"Do the research. The doctors and medical staff and personnel--a high percentage of them are not taking the shot. The shot is very dangerous."
"Government has to stay out of it. We don't want somebody coming here and saying you have to wear a mask or show a vaccination record to shop here."
Volunteers at the petition booth
Costco has a new policy in Oregon.
They asked to see your Costco card, then asked "Are you vaccinated?" If you said you were, you need not have a mask to enter.
I shopped at Costco yesterday. The man at the entrance door enforced people showing a Costco card and everyone flashed a card. It was the honor system on whether one had been vaccinated. Ninety percent of the people in the store had no mask, and no employees that I saw wore one. Local statistics show that just under half of adults in Jackson County have been vaccinated. About 36% of all residents are vaccinated.
This implies what I suspected. People who aren't vaccinated say they are. People who don't care to be vaccinated don't want masks either. They feel little or no social obligation to wear a mask.
 |
| Saturday, in front of Costco |
Three people staffed a booth on the public sidewalk in front of Costco. They were gathering petitions to bring to local city councils and county commissions. While I visited with them, many cars passed by and gave friendly waves. Two pickup truck drivers waved and adjusted their exhausts so that they billowed huge plumes of black soot. (It is an act of defiance against the tyranny of pollution rules, and a sign of approval of the petition.) The petitioners' location required many shoppers to make a long trek across a lot to get to them, but they had many pages of signatures.
The petitioners disagreed with vaccinations themselves; with mask-wearing having any value; with the invasion of privacy of a store asking if people had been vaccinated; with the implied expectation that people should be vaccinated; with the government policy of encouraging voluntary vaccinations; with the mandates over the past year to wear a mask; with the current policy of requiring masks in stores if one was unvaccinated; and with Governor Kate Brown's making any mandates by executive order instead of an act of the legislature.
The petition itself was to be delivered to local government. It asked them to object to the Governor's order on constitutional grounds. The petition asked them to resolve:
The petitioners wanted me to "do the research" and realize how dangerous vaccines were. They said they got their best information from a website news group, Telegraph. It is a weekly pay site and people on the site describe it as a "Patriot app" and "unbiased social media." It does not censor "our President Trump." The petition volunteers urged me to get the real information about COVID and the world from the unbiased information passed around by fellow newsgroup users. Fellow citizens, not journalists, are credible.1. All employees and agencies of this (County or City) shall not assist in the enforcement of business closure, school closure or stay-at-home directives under the Executive Orders of the Governor relating to the Coronavirus pandemic. . ..2. All employees and agencies of this (County or City) shall recognize the protections provided by the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Oregon in carrying out their duties.
 |
| Recommended App |
Takeaway Two: The petition volunteers resent the idea of being disadvantaged by their refusal to be vaccinated. They feel picked on and shamed.
Takeaway Three: Appeals to community benefit or public health will fall on deaf ears. Their motivation is individual rights, individual body autonomy, personal choice. They have the spirit of the Gadsden flag--don't tread on me. All three petitioners said they disapproved of abortion but that abortion wasn't their fight, and government should not intervene on the woman's decision. It is between the woman and God, one volunteer told me. "Our bodies, our choice. Nobody tells us what to do with our bodies."
Takeaway Four: They are information-siloed, and more deeply and narrowly than just Fox. They trust newsgroups from like-minded people. Efforts to change their minds or give them alternative information coming from politicians, health authorities, physicians, or from any mainstream news source will be worse than pointless. They will perceive it as lies pushed on them by a tyrant--an attack on them.
Takeaway Five: The petitioners seemed sincere, dedicated, and engaged. They were not there on a Saturday afternoon dutifully carrying out an obligation. They are committed.
Takeaway Six: Based on the response by passing vehicles, a great many people agree with them. They may be in a minority, but they are not outliers.
 |
| "Lock down Kate Brown" |
11 comments:
These people may be sincere, dedicated and engaged, but they are also dangerous. They seem to consider any effort to contain the pandemic a violation of some imaginary right they have to endanger others. It makes me wonder how they view speed limits, or laws against firing guns within the city limits.
