“Voodoo Vaccine” seemed like a catchy title, but a more apt title for this article would be something like, “How the Covid Vaccine is More Like Superstition Than Science.” Voodoo has a superstition basis, so this title works as well. So, what is voodoo, or superstition, and how is the Covid vaccine, its reverence, its effect, the fear that it is supposed to assuage and the relationship between the people pushing it, and the people taking it superstitious?
The word around town is that the fancy named third booster, the Bivalent booster for BA.4 and BA.5, is not being received all that well. There is also a “third shot” that is different than the “third booster”—don’t ask me how, but apparently is best taken by those who are immunocompromised. For a virus that is rumored not even to exist, and/or been accurately isolated, they sure do know details about the pesky little thing. I am no scientist (woo hoo) so obviously I cannot comment on the genius minds that put all this stuff together, but gosh dang it is like stuff you’d see a wizard do, it is so complicated and magical.
That comment is probably closer to the truth than not. Now, I am sure the minds that put all this together are indeed brilliant. And I am sure there is a boatload of science in all of this. But hell, the damn things don’t even work, and they sure as hell are dangerous (if you talk to the right people) so why are so many people taking them, one after the other?
Yes, it is true the mad fervor for the latest jab is waning. But a lot of people are still yakking on Facebook about getting them, “I have an appointment to get the latest super booster! I am so excited!” “Me too!! Yahoo!!” And of course there is a plethora of arm selfies with two, not one, little round Band-Aids covering the booster entry as well as the annual flu jab. Yahoo indeed! Double your money folks! It reminds me of the good ol’ days when teenaged girls were blubbering on their pink princess phones about some current heartthrob they got an autographed picture from. Screams and giggles. What is this crap?
The people that seem totally mesmerized by all of this and are frantic to get in line for the latest jab are the true believers. But I think there are still many who would act the same if the propaganda machine starting spitting out the usual hockey-poo. I have a very close shrew friend who is a freedom fighter. He says Covid is dead, that even if the authorities scared the bejesus out of the general public again, few would take any new poke they laid on us. I’m not so sure.
Actually, how much do any of us know these days about stuff we put into our body to ward off the evil spirits of disease? With all the science out there, who in the common pool of educated human beings really know the scientific mechanism of pharmaceuticals, or even anything about the diseases they treat? Not me, said the flea. So for the most part we are relying on hocus-pocus at best. Yeah, the guy/gal in the white coat said it works, so what the hell. I just know if I refused it because of some remote chance there was an unpleasant side effect that would get me, I would be worried all day and night about the boogey man it was supposed to ward off. Better just take the meds. Doesn’t a rabbit’s foot do the same thing, ward off boogey men? Oh, right, but that isn’t science. The medicine is science. Right…science.
People have been taking antidepressants for years believing in the science and the white coat wizard writing the prescription. And look where that got us. Hey, I have nothing against lucky charms. But if you are going to rely on that stuff pick a charm that doesn’t cause any harm. I don’t think a rabbit’s foot has side effects, antidepressants do.
But I digress. Let’s talk about voodoo. Voodoo is a specialized form of science, oops, I mean religion, that is practiced in a variety of locations around the world. Known primarily in Africa and parts of the Caribbean and South America (as well as the southern USA), it relies on a lot of strange (to a non-voodooer) rituals and practices. It would be safe to say that the custom of voodoo relies heavily on superstition—defined usually as an “irrational” belief. I would refine that a bit and leave the “irrational” out of it and just say superstition is a belief that is usually found outside the realm of materiality.
So what does that mean?
Well, I would venture to say that taking a vaccine that has shown to do very little of what it is trumped up to do and is in fact quite dangerous at the same time it is touted to be “safe and effective,” borders on superstition. And it certainly is treated by the people taking it as having magical powers. Very few vaccinated folks know how it does what it is supposed to do, even in a very elementary way. Fewer still are adequately informed about its safety and efficacy (isn’t that called “informed consent”?). Yet it is gobbled up like cotton candy on a hot afternoon at the county fair.
If people just took it and shut up about it that would be one thing. But they don’t. They dance about it, sing about it, give high fives about it, take pictures of it, dream about it, maybe even have orgasms about it (I wouldn’t be surprised). It is the thing to do, like having a Pet Rock in the ‘70s. This is voodoo.
