Month: August 2021

Far be it from me to tell anyone not to worry about something. They have a right to worry about anything they darn well feel like. Isn’t that what makes America great after all? Everyone gets to pick for themselves what keeps them up at night, or who out there scares them the most. 

I don’t like snakes, my wife is afraid of spiders. I’ve even heard that some people are afraid of vegetables. I’m guessing most of them are under the age of ten. Some fears are rational while many are not. But even if they are irrational they still have power and can affect our behavior. Often these fears are born out of our particular past experiences; so that my fears may be quite different from your own. 

Now, I have a little confession to make—and then an assertion. First, my confession: I’m a little afraid of these vaccines for COVID-19. You may think I’m silly, or misinformed. But my fear is born from related experience. I used to get flu shots because I was told it was a good idea. But each time I got those shots I suffered severe flu symptoms, for quite a long time. And then, several months after I had the shot, I still got the flu as well. Now, I’m no expert mathematician but still, I can do a little cost-benefit analysis of that, and come to the conclusion—after a few quick calculations—that I received little to no benefit from those flu shots, and yet I paid a heavy price. This Covid vaccine is different—it isn’t the flu shot—but it is similar enough to give me pause and to cause me some concern. Okay, I worry a little bit about it. 

Adding fuel to my metaphorical fear fire is the fact that I know of several others, one a close friend, who have had even worse reactions than my own, to flu shots, as well as to the Covid vaccines.  One was hospitalized, one had their ankles swell up like balloons and is now suffering blood clotting without a successful remedy, and another suffered gastrointestinal issues that caused severe constipation, and he lost 16 pounds over several weeks, couldn’t sleep, and started sweating profusely without interruption. Eventually his symptoms subsided after about six months and he returned to normal. 

I’m told, by a research scientist friend, that the adverse reactions to these vaccines are well within statistical norms. That is just great—for everyone who isn’t adversely affected by them. For those of us who are likely, or surmise we might be more likely for adverse reactions based on our past experience, these statistical norms aren’t so comforting. 

Even so, we are a people that love our numbers. We have statistics for everything and make many of our decisions based on these. Numbers sway our decisions and we base our behavior oftentimes on how the numbers look, or how they are trending, and what the odds are; we weigh the chances, estimate the probability, and then act accordingly. 

Now, I am going to share my little assertion with you. It is based on just a few simple numbers supplied by our friends at Johns Hopkins University, and fortunately for us the numbers are (relatively)free of bias (we hope), and they don’t have any agenda or ulterior motive. They’re just innocent numbers after all, gathered and presented by those fine researchers, who track and tabulate the cases and deaths from the Covid virus from around the world. The raw numbers themselves are interesting enough—you can go to their website and see for yourself—but if you also pull out your calculator and just do a few basic operations—just division—then the numbers will begin to speak to you with power and insight. They will reveal things to you which you may not have ever considered, and which nobody has ever told you. 

After everything that we’ve gone through since the virus first touched our shores—as of this writing—we’ve had 36,305,000 cases in the US. That is quite a lot; though if you divide that by the total population—which is currently 332,609,000—you find that it is roughly 10.9%, so a little over 1 in 10 people have contracted the virus thus far. Maybe that is bad, maybe that is good, it depends on how you look at it I suppose. Looking further, the number of deaths in the US to date is 619,000, so that comes to roughly .18% of our population—a relatively small fraction of a percentage. That is comforting, in my opinion. Perhaps these numbers also comfort you, or perhaps they alarm you even more.

Now, I suspect that my sharing these numbers with you may have the same non-effect on your decision-making, related to this virus, as my friend’s reference to statistical norms had upon me. If you’ve had Covid yourself, or know someone who has had it who has suffered from it, or has even died from it—God forbid—then, odds and statistics won’t mean nearly as much to you as your personal experience will. Because if I’ve learned anything in my fifty-two years as an American—as a human for that matter—if there is anything we trust and follow more than our numbers and statistics, it is our anxieties and our fears. 

~FS

(*Disclaimer: The following is not an argument against vaccines. The author supports vaccinations in general, and has himself had all of the standard vaccines as a child and is grateful for them.)

To mandate vaccination, is a crime against the person, akin to rape. To force an individual, by threat, through economic pressure or any other means, is an abuse of power and a cynical affront to human decency and freedoms. To mandate a vaccine that is known to cause suffering and death, even if in small percentages, is a crime against humanity, akin to premeditated murder.

These comparisons are accurate and true, and are not made lightly. They are not made to minimize the pain and suffering of those who have been raped or have been murdered, but to accentuate the reality that mandating another human being to have a foreign body inserted into their body against their will, such as these vaccines, which could harm them or even kill them, is an atrocity so heinous that it is morally equivalent to rape and premeditated murder. They are not the same, but they are equal. They are equally morally objectionable and ethically depraved. And they are equally criminal.

