Plagues and pandemics have consequences far beyond public health. Pandemics can disrupt societies in far-reaching and often devastating ways.
While the “silver lining” of the Black Death, for instance, was that it ultimately led to the dismantling of feudalism, during the plague itself social effects were horrific. There was the religious lunacy of the Flagellants, for instance. Even worse were the hundreds of massacres of Jews, who were made the scapegoats for the Plague.
We like to pride ourselves on living in a reasonable, secular age – but there is a growing, dark tide of hysteria, every bit as nasty as Flagellism.
And it’s finding its scapegoats.
Tourism Australia ambassador and Hollywood superstar Chris Hemsworth has reportedly declined an invitation to promote the Covid 19 vaccine rollout in Australia.
Well… so what? Haven’t we had enough of celebrities finger-wagging us and telling us peasants what to do, from the luxury of their million-dollar compounds?
Hemsworth was one of a number of recognisable faces offered ‘speedy vaccination’ and a bump to the front of the queue, if he was seen to promote the jab to his 50 million social media followers.
However the Sydney newspaper reported that the Thor star declined the offer of an AstraZeneca vaccine, and his preferred option of Pfizer is not currently available at his Byron Bay address.
So wait… celebrities are getting to elbow their way to the front of the queue, in return for peddling state propaganda?
But, in the growing mood of public and official hysteria over vaccination, it seems you’re either for them or against them. If you’re not jumping on the pulpit and singing from the government hymn sheet, the auto-da-fés and denunciations are quick to follow.
The God of Thunder’s silence on the vaccine front drew criticism from the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend. Since turning down the vaccine he has used his social media channels to promote his fitness-tech startup Centr, a brand of vitamins and other charity projects.
“He does live in the anti-jab capital of Australia,” opined the newspaper.
NZ Herald
In the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of poisoning wells to spread the Plague. Now, celebrities who don’t toe the official line are insinuated as “anti-vaxxers”.
It’s not just celebrities, either. Doctors are being told in no uncertain terms to toe the official line or be sent to the professional gulag.
A Northern Ireland doctor has been suspended over a YouTube video (now only available on Odysee after being deleted by YouTube) where she expressed concerns about young people taking the COVID-19 vaccine[…]
Several assertions were made by Dr. McCloskey in the nine-minute video uploaded on Sunday, among them that she had come across a girl that had a blood clot in her upper arm and alleged she spoke to a boy who couldn’t get out of bed two weeks after getting vaccinated.
Allegedly, GPs and members of the public have complained about the video, according to the BBC.
“There is no evidence to support Dr. McCloskey’s comments,” the BBC stated.
Reclaim The Net
Says who? It’s an established fact that more than a few young people in Australia developed blood clots following vaccination. Many people have reported being hammered by the vaccines.
This is not to say that that isn’t within the normal risk parameters for a vaccine, but the fact remains that they have happened. Preventing doctors from even saying so is censorship of the worst kind.
In Canada too, doctors face being hauled in front of professional star chambers “for posting about COVID-19 and vaccines in a way that contradicts the government’s messaging”.
We are entering very dangerous territory, here. We know for a fact that “official” positions on Covid have frequently been wrong – badly so. From the WHO’s early denials that the virus could be spread from human to human, to the disastrously wrong “modelling”, to the grossly over-estimated infection to fatality ratio (off by more than a factor of ten).
Governments and public health troughers may have the arrogance to proclaim themselves “your sole source of truth”, but that doesn’t make it so. Governments are frequently wrong. Public health bureaucrats, even more so.
Science – and medicine is a science – and democracy can only function where there is an open exchange of contested opinions. Those opinions may or may not be wrong. If they are right, how will we ever know, if we’re forbidden to hear them? If the official opinions are wrong – as we know they so often are – they will only persist in their errors if they are allowed to crush all dissent.
Only dictatorships insist that they are unassailably correct and suppress all dissenting opinions by force.
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