Shortly after an old acquaintance of mine was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer, he met up with one of his close friends. Obviously, the diagnosis was a shattering blow to a kind and gentle soul, knowing that the treatment he was going to receive was palliative and not a cure, but his close friend thought otherwise. His cancer, she explained with the seriousness of a hospital consultant, had been caused by the Covid vaccine. Essentially, he had caused his own demise. Incredibly, she never made contact with him again while the cancer spread through his body and eventually killed him. She didn’t even bother to attend his funeral, assuming she even knew about it. I know this person only slightly and indeed have probably not seen her for well over 30 years but regard her as among the lowest form of life. The clear and present danger is that she is not the only one. These people live among us.
Not only do they live among us, they are many. That is borne out by the MMR vaccine uptake which has hit a new low, with only around 80% of five year olds having the full course of vaccinations. This means that children are susceptible to severe illness and in rare instances death, almost certainly because of ignorance and the consequent vaccine scepticism. Oh and from people, many of whom are otherwise intelligent, believing in things that aren’t true, like conspiracy theories.
Abandoned by his close friend, my old acquaintance became a close friend of mine as his condition worsened. Others stepped into the friendship void where one person had walked away. I learned that those of us who accepted overwhelming scientific evidence were, in fact, “sheeple”, which the dictionary defines as “people compared to sheep in being docile, foolish, or easily led.” I was, and remain, puzzled as to how those of us who are prepared to accept scientific evidence can be regarded in those terms whereas those who call us “sheeple” are content to believe wacky, unhinged nutjobs whose theories are based upon nothing at all, other than baseless conspiracy theories. But, like I say, they are everywhere.
A person I have known all my life, at least since I was an infant, has long disappeared down the conspiracy rabbit hole. It’s not just the anti-vax movement, it’s everything else, too, like Chem Trails, 9/11 so-called truthers, the ‘Cash Is King’ movement, the moon landings were fake, the world is flat and all the rest of it. One conspiracy theory can never be enough. Infamy, infamy: they’ve all got it in for me. And this person literally laughed at me when I explained carefully that there was not a grain of truth in any of the conspiracy theories – not one – but I too was one of the sheeple, easily taken in by the Mainstream Media (MSM). Evidence was not needed: it was all too obvious that there were sinister power brokers at work who had pulled the wool over the eyes of every single journalist on the planet, every politician, every security organisation and the entire world’s population, except them, of course.
I have come across other conspiracy loons – sorry: it is hard to be respectful of people who take this drivel seriously – and, memorably, one literally laughed at me when I was unable to explain in precise scientific terms what the mRNA vaccines work. “Well, how come you trust what’s in them, then?” at which point I gave up. I don’t really know the specifics of how paracetamols work either, nor exactly what’s in them, but actual experts do. I am not an expert on the theory of lift, either, which enables extraordinarily heavy aircraft to take off, but I have literally been aboard planes and I have seen it at work. I could give you any number of examples of how experts make life easier for us – I regard a plasterer and a bricklayer as being geniuses because I can’t do what they do because they are experts – but there’s no point. You either believe what’s true and what’s real or you lose your mind and believe things that are clearly not true and real and become a conspiracy theorist. When you blithely inform someone who has just received a terminal cancer diagnosis that it’s all their own fault that they followed the science, it doesn’t make you some kind of harmless conspiracy nutcase, it turns you into a dangerous, heartless, brainwashed sicko and if I ever had the misfortune to meet the person who cruelly abandoned my old friend, who died earlier this year, I am not sure I would have the willpower to hold back.
The reality is that we, who follow the science and put our trust in experts, are not the sheeple. The sheeple are those who set aside the need for evidence in order to prove what is real and what isn’t. If your heroes are the likes of Alex Jones and David Icke you need to give your head a big wobble. Mad, bad, ultimately very sad, cruel and increasingly downright dangerous, I’m afraid that many of them are well beyond rational debate and thus beyond persuasion and help. And if they try to become part of your life, it’s probably best to give them a very wide berth. They probably require urgent psychiatric help – don’t we all? – but would almost certainly regard that as fakery, too.
