Coexisting with Those that Participated in Discrimination and Segregation of the Unvaccinated
Pondering My Feelings on these Immoral and Unethical Actions
I don’t profess to know the answers to these questions and writing this article is honestly something of a therapeutic exercise for me to get my thoughts and feelings out and maybe make some sense of what has happened to society over the past 3 years and how I can happily coexist with the large amount of people who directly participated and supported the discrimination and segregation of the unvaccinated.
There are people in my life that took these actions against my wife and I who have yet to apologize or even acknowledge the pain they caused with their unethical behaviors, and I am not even sure I could forgive them if the did apologize.
As the discrimination of the unvaccinated recedes, when I meet new people these days, nobody asks for vaccine status, so I immediately wonder if these people participated in the immoral and unethical discrimination campaign. If I found out they were, I feel that I would simply walk away in disgust.
Feeling this way about people would be all well and good in my mind if I was a hateful person. But I am not, and I can typically find common ground with most people and have enjoyable times with them even when disagreeing. Unless, and this is a big trigger for me. Unless they are treating people badly, particularly people who are important to me. This is the only time I really risk losing my shit on someone.
And this is the current predicament I find myself in. Not only have these people treated others badly, its near par with some of the worst treatment of people we can participate in. While there was no widespread physical violence against the unvaccinated (some places there were), this was direct discrimination and segregation of a group of people for a medical choice, we might call this medical apartheid.
Even in the absence of violence, this is a first step on a very slippery slope we have seen the result of many times in human history, yet so many people are ignorant, naïve, blind, or actually want this to happen that it’s terrifying.
Some people have likely forgot, purposely or not, just how much discrimination was flung at the unvaccinated during the pandemic, so here are some examples.
This reached something of a peak when the Whitehouse released the following aggressively divisive statement, that by the way, was completely unsubstantiated by real world data.
Not that I had forgotten about how I was treated over the last 2 years, but a new study was recently published that brought this all back.
The study is titled Discriminatory Attitudes Against the Unvaccinated During a Global Pandemic, and comes to the following conclusion:
Stuff like this gets me very pessimistic about people in general, and I hope one day those who participated in this unethical, theatrical, fantasy world attack on human rights and freedoms and personal sovereignty and autonomy will realize their disgusting mistakes and hang their heads in shame…at the very least.
However, I am coming to realize that most of those who went down this road are likely to hold on for dear life to any shred of evidence that supports their actions, regardless of how nonsensical and ridiculous the evidence is. Because, to be clear, there is no unbiased, quality evidence to support anything that went on during this pandemic, especially the vaccination campaign.
They will hold on because they don’t care about the devastation they caused and/or participated in and just want confirmation bias and a tribe that agrees discrimination and segregation was the right thing to do. Or, they will hold on because deep down they cannot admit to themselves just how bad the things they did were.
How to Coexist is a Struggle
No matter how much I want to hate all these people and see them held responsible for what they have done I know this is not the solution (except for those in positions of authority who perpetrated this whole mess). You don’t fight fire with fire, and you don’t fight hate with more hate.
Plus, there is that saying, united we stand, divided we fall. Politicians/governments know this and try and divide us to gain/maintain power all the time, so I really don’t want to contribute to division as much as is reasonably possible.
I think I might be stuck at stage 5 at the moment, but I am really trying to get to stage 6!
I know some people are so entrenched in the narrative, ideology, and propaganda that they are definitely a lost cause, but these are the minority. There is still the silent majority in the middle that may come around to understand the objective reality of what happened and help make positive change moving forward.
So, for those family and friends that directly took discriminatory and segregation actions against me, I require the sincerest apology I have ever gotten, and if I must tell them this is needed, the apology becomes meaningless. Additionally, it doesn’t mean I will forgive them or ever trust them again, it simply means the door has now been opened for this possibility in the future.
For everyone else I meet and interact with, I will simply speak my mind (kindly) if the topic is brought up. I don’t want to burn bridges that were never built in the first place and there is nothing else I can do but continue to try and spread some objective truths about the terrible things that occurred over the course of the pandemic.
Hopefully this will increase the necessary discourse and cause some people to see what has really happened.
Maybe even welcome them into the world of the tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who have honestly had a pretty good run the last few years.
And maybe, just maybe, some fundamentally important values will come back into style.