to stoplights. Masks have been much more commonly used in Asia—for example, during flu season—so there are fewer objections to them.
Some of these friends have been against vaccines for a long time. Vaccines have been a polarizing issue for a while, especially with regards to some children who developed autism within a couple days of having routine vaccinations. (This happened to the son of a couple I know.) However, many have had vaccines and have taken other pharmaceuticals without blinking an eye for most of their lives, but are jumping on this particular bandwagon now. There’s so much fear in the air both around the disease and the vaccines that many people are being triggered. It’s a sort of mass hysteria. Those on a spiritual path strive to remain centered no matter what is happening around them, but many don’t realize how profoundly we can be affected by the collective unconscious. We can feel things that don’t originate in us or really belong to us, but seem to.
Some who refuse vaccines claim that they are choosing not to be governed by fear, but one can take precautions out of good sense rather than fear. Those who later become deathly ill usually change their tune and want every possible medical intervention for a problem that could have been easily prevented. They were actually being motivated by fear all along, which illustrates how wily the obstacles are and how invisible our real motivations can be to us.
The same resistance to masks and limiting public gatherings occurred during the 1918 influenza epidemic, but not on today’s scale, maybe due to the absence of social media, which spreads fear (as well as some good things) as fast as a virulent virus. Fifty million people died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, ten million more than from World War I. About five million have died so far from COVID-19. As limited as modern medicine still is, things would be far worse without it.
Those who today protest for their right to spread a potentially deadly disease are often the same ones who wanted HIV+ gay men in the 1980s to be arrested and even put to death for spreading HIV. When we’re under the thrall of fear, logic and consistency go out the window, resulting in hypocrisy. Hypocritical people may be sincere but they have not yet examined their beliefs to notice their inconsistencies. A core insight of spiritual teachings is that we are not our thoughts and feelings, and should observe them with non-attachment. This is not happening nearly enough. Again, we cannot see what is in our subconscious mind until it rises to the surface. We may not be aware of how much fear is running our lives, but we can examine our thoughts, feelings, and actions and ask whether they reflect love or fear. Do they make sense? Are they congruent with fact? Are they serving the highest good? Do they feel good, positive, and freeing?
Speaking of HIV, scientists have been seeking a vaccine for that for forty years. It’s now possible that with mRNA, they can finally create a safe, effective one, as well as for other intractable diseases. That’s extraordinary news.
I’m a big believer in holistic health and try to find natural ways to correct health issues whenever possible. Western allopathic medicine is more about reacting to and controlling symptoms after things have already gone wrong; it rarely concerns itself with creating health to begin with. That is more the domain of nutrition, herbs, supplements, exercise, proper breathing, rest, and in general, living a happy life without unnecessary stress.
Still, we live in a dangerous world that has a lot of virulent substances. There is an important place in it for Western allopathic medicine. Having a robust immune system is always a good thing, but it doesn’t protect against every infectious disease. The 1918 epidemic killed millions of young, vigorous people. Counting on your immune system to protect you rather than a vaccine is a crap shoot.
There are certainly some holistic treatments that can improve our immunity. One gifted healer I know believes that homeopathics can protect us as well as vaccines. Homeopathy also has its place—I’ve had good luck with it at times—but homeopathics are not one size fits all. They are most effective when a person has a complete workup in which individual patterns are skillfully observed and addressed. So two people would not necessarily take the same remedy for the same condition. There are not nearly enough expert homeopaths to do this for eight billion people. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers had homeopathic treatment that he had thought immunized him, but he still got COVID-19. Was he given the wrong remedies for his constitution, or are homeopathics simply too subtle to deal with virulent viruses? We know that vaccines work, for the most part. For those who cannot take vaccines due to allergies, etc., alternative approaches are worth exploring, but unvaccinated people still need to be very careful to avoid exposure.
mRNA vaccines might be much safer than traditional ones because they don’t actually contain the virus, which also makes shedding impossible. Some people, however, refer to the mRNA vaccine as the biggest experiment in human history. Here’s an article that explores the possibility of problems arising down the road from mRNA vaccines:
An excerpt from it:
“Vaccines are just designed to deliver a payload and then are quickly eliminated by the body,” Goepfert said. “This is particularly true of the mRNA vaccines. mRNA degrades incredibly rapidly. You wouldn’t expect any of these vaccines to have any long-term side effects. And in fact, this has never occurred with any vaccine.”
