I've cut down on my Facebook use this year. However, every now and again I scroll down a few pages to see what people are up to. When I did this yesterday, I came across a curious post where one of my more remote friends claimed that he had an adverse reaction to being in close proximity with a couple of vaccinated friends. He got a bruise on his thigh and a migraine. Furthermore, he claimed that this was the second time he had this experience after hanging out with vaccinated friends.
I don't have much faith in this guy's claims, but I find it interesting enough to put on my list of things to look for. If I come across other such accounts, I'll give it more credit. But for now, I'm not going to take this report seriously, not least because we have my mother in law over for lunch every Sunday, and none of us have gotten any adverse reaction from her presence despite the fact that she's fully vaccinated while the rest of us aren't.
What's more interesting than the claim itself is the dynamics behind this latest scare. It mirrors a similar claim made by the vaccinated; that unvaccinated people are a danger to them. This claim is similarly difficult to believe, because a vaccine is supposed to protect those who take it. However, it's not difficult to find stories in which large number of vaccinated people have gotten sick from being in contact with unvaccinated people. It really does look like the vaccine fails to protect the vaccinated. But if that is so, why take it? The logic then turns collectivist. It will be effective, but only when everyone is fully vaccinated. We must all take the vaccine out of solidarity to everybody else.
With this kind of flimsy logic used in the official narrative, it's easy to concoct a counter-narrative in which the same logic is reversed and rehashed. The fact that misinformation like the bio-weapon theory is no longer misinformation makes this all the easier. The counter-narrative cannot be dismissed as easily as it would have if the narrative was more credible. The narrative is flawed, and demonstrably deceptive, so why believe it over the counter-narrative?
We are now faced with two opposing narratives, both founded on speculations and flimsy logic. One directs us towards lockdowns, mask-mandates and vaccines. The other directs us towards a rejection of this, and in particular the vaccine. For now, the vaccine narrative has the upper hand. However, there may come a day when the counter-narrative becomes dominant. People may become reluctant to be in the vicinity of those who are vaccinated, and that's when it will be clear to all that the decision to get the vaccine is a decision that cannot be undone. Once vaccinated, we cannot become unvaccinated, and that in itself should be cause for concern, especially with so much propaganda flying back and forth.
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| Great plague of London |
By unknwn - http://theloveforhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/plague_380x529_712060a.jpg, Public Domain, Link
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