Meth: a Ticking Timebomb Gone Viral

To Jab or Not to Jab

Over the last few years, I've taken the COVID-19 vaccine on four occasions and have never suffered any side effects. Nada, on the other hand, says she has experienced moderate side effects on all three occasions she has been vaccinated. Unfortunately, she no longer considers receiving a vaccine as something worth doing. It's her body and her life, and I understand that she thinks the risk isn't enough to warrant having any further jabs.

I think otherwise, and will soon get both the latest COVID-19 and flu vaccines (although not on the same day). About six months ago, I contracted COVID-19 for the first time and was moderately sick for three days. No one knows how bad it could have been if not for the vaccines, but those three days were bad enough for me to not want to find out.

There is a current trend against vaccination, and it isn't being pushed by doctors (in general) or by science. Data, it seems, is irrelevant when it comes to social media clout. It was bound to happen, and I see it a bit like this. Many people suffer from mental illnesses and must take meds to alleviate their symptoms. The vast majority follow their doctor's advice and realise why their symptoms aren't as bad when they take their meds. Some, however, feel better and stop taking their meds because they think they are better and hate the side effects of the meds. I get it (because I took antipsychotics for just a few weeks and couldn't take it anymore), but the reality for most of those people is their psychotic symptoms will return.

Vaccines, in my opinion, save lives, but it isn't like anyone can prove it. Whether Grandma would have lived if she had a vaccine or died anyway, cannot be proven. Would I have been just as sick when I tested positive for COVID-19 if I hadn't been vaccinated? Or worse, would I have died if I wasn't vaccinated? How many people survived because they were vaccinated is impossible to know. These are questions nobody can answer, and I think this lack of faith and change in attitude towards vaccines comes down to uncertainty. The real question is, who do we trust?

According to the vast majority of the medical fraternity, vaccines lessen the symptoms when we catch viruses, and I know who I will be putting my faith in. I'm sixty years old, and because I smoked meth for many years (which has likely compromised my lungs), I am not willing to listen to a bunch of people who ignore the data and would rather allow these viruses to go unchecked and (unnecessarily) claim lives.

I don't mind conspiracy theories, but I would never hold any of my favourites up as fact until I see evidence proving them to be so. Social media has become a tool for the rich to manipulate the masses. Just look at the election result in the US to see the influence it has. I'm not saying the Republican Party wouldn't have won without X or Joe Rogan, but no one can deny that certain demographics are, and will continue to be, influenced by trends. I understand it wasn't just that, and people will invariably vote out governments hoping for better. But, things are very different nowadays, and as much as I hate change, it is, by and large, inevitable.

Moving on...there has never been an apex species that lasts indefinitely, and in some ways, I see viruses like COVID-19 as being a lot like lions in Africa. Large predators thin out herds on the savana, making their prey, on the whole, stronger, by only taking the young, the old and the sick animals...a lot like what viruses do to humans. I just don't want to be one of them.