Usually, any bad reactions to vaccines show up quickly. And research on mRNA vaccines began in 1987, so they’re not as new as people think.
What we know for sure is that if people get COVID-19, there’s a significant probability of getting a terrible disease that may ruin their health for the rest of their life (long COVID-19) if not kill them outright, especially if they already have other health challenges and/or haven’t been taking good care of themselves.
Some people are concerned that mRNA vaccines could alter one’s DNA or RNA. Here is a relevant article:
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2021/09/13/trust-index-does-the-vaccine-alter-your-rna-dna/
An excerpt:
“It doesn’t change it at all. The interesting thing about the vaccine is that all it does is inject you with a recipe that teaches your body how to create an antibody. The moment your body creates the antibody, the first thing it does is it destroys the recipe. It doesn’t enter the nucleus,” said Ajayi.
I channel the Michael entity, and people have asked me what Michael has to say about the vaccines. I didn’t ask Michael myself, because to me, it’s common sense to take them unless people are allergic to something in them or are otherwise likely to have a serious bad reaction to them (which should be discussed with their primary care provider). But all the Michael channels I know have chosen to be vaccinated.
Those in doubt as to how their body might react to a vaccine should use their intuition in this regard if they’re able to set aside fears and take a clear-eyed look at it. Techniques for consulting the body such as kinesiology or dowsing can help. They might also consult a gifted and unbiased intuitive healer. Since the Johnson & Johnson vaccine doesn’t use mRNA technology, it could be a good option for those who might not tolerate mRNA.
I have a very sensitive body but I also take good care of myself. I took several supplements said to be helpful before and after vaccinations, such as pine needle tea, vitamin D, zinc, and Thuja Occidentalis 30c, a homeopathic. I’ve had three Pfizer doses and have had no side effects other than the usual sore arm.
To be consistent, people who are anti-vaccine would have to be anti-all pharmaceuticals, and in fact most Western medical interventions, especially if their argument is to allow one’s immune system to take care of threats. It’s true that some Western medical treatments that are considered safe later turn out not to be, but if one course of action seems like our best option, we may choose to take a chance on it. I try to keep pharmaceuticals to a minimum—I haven’t taken antibiotics for a couple decades, for example, although I would if they were really necessary.
Good choices come from using facts and reason along with intuition to try to determine the highest good in any situation. Adhering to dogma (with their keywords always and never) is not likely to lead to the best choices. In addition, believing anything just because someone else said so, without real facts and evidence to back it up, is likely to lead to choices that we later regret.
For example, I have friends who believe that the COVID-19 vaccines contain nanoparticles capable of mind control. They do contain nanoparticles, which are tiny lipid droplets that transport and protect the vaccine component. The term “nano,” however, is simply a unit of size. There is no evidence that anyone’s mind has ever been controlled by something in a vaccine, or that such technology even exists. In fact, the current state of humanity suggests a distinct lack of mind control! We are all well-advised to explore why we’re readily willing to believe things that don’t hold up in the light of day. What fears do we carry that make such ideas appeal to us? Considering how much stuff people make up, both sincerely and cynically, ongoing skepticism is a good idea. Remember Pizzagate, the story about sex trafficking run out of a pizzeria’s basement? The place that doesn’t have a basement? Totally made up.
Conspiracy theories should not be automatically dismissed, because sometimes there are conspiracies (the Reichstag fire, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, etc.) Like individuals, governments, corporations, and other groups of individuals often lie. Still, there has to be a motivation for what people do, and I don’t see a realistic nefarious one behind COVID-19 vaccines and mandates. One motivation is good enough to explain why people wanted to find a vaccine: “I don’t want to get a horrible disease and die or be physically compromised for life. And I don’t want that for my loved ones and humanity in general.” It is no different for the COVID-19 vaccine than it was for all the others: polio, smallpox, hepatitis, diphtheria, etc. They are all devastating diseases. If medical science can come up with vaccines that prevent them, that’s a good thing. They’re not perfect—nothing is—and could no doubt be improved, but they clearly have enormously reduced suffering.