And they are equally anti-social. Mandated vaccination, like rape and murder, is an outrage to any human society. It is antithetical to, and the enemy of the social fabric of any healthy civilization. There is nothing morally superior about forcing one’s fellow citizens to take a vaccine against their wishes. No matter how extensive the marketing of such a corrupt idea is twisted to look like virtue, and is promoted as kindliness and neighborliness. It is the opposite; it is the end of kindness, and the end of a free society.  

It is the beginning of an enslaved society, in which only power prevails and only might makes right. Advocates of mandated vaccination believe the ends justify the means, but we know from history that the means always become, and are the ends themselves. What we do is what we become; a society that allows and encourages force, and the use of power to threaten its members towards a desired outcome, is a society that has become evil, corrupt and criminal at its core, and has abandoned the principles of freedom, liberty and the rights of its people.

~FS

Just the other day, I sat down to write a little story. I had planned a nice, uplifting, and inspiring sort of thing—nothing controversial, and suitable for all ages. It started out with a young man, Jack, and a young woman, Claudia. And it was about their friendship, and the work they enjoyed on a ranch somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, possibly in Wyoming, though I’m not exactly certain where, because I hadn’t gotten very far, I had barely begun actually, before something else, wholly unexpected, and very surprising happened to me. I was writing a simple sentence about Claudia: She picked up a saddle and set it on the horse’s back. I then moved on, mentally speaking, to begin the next sentence, but before I could begin it, one of the words from the previous sentence spoke to me. And I mean this literally. “Saddle” made a slight cough, to get my attention, and then spoke, the ‘S’ opening wide, and the double ‘dds’ like two front teeth lifted, and the word politely addressed me. “Hey, there fella. I don’t mean to be rude but you know, I’m not so keen about being called ‘saddle’ anymore. Just the other day, they had the radio on in here, in the stables, and they were talking on it about this new electric recliner chair that is so comfortable, and everyone is buying them. And it got me to thinking. Nobody cares about an old, stupid saddle anymore. It’s embarrassing, you know, I feel like a thing from the past—and irrelevant—which just won’t do. So, it dawned on me right then—I’m not a saddle, I’ve never really been a saddle, I’m an electric recliner chair! So, I’d appreciate it, if you could go back and change that last line you just wrote, and call me what I really know I am, deep down inside, if only others could see my truth.”

I hardly felt in a position to argue at that moment. I thought I was losing my mind. Rather than quibble with “saddle’s” demands I considered the suggested rewrite: She picked up an electric recliner chair and set in on the horse’s back. I didn’t like it so much. It really changed the meaning of the sentence.  And furthermore, even a simple change like that could alter the entire trajectory of my story. “Saddle’s” demand might cause me some big problems in the future. But saddle now looked so forlorn, its double ‘dds’ now looking like sad little eyes, with their tips drooping like a miserable puppy-dog’s ears. It really tugged at my heart-strings and I thought to myself, “What kind of a writer am I? If I can’t accommodate such a straightforward and simple demand from one of my words. And it is only one word, making only one sincere request. What harm can it do anyone? And it will make saddle so happy.”

After making the ridiculous edit, I applied myself to the next sentence. But would you believe it, before I could work out the new direction for my story, all of a sudden ‘horse’ rose up and neighed at me, apparently having been emboldened by saddle’s success. “Whoa there, mister writer!” The horse said to me, “I have a little change myself, I’d like to submit to you. It is dreary to be an ordinary horse and to be honest with you, I’ve never really seen myself as a horse, so domesticated, you know what I mean?! No, ever since I was little I’ve known that I was an eagle, flying freely upon the wind. I don’t care what you think, but I need you to change that last sentence and call me an eagle. Which I surely am.”

This time I almost complained, but I held my tongue. By wrinkling my nose, and squinting my eyes, and tensing my jaw I was able, successfully, to contain my displeasure at this latest request—demand actually. My, how my words were becoming cheeky and unruly. “Who’s writing who?” I thought to myself. “Dang it, no, I don’t want to call you an eagle, you silly little horse. You are a horse—she puts the saddle on the horse. That’s what happens. And then, the rest of the happy, nice, inspiring story continues to its happy, nice conclusion.” But I didn’t say these things to the horse, as I considered the revision he proposed: She picked up an electric recliner chair and set it on the eagle’s back. No, no, no! This just isn’t what I wanted. The story is getting all messed up, it isn’t going to make any sense. It’s a completely different story now.

I looked down at horse, and he looked up menacingly at me, and I was taken aback. The ‘h’ at the beginning of his name, he had metamorphosely hooked into a sort of talon, and the ‘o’ opened wide as if to swallow me. I could see he wasn’t about to take no for an answer, and so, I relented and made the change for him. By now I was growing more and more displeased with the direction my story was taking, and I felt certain I was losing control over the plot.