Their numbers raise the question whether this is some strange new phenomenon, or if we’ve always had so many people so divorced from reality and are just more aware of it now because of social media. It also points out the need for our schools to teach children how to tell fact from fiction and reliable sources from whacko websites. Of course Trumplicans would consider it a commie plot, but that’s another story.
We don’t deserve the title, self-assigned, as leader of the free world. We appear to be the leader of a world of idiots.
As Forest Gump once said "stupid is as stupid does". These people are stupid and they don't know it. The doctors and scientists are all wrong. It's some anonymous dufus on the internet that knows it all.
I have no problem if they get sick and die. A few less idiots to listen to.
The only issue I have with these idiots becoming dead testimony to Darwins Theories is that it takes so long for those principles to wholly become effective. Anonymous above is quite right, or as Pogo Possum once said "we has met the enemy, and he is us".
I try not to worry about my grandsons future, as there is seemingly little I can do to have an effect. I really do wonder if this Country is going to survive in any recognizable form.
The Compassion shown for “idiots” in this space is astounding. Jefferson said “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” These citizens consider themselves patriots Who have withdrawn their consent to be governed by tyrants. Woe to you who would shame, castigate and shun them further. Proverbs 11:29: He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.
Please go back and remind them that President Trump has been vaccinated and has told all of his supporters to get vaccinated. What do they think about that?
I also would like to know their level of education and their history of mental illness. I also would like to know if they understand what the word "contagious" means and if they are familiar with any other epidemics, plagues or pandemics in human history.
This fits my theory that immigration from Europe over the past four centuries has influenced the character of America. The people who left Europe to come here were by and large more independent and less communitarian than the people who stayed behind. This sorting process, going on for centuries, led to a much more communitarian Europe and a much more independent-minded USA.
I have recently read some articles which say that political orientation is about 50% inherited. So this may be a genetic as well as a cultural phenomenon.
The only thing that would motivate the people that Peter is writing about to get vaccines would be if they started dying like flies from Covid. At the moment, the disease is not deadly enough to cause something like that. A future variant might be…
Not being an epidemiologist, but not stupid, either, I strongly suspect the Variant is out there, and it's going to come at the planet like an out of control freight train, aided, at least in this Country by the way governments are knuckling under to groups like the ones at Costco, putting political futures ahead of Public Health.
Takeaway 7: Not only are they delusional and ill informed, but they feel a compulsion to influence others to validate their reality.
There's kind of a rueful irony to expressing "one's freedom to petition one's government" with a request to "stop its tyranny".
Yikes!
Long time reader, first time commenter.
The logic of viruses indicates that a more deadly variant is probably not in the pipeline, at least from this particular strain of coronavirus. If a virus kills it's host, that generally prevents it from replicating as easily compared to one that merely makes the host sick and can transmit it (the less deadly strain) to others. The arc of these diseases is then ultimately less deadly, though perhaps more infectious.
The Spanish flu WW1 is an interesting example of a virus NOT behaving with that logic, but due to a purely human element. Troops who got severely sick with the deadliest versions of the Spanish flu on the front lines were transported away from the front to hospitals and cities sometimes hundreds of miles away. Instead of the deadlier variants killing the infected person and making it more likely that less deadly versions became common, people inadvertently helped spread the more deadly version significantly further than it would have ever gone in a non wartime situation in that era before prolific world travel.
All that being said, I am fully vaccinated and still wearing a mask.
Keep up the good work with this blog Peter Sage.
Eric Hoffer said it all in The True Believers, “ the Sauls flip to Paul’s ...anti Christian non believer to fanatic believer and enforcer. My next door neighbor bless her soul, went to a convention of women in Grants Pass where 20 churches met and found out the Truth of Covid- a plot to stop church goers from meeting and worshiping just like prayer being removed from schools. She saw charts, she learned people die of heart attacks and then are added as Covid death numbers. George Soros is behind the lies. My own son and his girlfriend stand up for their freedom to chose and refuse.. it is everywhere. My grandson has gotten his first shot. The young know better. ( I hope) He also knows about global warming. Prepare for your 6 month booster. The India variant is in the UK.
Post a Comment