People often automatically jump to negative conclusions about other people’s motivations. They usually project their own issues rather than accurately perceive objective reality. As with inkblot tests, what they project on others reveals more about themselves than about others. When others honestly and clearly explicate their motives behind a choice but it doesn’t make the slightest dent in people’s story, they are living in a closed system. Closed mental systems don’t allow in any new information; they are barricaded by fear which is often invisible to those holding them. Others waste their breath trying to get through when dealing with them.
We cannot know someone else’s motivations for certain, at least not the whole of them. It’s better to give the benefit of the doubt. If we know someone to be honest and ask them why they did something, we might want to trust what they tell us rather than insisting that we know better.
Similarly, many people have a knee-jerk need to disparage others, to promote “us vs. them” thinking. One can observe this on some news outlets: an unending stream of denigration. No matter what perceived opponents say or do, they find a way to twist it and make something ugly out of it, attributing diabolical motivations where none exist—disdain first and ask questions later. They appeal to and enlarge chips on their viewers’ shoulders. Many people also operate this way in their personal lives. This is antithetical to unconditional love, which is the aim of every true spiritual teaching and religion.
The vitriol being heaped on people like Anthony Fauci that assumes he has nefarious motives is not only unfair but silly. No one is perfectly accurate about everything, but he is clearly earnest in his desire to be helpful. This vitriol is being heaped by many of the same people who don’t recognize a con man when they see one. Fear blinds us.
I am grateful for the vaccines I’ve received, grateful that if I do somehow get COVID-19, it is likely to be a mild case, and that they will probably keep me from getting it altogether. Yes, some who were vaccinated did get it, and a few even died. Most of them had other health issues. One hundred percent effectiveness can never be promised with anything. But it’s not a good idea to seize upon the exceptions to deny the rule.
So many people on their COVID-19 deathbeds wished that they’d been vaccinated. If vaccines aren’t right for you, for whatever reason, I hope that you’re being very careful. Once one is infected, it’s too late. We don’t get do-overs.
SOME THOUGHTS ON VACCINES IN GENERAL
ON THE ONE HAND:
I would like to see organic (or close to it) vaccines, without aluminum, formaldehyde, and mercury, among other things. (Covid vaccines don’t have these specifically but I’m speaking of vaccines in general and their various additives here.) I wouldn’t mind a weaker vaccine that had to be repeated if it were safer. I try to get single-dose vaccines without preservatives. I won’t take a vaccine with thimerosol (mercury) because I know I’m allergic, and hello! It’s mercury. Fortunately, most vaccines no longer use it.
No company should be shielded from the possibility of being sued. It makes them sloppy; it’s a disincentive to make their products better and safer, and to pay attention to complaints.
Those who have reacted badly to vaccines in the past probably should avoid them.
People’s concerns about vaccines should not be dismissed or ridiculed. I know a couple whose small son developed autism within forty-eight hours of being vaccinated. Even if the number of children to whom this happens is statistically small, it is life-changing for those families. Maybe it’s true that their bodies were such that something else might have eventually triggered autism if not vaccines, but then we should be alert to all possible triggers and avoid them. Steps should be taken to make vaccines safer, including not overwhelming young bodies with too many at once.
In general, what people do with their own body is their business and outside forces should not impose their will. This applies to abortion, too.
Especially once vaccines are fully available to those who want them, those who choose not to get them are mostly only exposing themselves to danger. Even those who are unvaccinated will probably be okay if they are careful, wearing masks, socially distancing, washing their hands frequently, etc. I do favor continuing to require masks in indoor public spaces but don’t get bent out of shape about those who refuse.
I wonder whether the shutdown of most businesses was really helpful and necessary. What if they had simply followed the same guidelines as for those businesses considered essential, along with employees working from home who could? In some places, people are dying from starvation rather than from Covid, which obviously is not an improvement. When Covid hit, we were frozen like a deer caught in the headlights, and maybe overreacted without really thinking things through.
