The more you know…

I understand that it seems to be getting harder to know who or what to believe. The world’s kind of gone topsy-turvy lately, and while the boon of the internet may be that it gives us more access to information, that bane of it is deciding just what information to believe.

I’m leery of the “disinformation police.” I’ve seen their “takes” before, some of them on things about which I’m fairly well informed, and the slant will sometimes take a suspect path. The problem is, we far too often make assumptions and assertions that are not entirely true. For example, I would suspect a person who believes a “fetus” is not a living human being would have no qualms with ending its life, so to them, claiming to the contrary would be “disinformation,” despite the fact that such a claim is entirely true.

But this works in all directions, not just left or right. I listened the other day as someone went into detail about how the Covid vaccine is now proving to have been dangerous. That it caused a significant number of deaths and that in many of these deaths coroners were pulling massive blood clots from the veins of “victims.” I don’t doubt that may be the case. I also don’t doubt that he’s done the reading. Still, I wonder…what reading? What studies was he quoting? Were they based on reliable research from reputable scholars in the field? Or are we talking about generally scattered anecdotal information? Or is it somewhere in between? Can we honestly come to the conclusion that clotting and death is the norm for those who received the vaccine?

I know something (anecdotally, but still true) about the Covid vaccine. It was given to hundreds of millions of people, all within a very short time. I know that just about every person I saw walking around on base here over a certain age was vaccinated, along with all of the other 25,000+ American service members on the Korean peninsula (not to mention a large majority of Korea’s 51 million citizens). Now, I don’t know everyone, but I do know people who know plenty, and I doubt that they could name anyone they know personally having died from the vaccine (other than people who know the same person to die as me). They certainly couldn’t name any young, healthy, athletic members of the military who suddenly dropped dead from a heart attack on the basketball court or out on a ruck. I’m sure they’re out there – just as I’m sure there have been people who have dropped dead after a flu shot. Or an anthrax shot. Or a typhoid shot. Or you name the shot. But wholesale and mysterious deaths in significant numbers?

I served 27 years in the military. I’ve had more shots than I can remember. Shots of all kinds. Annually. Boosters. And yes, even a few Covid shots in there too. And I honestly couldn’t tell you if they negatively affected me. Yeah, I’m tired sometimes. But maybe if I didn’t stay up late and wake up at 4AM every day, it would be a different story. My blood pressure is up a bit (still lower than most people my age). I just had a colonoscopy last week and they took care of a couple of polyps for me while they were at it. I’m still kicking.

The point I’m getting at is that I’m living life, and it’s not killing me any differently than it’s killing anyone else, shot or no shot. I know a grand total of one person who’s died of Covid, and one other who’s died of the vaccine (anecdotally, again – she died from a blood clot in the brain about a week after getting the shot). But I look around and don’t see people dropping like flies in the streets. It’s all pretty much life as usual.

So what do we do? Well, I don’t mind this guy doing the research and doing what he wants with it. I just want everyone to recognize that we all have our biases, and sometimes they lead us down a path less helpful. But the best cure we can have is to inform ourselves in light of those biases. Maybe throw a little logic in there. If you find one obscure study that might have a touch of merit and it’s telling you to be cautious, but then find fifty others that refute it, well…be cautious. But don’t throw everything else out because you’re convinced this is all some kind of commie conspiracy. Educate yourself, then do what’s logical with the facts you have.

I’ll leave you with this:

On January 19, 2021, the Trump White House issued a press release titled “President Trump Awards Presidential Commendations to Operation Warp Speed Team.” On that list was Dr. Anthony Fauci (and General Mark Milley, whom Trump has recently ripped as “embarrassing” and “incompetent”). When asked about this a couple of weeks ago, Trump claimed “I don’t know who gave him a presidential commendation,” despite clear evidence that it was him.

Do with that what you want, but if you find yourself making excuses for the man, even in light of the clear and repeated evidence that he’s a liar and charlatan, I’m afraid you have a bigger problem than just falling for “disinformation.” Your problem is just pure delusion.