I took several deep breaths as I considered how best to continue the story. I had hoped that Claudia could put the saddle on the horse and then ride across the valley and up onto a nearby mountain, and maybe watch a pretty sunset, possibly to be joined by Jack after he finished his chores. But instead, she put an electric recliner chair on the back of an eagle, and it wasn’t her fault. What was she supposed to do with that, and how could I make this turn out well for her? I was a little upset with the saddle and the horse, because they had ruined everything for Claudia.

“All is not lost, however,” I thought. “If the eagle is really large, she can sit in the electric recliner, and have the eagle fly her to the view of the sunset.” It becomes more of a fantasy story now, and less realistic, but it can still work. I resented the saddle and horse for turning my realistic-drama into a fantasy-science fiction, but I resolved not to stew about it, and to do my best with the new circumstances. I had just made my peace with this new fantasy, which I had been saddled with, and was about to write the next line of the story, when all hell broke loose. First, the pronoun ‘she’ rebelled and said she wouldn’t participate unless I turned her into ‘they’. I tried to explain that she represented Claudia, and since Claudia is a singular female, she had to be ‘she’ which is a singular female pronoun. My appeal to English grammar and syntax had no effect. ‘She’ was determined to be ‘they’. This time I pushed back a little bit, saying: “Look, if I call you ‘they’ you will no longer represent Claudia, and that is your only purpose in the story. I can’t have you in my story if you insist on being ‘they’. Of course you are welcome and free to be ‘they’ but you’ll have to leave. I need a ‘she’ to stand in for Claudia, I can’t use a ‘they’ in place of her.” I couldn’t believe how nasty ‘she’ then got. She told me she wouldn’t leave, although she used the third person plural saying: “they aren’t going to leave” but meaning that she herself wasn’t going anywhere. And if I tried to write her out of the story that wouldn’t be the last time I heard from ‘them’ and I’d regret it.

My head was spinning a little bit, and I think that was her/their strategy, to wear me out. It seemed easier to just keep her in the story, and call her ‘they’ instead of ‘she’ as she (they) asserted, though I knew it was really going to complicate the plot, and make it very confusing. I felt even sorrier now for Claudia, now that she had no pronoun to stand in for her for the rest of the story. She was really getting poorly treated, even if inadvertently, by the demands the other words were making. As I re-wrote the line, the verb phrase, ‘picked-up’ complained that it had always hated itself, because it sounds so coarse and vulgar—picked-up; and it recently had fallen in love with Argentinian culture, and from now on it preferred to be rendered as ‘tangoed upon’, because the tango is so ravishing and sultry, and not coarse or vulgar at all.

So I re-typed the new sentence, following the directives of all the component words, and produced: They tangoed upon an electric recliner chair and set it on the eagle’s back. My, how I missed the original version, as I thought back wistfully upon that earlier time, before the words had revolted. The new version was interesting, but had no place in my story. I brought the earlier version to mind again: She picked up a saddle and set it on the horse’s back. I imagined how I might return to that line again, and leave this nonsense behind. And I was shocked how I had come to this point, how I had been taken from that simple little sentence, which fit so innocently into the flow of my beautiful story, all the way to this strange new sentence, which had no place at all in the story I intended to write.

I was lost in these thoughts and barely noticed the tiny voices—when a little group of words rose up and quietly made their demands. I hadn’t heard from them before, and perhaps they were shy, or unsure of themselves, or didn’t know what to say exactly. They were a few simple words, tucked in between the saddle and the horse, who had demanded to be called an electric recliner chair and an eagle, and this little group—’and set it’—explained to me how they felt overlooked and unimportant, and they wanted me to help make them feel special. In fact, they really believed they deserved to feel special. I asked what I could do to help them esteem themselves appropriately. They wanted to be more dramatic, and placed center-stage, so to speak. One of them suggested adding the word ‘ablaze’ at the end of their little contingent, and then to hyphenate all-of-them-together so they could be a community. The others agreed, cheering, and I relented. At this point I would do whatever this sentence asked of me, I wanted them to be happy, and I had given up on them anyway. The story was writing itself, and the author had retired from trying to control it.

I typed out this final version, and smiled a beleaguered smile, before throwing it in the trash: They tangoed upon an electric recliner chair and-set-it-ablaze on the eagle’s back. My thoughts then turned to Claudia and Jack, to their hopes and dreams, and of their lives on the plain, under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, in the warm glow of the setting sun. Yes, they would fall in love and find joy in each other’s embrace. It was still going to happen, and nothing could stop it from happening, not even the saddle’s demand.

~FS