This Has Nothing to do with a Virus

Remember 2 weeks to flatten the curve...? At this point that statement of locking down and heavily restricting our normal behavior for the "common good" to make sure the hospitals have time to prepare for the influx of COVID patients feels like it was said in an alternate reality. After all, that statement came nearly 80 weeks ago.

So what's the problem? Why hasn't life returned to normal? It appears that at some point the goal of politicians changed from accepting that COVID will do its thing and run its course to needing to get to COVID-zero. In other words the goal has become defeating this virus. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but based on what we're seeing today that simply isn't going to happen.

A Shot, not a Vaccine

You've never in your life ever heard of someone being vaccinated for polio and still catching polio. That's because vaccines are (at or near) 100% effective. Each year Big Pharma produces a flu shot and then we find out how effective it is against that year's most prevalent strain. It's always significantly less than 100%. That's why it's always called a flu shot and not flu vaccine. And since it's less than 100% protective against influenza, influenza continues to mutate and spread, in both those who have and have not gotten the shot. There's no thought that we'll defeat the flu, and we've learned to accept it and move on. The same goes for COVID. The "vaccine" is less than 100% effective so we're going to have to learn to accept COVID is part of us now and move on.

Hesitancy

There are a lot of people in this country that have not gotten the COVID shot. Yes, some of those people who haven't gotten the vaccine are doing so because they believe it causes autism or they're just anti-vaccine in general, but there are plenty more who are hesitant to get the shot for less radical reasons, a couple of which include:

1. They already had COVID. A vaccine is intended to mimic the virus to produce an immune response without actually conferring the illness. Therefore getting the actual illness is as good, if not better, than the shot. No one has ever said that if you get the flu you should still get the flu shot after, yet there is absolutely little to no value given to those who've recovered from COVID.
2. They don't trust the government. If you've never heard of it, look up the Tuskegee Experiment. The CDC experimented on 400 black people (lying to them about the nature of the study) for 40 years tracking the effects of untreated syphilis, even after a treatment became available. With COVID, the government has changed the story and moved the goalposts so many times it's difficult to take anything they say seriously. I can't say I blame anyone who isn't getting this shot because they feel something is off here. There's never been something pushed this hard for a respiratory virus that has a greater than 99.5% chance of recovery for those under 70.

My Body, My Choice and the Mandate

The same people that say a woman shouldn't have the government dictate what happens with her reproductive organs are more than happy to support the idea that the government should require you get jabbed with a COVID shot. Of course it was only a bit less than a year ago when President-elect Biden said he wouldn't make COVID shots mandatory, and only 2 months since his Press Secretary said such mandates were not the role of the Federal Government, but, of course, none of that matters anymore.

But since we know the virus spreads even amongst the jabbed, who is actually being protected with the shot? In reality, the only beneficiary is the recipient. If this were about public health, this should be about getting people out of their homes and exercising and eating healthy, not forcing them inside onto their couches, ordering fast food from GrubHub and binging Netflix, since it is the comparatively unhealthy that tend to suffer worst from this virus.

Additionally, if the virus still spreads amongst the jabbed, then the mandate to get a shot is pointless; the entire purpose of the mandate was based on the claim that the shots could prevent transmission, and if everyone got the jab then we'd eliminate the virus.

By the way, interesting side note. USPS workers and all of Congress and their staff are exempt from the mandate. Another example of "rules for thee but for me."

Power and Control

So if the shot doesn't help protect anyone else other than the recipient and it's not about public health, what is the mandate about? This mandate is yet another way for the government to exercise control over your lives for the benefit of some big corporation. Like the PATRIOT Act and the War on Drugs, this is another step towards total control over your lives, and both major parties are in full support.

Like I've said before, these restrictions and these behaviors will last as long as we put up with it. Noncompliance is the only way out, and we need a lot of it.