Fresh air is important, so take a break from your mask when you’re six feet away from others, especially when outside. Consider a mask that sticks out from your face to give you more air. Keep it clean and change it often.
Alternative treatments for many diseases are often dismissed or even ridiculed without adequate study. If there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that something has worked for a significant number of people, we should pay attention and keep an open mind. Big pharma funds a lot of research. There should be more funding for testing things that no one would profit from. I had a virulent flu about thirty years ago that MDs could do nothing to help. After circling the drain, I was fifty percent better in one day from drinking a tea made from weird bird’s nest of Chinese herbs. Allopathic and alternative medicine need to work together.
ON THE OTHER HAND:
No medicine, pharmaceutical or alternative, is perfect, and everyone reacts differently to them. Almost everything (including food) has side effects for some people.
Vaccines have unquestionably saved many lives and have generally caused far less harm than the diseases they prevented. Does anyone want polio to come back?
I know people who had bad cases of Covid, and it’s a really terrible disease, regardless of where it came from. I’m not sure I would have survived it, considering my lifelong history of taking forever to get over colds and flus. I was happy to take my chances on the vaccine. I had no side effects from the Pfizer. In fact, my acupuncturist said that my pulses had improved after getting it (which was not the case for everyone he treats). The common-sense bottom line question is: Would the vaccine be worse for me than the disease? In most cases, the answer is no. Everyone must make that calculation for themselves, but it’s wise to bear in mind that one can’t be assured of getting infected without symptoms or with only a mild case. Even some healthy young people have gotten devastating cases. Even mild cases can bring worse problems later on. (Again, there’s also the issue of infecting others even if one doesn’t have symptoms.)
The vaccines don’t promise that one can’t transmit the disease, but it appears at this point that there is a much reduced chance of that happening, along with a much milder case if infected.
It’s likely that reporting has been imperfect—so much with regards to Covid has been improvised and inconsistent—but one can’t credibly argue that millions of people haven’t died from this who would not have otherwise. One friend lost several family members to it. Try telling her that it’s not a pandemic. Overwhelmed hospitals and staffs in many places are easily verified.
Many of those who have died from Covid were not in great health to begin with, but no doubt most of them would have preferred to live longer, and their loved ones ache for their loss.
Unlike with the flu, those who survive may contend with compromised health for the rest of their lives. This is easy to verify by talking to some who are dealing with this.
If governments had advanced nanotechnology capable of mind control, wouldn’t we see it being used in other applications? And my mind still isn’t controlled, so if that’s the case, I want my money back.
I have nothing against conspiracy theories in general because sometimes, there are conspiracies. If they require a large number of people to be in the know to carry them out, there’s always the question of whether secrecy could realistically be expected to be maintained.
Why would Bill Gates et al want to be so evil? What would be in it for them? Gates was a typical ruthless businessman at Microsoft, but since then, he hasn’t seemed like the mwahaha type.
The pores of most masks are larger than viruses, but it still stands to reason that any fabric blocks the majority. Viral load does matter (fewer viruses means a less-virulent disease). In the real world, viruses aren’t forced through the pores of fabric. If there’s a strong wind, it’s more likely to disperse the virus.
It’s fascinating how few cases of flu there have been the past year, in part due to mask wearing. Wearing masks during cold and flu season is common in Asia and isn’t a bad idea for the rest of us.
If we discount the possibility of unknowingly infecting others and overburdening hospitals, being required to wear masks in public indoor spaces is like being required to wear seatbelts. An ideological argument could be made that it’s government overreach since it only affects the individual, but common sense suggests that it’s a small cost for a big gain. There are much bigger fish to fry in the individual freedom department.
Fear suppresses the immune system but one can take common-sense precautions without fear.
We could all benefit from examining what kind of ideas and sources we are quick to accept. It can shine a light on our belief systems. So much disinformation spreads because it appeals to people’s unhealed sense of being aggrieved and yes, fear. Resentment against unjust parents becomes projected onto governments. With all their failings, governments are the only entities capable of leveling the playing field and protecting the common good.
Good choices come from weighing pros and cons rather than from ideology or dogma.
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