Sorry Doc, I won’t be taking the vaccination! The question is bound to come sooner or later. I shall seize the bull by the horns and set down in writing some of the reasons why this will be my answer, and in the process attempt to answer another question that comes my way now and again,- what do you think about this pandemic?
‘Science’ of course is supposed to answer such questions for us. Politicians and everybody else are generally expected to defer to her dictats. However there are in the case of the pandemic the mainline scientists, whose general approach is that we must fight Covid with lockdowns etc until the vaccines deliver us from it, and the fringe 'loonies' who insist that lockdowns are in fact counterproductive* and sometimes even dare to question the efficacy of vaccines. I cannot begin to pretend to get my head around charts and facts and figures, so how do I set about establishing my own position in any kind of a rational way?
I cast around for experts whom I deem genuinely capable of setting aside their own opinions and drilling into the data to find out what stands up. It is a tall order. Meanwhile, for my part, I can only make a start by reviewing what I have gleaned from my own journey. I am allergic to endlessly sparring over ‘facts’; in the end one does have to situate the problem within whatever wider frames of reference one has managed to establish, while the test of integrity is our willingness to painfully interrogate them.
I have strayed from the question,- what about that vaccination? It’s not a new problem. My doctor has been trying to get me to take a ‘flu jab for some years. I pointed out that I knew several people who had had the jab and still had ‘flu. One exasperated response to my refusal was ‘well don’t come to me when you get pneumonia!’ He's a good man though, taking my jybes in good heart, and as for the medical 'industry' as I am tempted to call it, I recognise that there are many good people in it, and also that there are times when, like the Fire Brigade, they are vital.
Yet as it happens I have so far neither caught the ‘flu nor had pneumonia, though I do generally get a bad cold around the turn of the year that sometimes threatens to get on my chest, but which Fiona’s home brand of medicine - mostly homoeopathy and diet - has so far always coped with. Yet for a start, we do not ‘fight’ it, but rather regard it as a kind of annual revamp of our immune set-up, like training a horse to jump fences. It is one of the big theoretical objections to vaccinations, that they bypass and rather sabotage the natural workings of our immune systems. Are we supposed to get yet another jab for every kind of virus that comes at us?
There is the question mark over these substances that we fire into our veins so blithely. Neither the manufacturers nor their insurance companies are prepared to stand over them, and they insist on governments taking the responsibility for any ‘complications’. It is anyway of course very hard to actually prove when the vaccines are to blame. In the case of the swine ‘flu vaccine, it took ten years and much effort to pin the blame for narcolepsy on it, to the extent that the Irish Government had to pay compensation, though GSK still refuses to accept responsibility. The fact that the current crop of vaccines has been turned out under massive pressure does not augur well.
In the case of the pandemic, what is the alternative to ‘fighting’ it with lockdowns and vaccines? Pandemics in the past, though like the ‘Spanish ‘flu’ they were sometimes much more deadly, nonetheless passed eventually. Meanwhile, supposing we seriously take a look at ourselves and ask whether the ‘fighting’ posture is the best one? After all, in the cause of ‘security’, our leading nations are apparently willing to expend astronomical sums on weapons that would wreak unimaginable havoc, death and destruction, in a completely different order of magnitude to this pandemic. They do not exactly achieve peace. The attitude to health, out of the same stable, gets through vast sums of money forever ‘fighting’ this and that, without actually being very successful at building a healthy world.
There is a pattern of whacking molehills to be discerned. We wallop dis-ease in one form and it erupts in another; and of course we tend to forget that everything is interconnected, on psychic, physical, social, economic and spiritual levels. Supposing we ask ourselves, might the pandemic be trying to tell us something, even to help us respond to much greater threats? Might it have something to teach us? Let us look at it holistically. It is possible that Covid19 could have been brought under control months ago with homoeopathic prophylactics.**
Beyond this, were there by any chance apparently unconnected signs in differing modes that our way of living was unsustainable and in the gravest danger of breaking down? Had we any personal indications of the need to slow down, consolidate, integrate the various facets of life into something sustainable? ‘Progress’, profit, GDP, the very 'scientific worldview' have broken down as yardsticks by which to pace our lives.
In many ways we clearly need to go backwards, for an immediate and particular example, with regard to things like heating this house, in which we are fine and cosy after a long and painful change from dependence on large amounts of oil to warming ourselves mainly with two wood stoves. Such a move needs to happen, of course, in tandem with efforts to improve insulation and avoid the need for excessive heating. We might even need to wear thick clothes in the winter, instead of T-shirts!
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| Both Chimneys in Action. |
There’s a lot of work involved in tending them in this cold weather, not to mention in the cutting and curing of firewood, but actually I enjoy it. No better exercise than cutting and splitting logs, and I even enjoy the little ritual first thing in the morning of kindling the embers for the stove in the west room, which stays in all night and heats those few of the old radiators that I have kept. It’s a great occasion for that prayer to the Holy Spirit,- Come Holy Spirit, kindle within us the fire of thy love; send forth thy spirit and we shall be recreated, and thou shalt renew the face of the Earth!’
Nothing reveals our need for renewal more clearly than the general paucity of ritual these days, reduced as it so often is to banal things like football. Ritual is the human way of pulling our lives together, in the interaction of meaning and community. Again, we need to take a step or two backward in order to go forward; but can we call this renewal a matter of ‘making progress’ at all? I scratch my head trying to think of another word. I can only think of an old English West Country sailor's term for making headway against the wind - winnin’ . So that’s the best I can wish for you this New Year,- may you be a-winnin’!
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_vAQyVlXzU&t=10s
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I welcome feedback.... Joe