An opinion piece: In which I descend into the sticky realm of polarity, climb upon my soapbox and do a bit of ranting

 “ People will never rebel against a system while they’re being successfully propagandized not to. It will never, ever happen.”

Caitlin Johnstone

“The extent to which we’re all policing each other’s voices right now shows how much we’re still operating within oppressor consciousness in which manipulating others to maintain safety and control is expected and encouraged.”

Aaron Rose

There are times when I find the mainstream narrative around our current situation so insufferable that I want to scream. Last weekend while attending a memorial for a dear friend’s mother I was talking with another friend about how she was doing and she talked about the virus, how both of her parents had contracted it and how much better things will be “when everyone gets vaccinated and we can just get back to normal again.” I stared silently at her, my full facial expression hidden behind a mask. When I told her husband I have no intention of receiving the vaccine he stared at me with the same quiet judgement in which I had just stared at his wife.

Here we are. Backed into a corner for almost a year of pandemic lockdowns, sold the idea that now that the glorious vaccines have arrived, we can breathe a sigh of relief.

It is a narrative that I was expecting to be sold to us when I lost my job last March. I wasn’t wrong. Those of us who are skeptical of said narrative or plan on never receiving the jab are seen as the problem by those who truly believe that this is what will end our plight.

Maybe it will.

That remains to be seen.

The fact remains that I have no interest in hopping on the “Let’s put all of our eggs into the rushed vaccine basket” bandwagon.

What I find so frustrating is how much money has been poured into fast tracked and experimental (MRNA) vaccines and how little has been spent on treatments in comparison. According to the New York Times recent article titled 

 “How the Search for COVID-19 treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead.”

“The government poured $18.5 into vaccines, a strategy that resulted in at least five effective products at record-shattering speed. But its investment in drugs was far smaller, about $8.2 billion, most of which went to just a few candidates, such as monoclonal antibodies. Studies of other drugs were poorly organized.

“The result was that many promising drugs that could stop the disease early, called antivirals, were neglected. Their trials have stalled, either because researchers couldn’t find enough funding or enough patients to participate.”

This article also pointed out that in many cases “researchers have been left on their own to set up trials without the backing of the federal government or pharmaceutical companies.”

Last March Rachel Maddow interviewed  Dr. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia School of Public Health. In the interview, Lipkin acknowledged that our national priorities for tackling the pandemic were being driven by a desire to create new patents and in turn, new profits.

Lipkin told Maddow:

“We are not investing as much in tried and true classical sort of methods, repurposing drugs and strategies that have already been shown to work. Most of our investment is in things which are sexy, new and patentable.”

Money talks and when we follow its tentacles of influence, in this case the money of pharmaceutical companies and its influence in science and medicine, our collective conditioning to “trust the experts” gets complicated. Four years ago NPR published  this article  https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/17/510226214/from-twitter-to-treatment-guidelines-industry-influence-permeates-medicine

and I highly recommend reading it. One quote that stood out to me: "The very way we all think about disease—and the best ways to research, define, prevent, and treat it—is being subtly distorted because so many of the ostensibly independent players, including patient advocacy groups, are largely singing tunes acceptable to companies seeking to maximize markets for drugs and devices," researchers Ray Moynihan and Lisa Bero wrote.

It’s complicated, it’s maddening and the medical industrial complex, so controlled by  the pharmaceutical industry, does not hold our best interests or our health as a priority . I do believe that human beings that work inside the industry do have good intentions and DO have our best interests at heart, but the machine from which they are operating within is so disconnected from a truly holistic vision of health. Indeed, the whole narrative around this virus from the start has not been about our health. In my opinion, it has been about controlling the narrative through fear and putting profit over people as per usual. Empowering people with knowledge about our immune systems and simple steps to take to treat early symptoms are not profitable and therefore not a priority. I know that many people are being told they must receive this vaccine to stay employed, and many others who are gladly being injected by what they see as a legitimate prophylactic, here to protect them and the most vulnerable. I pray that they are right and that their health remains intact. 

But I digress (finally).  Most days I try to unhook myself from the polarity of politics, policy and blatantly profit driven “solutions.” Today I am tired, premenstrual and weary of people I love buying into a narrative that I find insufferable. I fully acknowledge that my opinion is undoubtedly insufferable to many people I love and beyond. Whenever I feel myself judging others I know it’s time to go within and start loving the parts of myself that need people to be somewhere else than exactly where they are. Manipulation of perception and instilling a sense of fear and separation is and always has been an agenda, and a very powerful tool of control. Sometimes I play right into it.

So back I go into my cave. Full of literature, cats, cooking, parenting, poetry and music. I will be meditating, practicing truly listening to those I disagree with, finding grace during turbulent times, tapping back into the quantum field of potential and dreaming a new reality into existence. You know, hippie shit.