Amid last year’s terrible parade of death and tragedy, making it at the saddest and most upsetting of my life, my main emotion was sadness. Perhaps, I didn’t have room in my heart for anything else? I remember each death with great sadness, yet with one of the deaths, I seem to have maintained a level of anger that just won’t go away.
This morning, I read a fascinating article about how the Covid-19 vaccine does not just protect a pregnant woman, it also offers a level of protection to the unborn child, which can extend into the first five months of a child’s life. It reminded me of an old friend who died after long, lingering struggle with cancer. I saw a great deal of him as his condition deteriorated, which is more than could be said of someone who was supposedly a far closer friend to him than I was. Let me explain.
When my friend was diagnosed with Stage Four cancer, he met up with his friend as he had done for many decades, but this is where things began to take a disturbing turn of events. She reacted to the diagnosis in a way which I found to be utterly grotesque. The first thing she asked him was whether he had taken the Covid vaccine. Of course he had. Like most people, he had faith in science and medicine and did not hesitate to get the jab when it was offered. At the height of the pandemic, the death toll from the disease was terrifying. Vaccines saved lives, maybe my friend’s, who knows? But his friend took a radically different view. Bluntly, she told him that his cancer diagnosis was his own fault because he had taken the vaccine. The vaccine, she assured him, was the likely reason for his terminal diagnosis because the government, scientists and the medical profession were hiding the truth from the people. Vaccines kill. He never saw her again because she walked away.
My friend explained that she had been brainwashed by her boyfriend, who was a serious conspiracy theorist. He absolutely believed in the power of ‘The Deep State’, that 9/11 was an inside job, that man had never been on the moon, that the Holocaust was a hoax, that we were secretly controlled by lizards, that Princess Diana was murdered by the Duke of Edinburgh and so much more and that – gasps for breath – my friend, and everyone else who dismissed these bonkers theories on the grounds there was no evidence to suggest they were in any way true, were actually “sheeple”, gullible victims of the Illuminati. With regard to my cancer-stricken friend, who had been incredibly kind and generous over a very long period of time, she no longer wanted anything to do with him. She never once visited him, didn’t bother to attend his inevitable funeral, assuming she knew about it at all. I expect she would have said it served him right. I am not sure I should share what I think about her on a family-friendly blog.
I have no idea just how many conspiracy theorists there are, but I am imagining quite a few. My oldest friend succumbed to the conspiracy-theory world long before the pandemic and I have not seen her since. We shared so much history in our lives and were for a long time very close, like the brother and sister neither of us had. But then, along came Chemtrails, weather control and warfare and, of course, the danger of vaccines and our friendship, heartbreakingly for me, was not able to survive it. When anti-vaccine protestors marched through Bristol, I saw an old work colleague pass by. An old friend’s wife refused to allow their son to take the MMR vaccine because – you guessed it – she had been convinced it causes autism (it doesn’t). These were not ignorant, uneducated people. They were people with university degrees, serious intellects, on the face of it far smarter than me, yet they were believing in things that palpably were not true.
Today’s ringing endorsement of how Covid vaccines are not just safe but beneficial for the unborn baby fills me with joy. I do not pretend to understand the science, any more than I understand how paracetamol works, but that most reviled group of people, experts, do understand so I go along with them. Just like I go along with the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter, the plasterer and every other expert who does things I can’t. It is not a leap of faith for me to accept the words of expert virologists as it is expert plumbers. I am not clever enough to pick and choose. So, why do others?
I have not seen my friend’s friend for over 30 years, nor would I ever wish to, not least because I could not guarantee I wouldn’t say something she might regret (I wouldn’t). Treating someone who was going to die of cancer, a supposed friend, the way she did was unforgivable and no expression of regret, or even apology which never came, would do. There, writ large, is the sick world of the conspiracy world, that unhinged, dangerous and downright harmful world where untruths somehow become true and the truth doesn’t matter.
These people are out there, on every street corner, it seems, groomed and brainwashed, likely for life. They are the true victims in all this, not the ones who believe in what is true and what is real. Vaccines didn’t kill our friend: cancer did. So, don’t tell lies about it, particularly to the person who is dying of it. I miss my friend, a gentle and kind man. My thoughts will always be with him and not some idiot who lost not just her mind, but also her heart. In it’s own way, there’s en element of sadness, even tragedy, about that, too, but I can’t be bothered with that. Believing what isn’t true is a choice. Dying of cancer isn’t. And that’s where the story ends.
