Who is Really Selfish Here?

Some government media pundit came up with a really nasty and hurtful slogan to push the vaccination mandate. It goes like this: If you won’t get vaxxed to save your neighbours, you are selfish.I’d like to save the unvaccinated from some of the sleepless nights this has caused me.

This cry has been taken up and flung like shit across every social media platform and mainstream media outlet for months. I found out the hard way that refuting it put me in an extremely defensive position, like being up against the ropes in the 9^th round. There really wasn’t a good way to defend myself from this low blow without offending somebody. I can hear the backroom snickers from Bonnie Henry and friends every time I get slammed to the mat.

But let’s look at this now, from the perspective that has been gained with a little time and a lot of space (goodbye Facebook! Read my post “Welcome Dirty Unvaxxed: 7 Ways to Feel Better Today”).

Selfishness: Let’s Look at Your WHOLE Life

Firstly, is it fair to question the selfishness of someone over one issue? Shouldn’t the totality of our lives be taken into account?

After all, it’s easy to spend a few minutes getting a shot but what do you do in your spare time? Do you help shovel your elderly neighbour’s driveway, bake food for friends who have had a loss in their family, call someone who is lonely, or bring a basket of magazines, etc. over for someone who is sick with Covid?

Does the small effort of getting a shot or two make up for spending yet more money on yourself instead of donating some to charity? Do you volunteer to help others in your community? Does it really make you a superior, unselfish human being to get a couple shots that do not help the spread of Covid as much as we were told they would? (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext)

Red Badge of Courage

When someone flashes a badge or brags to others that they got vaccinated to prove they are a “good person”, it’s called virtue signaling: “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.” Oxford Languages  

I think social media itself is one big virtue signalling clusterf*ck. The government and mainstream media have whipped the average Facebook user into a frenzy. “Look how righteous I am for doing what the government told me to do!” (And the pharmaceutical companies want you to do). “Down with you selfish anti-vaxxers!” they cry.

To Be Truly Kind

Someone who listens to your opinions and then thoughtfully gives their own opinion is not selfish. A person who pays their taxes, donates to charity, volunteers to help others in their community, supports friends and colleagues in various ways, large and small, is not selfish. Someone who gave up a career to raise their children or who gave up sleep or new clothes or nights out or vacations to meet the needs of their children is not selfish. Anyone who takes extra shifts or a second job to help pay for their kids’ hockey or music lessons or special education is not selfish. Someone who helps their parents out financially or who gives time or money to others is not selfish.

Getting vaccinated and then belittling those that choose not to is small-minded and short-sighted. Pushing your agenda on other people is the work of the truly selfish.

Maybe that’s why defending myself against this charge has been so difficult. I dislike having to state what I think in case it hurts someone else. I would never ask someone to go against their every inclination to have a medical procedure or take something into their body that they did not want to.

That seems to be the problem. Selfish people don’t try to understand the reasons or motivations behind another person’s feelings and actions.

I get that most of my family and friends believe the mainstream media and government propaganda. They have been told that I am contagious and toxic to be around.

Why can’t everyone see that two and now three vaccinations STILL has not protected them from getting Covid? That the vaccinations don’t work to stop it from spreading? Instead they are blaming us few unvaxxed who haven’t been on a cruise ship or an airplane or even in a restaurant for years. Bizarre!

Yet when I defend myself, the fight is on. Defending yourself is exhausting and disheartening.

Someone posts another one of those canned meme things against my decision and my heart would sink. It is never an original thought or post, always a forward from some mysterious entity. Are people so lazy that they can’t even accuse you of being selfish in an original post? But the meme, like their opinion, is a borrowed thing. They are likely to drop it for the next thing tomorrow. What can you do when people pile on in the comments with unadulterated glee –who ARE these people? These are friends of my friends? This is like VD! Or angry Faberge hair products: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcskckuosxQ

Hospital Admissions – From Covid vs. With Covid

Here in British Columbia, our numbers in hospital with Covid are consistently 300-400 people across the whole province of 5 million. Many of these hospitalized people were not admitted for Covid at all but for other reasons like kidney disease, diabetes complications or cancer and are tested and counted as Covid. Many others get Covid after they’d been in the hospital for awhile.

We are never told if those who were admitted with Covid or who later died had underlying conditions.

What is truly scary is how these few extra patients in hospital can throw the entire system into chaos. If the government really wanted to ease the strain on healthcare staff and encourage unselfishness, they would be promoting meaningful change like adopting a whole foods plant based diet (WFPB), not forcing people who don’t want to get a vaccine to eat at McDonald’s.

Whole Foods Plant Based Diets – Truly an Unselfish Choice

Eating a whole foods plant based diet can reduce the severity of Covid and could make a real difference to the public healthcare system: https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/18/bmjnph-2021-000272

Heart disease and diabetes have caused and still cause far more suffering and treating them use up many more resources and staff time than does Covid. On a WFPB diet, the incidence of heart disease (https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.119.012865) and diabetes would free up hundreds of hospital beds (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466941/).

Of course, this wouldn’t make any money for the medical industrial complex, would it?

Canada: Selflessly Helping the Rest of The World?

If the government truly wanted to be stop the spread and mutation of Covid, wouldn’t they be donating vaccines to poorer countries who can’t afford the shots? A pandemic is not confined to one country alone – we’re one world here. If rich countries vax up but poor countries don’t, the virus will continue to spread and mutate, yes? That’s what they’ve been telling us.

Anyone that believes fully in vaccines and truly sees themselves as unselfish and “protecting” their neighbours should be willing to give up their 2^nd shot or their booster (or their 2^nd booster) to the poor in another country and demanding that the government do just that with its stockpile.

The unselfish and common sense thing to do would be to protect only the vulnerable in every society, in every country, and let the virus run its course. It will do what coronaviruses always do: mutate so that it is more infectious but less dangerous until it is like the seasonal flu. (Do you remember the seasonal flu? Apparently, in 2020 there was no seasonal flu! A miracle!)

Don’t Make Me Put a Coat on if You’re Cold

There are far better, safer, and healthier ways to be truly selfless in our society than by merely submitting to a vaccination regime that doesn’t fully protect the vulnerable from you at all. People who are double vaxxed are still a threat to the vulnerable. They still carry and spread the virus around when they eat at a restaurant and use the washroom. The vaccinated are spreading the virus on airplanes and at movie theatres. They are still giving the virus to anyone and everyone they come in contact with, just by breathing.

Maybe they are even more dangerous since they are walking around with a false sense of complacency and attending all kinds of events where Covid is circulating.

When someone blames others for this whole mess? When these people are contributing to shaming, cheering the forced isolation, and clamoring for the unvaccinated to be fired from their jobs or cast out of society?

Then there is no question. The hurt and harm they are doing to another human being is intentional and cruel.

That is the true mark of selfishness.