I used to travel a lot, before my un-vaxxed status ended that (oh, happy, happy, joy, joy, they are again allowing me on a plane!!). Years ago I was obsessed about getting all jabbed up for my trips. I would find a special travel doctor and get a list of CDC recommended medications and vaccines specially aligned with whatever strange primitive country I was going to that still grew amongst its primitive population various weird outer-space-type diseases.
This was fun. I felt responsible, intelligent, and all properly voodoo-ized for my trip. “No weird outer space invader type critter is going to get into MY veins, no sir-ee.” Did I know anything about any of these diseases? Or how to naturally prevent them from wreaking havoc on my helpless unhealthy body? Nope. I had the crucifix around my neck and a silver bullet in my pocket. Ain’t no fleas on me, I was protected.
Peace of mind. Yeah, that’s what they call it. Peace of mind. Rub that rabbits foot in your pocket and get the mark, the “shot card,” the “proof of Covid vaccination,” no problem at all. Side effects? Never heard of ‘em.
What a world.
*I forgot the aside. Sometime in the 90s Frank Zappa said the following: "Just because 350 million Americans think it's so, don't make it true." He was talking about running for president of the United States at the time. I would have applied for citizenship, just so as to be able to vote for him if that had actually transpired.
With respect to "Screams and giggles. What is this crap?"
The worst of the worst (I am being sarcastic here, like J.P. Sears) among the so-called conspiracy theorists adhere to the notion that this entire scenario has been long in the coming. Part of the agenda, and a pivotal part, has been the cumulative infantilization of the entire adult population of the west, ergo the screeching cartwheels when one's friends are doing the same mindless thing altogether.
The absolute drivel that is coming out of boards of education with the backing of state and provincial bodies, e.g., as witnessed by heretofore deviant populations offering indoctrination sessions in elementary schools, is designed in concert with a lack of education in the enhancement of rational analysis to render adult individuals incapable of recognizing logical fallacies of any kind.
Many of the strategies to empty out meanings from words, words that used to be employed to describe the moral and rational underpinnings of the perceptions of a post-medieval thinker (words like "wrong", "good") are precisely those recognized by psychologists and the like as those used by narcissistic abusers to gaslight and manipulate their victims.
This means that acceptable "science" is founded now in the public mind on a platform of two fallacies: the "appeal to authority" and the "appeal to popularity". If the dude in a white coat funded by the legacy media arm of our government says it's so, it's so. And if everyone else agrees, then it's especially so.* Our 'experts' can make whatever idiotic interpretations of the data they like even when they produce the actual flawed substandard research to back up their statements, because the public is scientifically illiterate and innumerate. You have to understand statistics in order to interpret research meaningfully, and most people's eyeballs roll up in their heads when you point to the actual data.
So much so, in fact, that when data comes out that clearly falsifies former statements based on a lack of data, people are incapable of changing their position because of the very strong "sunk cost" fallacy upon which the government and its mouthpieces rely.
Now it is a commonly assumed view that teenagers are irrational, that that is a defining characteristic of their developmental phase. In some neuropsychological circles, this is put down to the immaturity of certain brain structures responsible for risk aversion and critical judgment being proportionately inhibited by other more active primitive structures associated with anger, fear and strong emotions.
Therefore, in an organism that has insufficiently developed rational executive capacity, whether by natural chronology or by educational training design - which has been the case since about 1995 when Foucauldian postmodernism replaced structural functionalism as the favourite intellectual paradigm in the universities - playing on anger and fear circuits will have an outsized effect. As will the interruption of those circuits with intermittent reward for acting on that anger and fear.
And here lies the origin of the adolescent gigglefest. It is a well known axiom of behaviorist theory that the best way to condition a response is to intermittently reward it. With respect to the sheep, the injections are the reward, in that they constitute a release from a constant condition of state-induced fear, something to be celebrated along with one's comrades.
And lastly, if you add addiction mechanism theory to the mix, what you get is a growing need, an actual craving, for more of that reward more often. And isn't that exactly what our government is pushing? More shots, with "new and improved" (although completely untested) effect, more often? So more frequent dopamine showers relieving the constant cortisol seep induced by quotidian media propaganda? And God help anyone who stands between the addict and his fix!!!