Following the Science: A Philosophic Question
The only nation-wide scientific analysis of the effects and effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine, conducted in Israel, shows that having previously contracted the coronavirus itself was and remains by far the best protection against future infection and illness with all known variants of the virus. In other words, the vaccines are not really working as the “experts” continuously allege, in defiance of all evidence and common sense, that they should be; and furthermore, the vaccines offer relatively little protection against the latest variants (or, presumably, subsequent variants) to offset the risks, expense, and paternalism involved in the current efforts to impose immediate vaccination (with these particular vaccines, sold by these particular companies) on every human being, regardless of age or previous Covid-19 infection.
The largest real-world analysis comparing natural immunity and the protection provided by coronavirus vaccines revealed those who have received both jabs of Pfizer’s two-stick shot were almost six-fold more likely to contract a delta infection and seven-fold more likely to show symptoms and become hospitalized than those who have already recovered from COVID.
What a colossal money-sucking, life-shrugging, tyranny-expanding, and, yes, science-ignoring catastrophe these past eighteen months of world history have been. As the evidence continues to roll in — from the absolute ineffectiveness (or rather counterproductivity) of lockdowns, to the demonstrably deteriorating effectiveness of the largely experimental, insufficiently analyzed vaccines currently being pumped willy-nilly into every man, woman, and child at cash-register exploding speed — there is no doubt that we are being browbeaten and mandated in irresponsible directions by “leaders” with neither the knowledge nor the conscience to be granted such control over all human life. And yet most of us sit in our locked-down realities spewing venom at those of our neighbors who refuse to submit their healthy children to a questionably useful vaccination for an illness that has consistently shown extremely little threat to children, or demanding that people who reject lockdowns explain — projection of projections — why they do not care about human life.
Some moralists and philosophers or quasi-philosophers (Harvard’s libertarian wayfarer Robert Nozick was among them) used to speculate on whether the human race had finally invalidated itself outright — that is, ceased to have any ultimately justifying case for its continued existence — in the aftermath of the Holocaust. I always found such speculation specious and self-righteous, premised as it primarily was on the horrifically irrational outburst of one nation. The sheer number of victims, it always seemed to me, was not in itself an argument against the moral defensibility of mankind as a whole, but rather, if at all, only against that of Germany as a nation.
Today, however, if those same moralists and philosophers or quasi-philosophers offered an analogous argument, focused this time not on the horrors perpetrated by one nation, but rather by the collected populations of the advanced world against the life, liberty, property, psychological well-being, and yes, health, of people of all races, religions, and nationalities, motivated by immoderate fear of death, opportunistic power lust, and/or the extremes of foolish scientific pride, combined with a complete loss of any sense of the worth of an individual soul — well, in this case I would be willing to give the argument at least a hearing. For this time, there would be no gross over-generalization from one nation’s insanity to a worldwide moral negation. This time, the insanity itself is global, the nihilistic rejection of the principle of life has been generalized, universalized. Our race as a whole, rather than an isolated nation, has committed the “crime against humanity.”
Do we have a right to exist anymore? Have we delegitimized ourselves as a species through our utter abnegation of our nature, our virtues, and the responsibility, recited in childhood but subsequently neglected, to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?
This is not a madman’s outcry against the heavens, a suicidal revolt against life itself, or an angry wish for mass calamity to “put us out of our misery.” This is a philosophic question, a matter for sincere pondering at this time. Have we, as a species, lost the historical argument for our salvation, or the moral argument for our genuine right to life? Have we slipped so far from our center that we have tipped the scales of human life against our continuing to have any genuine claim to it? Are we — the race that would reduce itself, collectively and globally, to this — henceforth here only by mercy, rather than by desert?
Time will tell, I suppose. In the meantime, we few struggling to retain some semblance of our humanity must remain vigilant over our souls, seeking at all times to avoid the smug self-certainty and self-obsessed short-sightedness that have been so central to the downfall of modern man.
