by Colin Hyde
There are people who volunteer to take vaccines whose safety for human beings is unknown. They are the highest form of humankind, men and women who walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Oh yes, the Christ would have volunteered for a test jab. Anti-vaccine folk might argue that vaccines don’t have anything to do with the soul, and His kingdom was not of this world, thus He would have said if asked to get jabbed, get away with your Satan needle; but based on His life on earth, the bet has to be that He would have exposed His arm with no fuss. In His time here Jesus healed the sick, told the fishermen where the best spot was to cast their net, fed people who were hungry, and don’t forget how He stepped up when the people at the wedding had run out of wine.
Throughout time, people have watched what animals and birds eat, before sharing in the feast. Throughout time the rich and powerful have paid or forced people to taste their food. The Wikipedia names a number of those heroes who ate only after their food was tasted and the taster didn’t get sick or die. According to the Wikipedia, prominent among those who would not die from food that was laced with poison is Hitler, whose food taster, Margot Wölk, ate his food at 8:00 a.m., and if she didn’t drop dead, the food was sent to Mr. Hitler at his military headquarters. Another with a food taster is Putin, and the report says Obama was one of many recent US presidents who had people taste their food.
I would be proud to be one of those people who, in the service of mankind, volunteered to be a guinea pig for a medicine or vaccine, but I don’t know if I’d have been brave enough to step up when I was young and people depended on me. I think I would have voted for people on life sentence to take the jab instead. Prisoners and mental patients have been used in trials, but the ethics of that has been seriously questioned. If that still happens today, it would be clandestine.
Rats, rabbits, monkeys, guinea pigs and other animals are the involuntary stars to first test the efficacy and safety of medicines and vaccines. There are some animal rights activists who resist the use of animals as guinea pigs. But someone or “something” has to do it.
Long before people are enlisted for vaccine and medicine trials, monkeys, mice, and guinea pigs are exposed to them. After being proven effective and safe in animals, the treatment is then perfected in humans. Some vaccines and medicines that are proven safe in the animal trials will sicken a few people. There being no perfect thing under the sun, some people get sick from placebo, and a few people will fall ill during the trials. After further perfection, in the human guinea pigs, the treatment will be declared safe enough for the world. The medicines and vaccines developed in research labs have been miraculous.
The American Museum of Natural History says, “One of history’s deadliest diseases, smallpox is estimated to have killed more than 300 million people since 1900 alone. But a massive global vaccination campaign put an end to the disease in 1977—making it the first disease ever eradicated.”
The WHO’s story, “A Brief History of Vaccines”, says, “From at least the 15th century, people in different parts of the world have attempted to prevent illness by intentionally exposing healthy people to smallpox – a practice known as variolation … In 1721, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu brought smallpox inoculation to Europe, by asking that her two daughters be inoculated against smallpox as she had observed the practice in Turkey … In 1774, Benjamin Jesty makes a breakthrough. Testing his hypothesis that infection with cowpox – a bovine virus which can spread to humans – could protect a person from smallpox”; and “in May 1796, English physician Edward Jenner expands on this discovery and inoculates 8-year-old James Phipps with matter collected from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid. Despite suffering a local reaction and feeling unwell for several days, Phipps made a full recovery … Two months later, in July 1796, Jenner inoculates Phipps with matter from a human smallpox sore in order to test Phipps’ resistance. Phipps remains in perfect health, and becomes the first human to be vaccinated against smallpox. The term ‘vaccine’ is later coined, taken from the Latin word for cow, vacca.”
Aha, “Not everyone was on board with Jenner and his vaccine. Rumours circulated at the time that it would turn people into cows.” Sober, concerned people the world over recognize the tremendous importance of vaccines. Thanks to vaccines, smallpox, diphtheria, polio, tetanus, rabies,—the scourge of the earth, tuberculosis, Covid-19, and a number of other serious diseases have been contained.
I hear anti-vaccine folk talk a lot of foolish things. I believe they throw their bluster to deflect attention from the fact that they are “me, myself, and I”, NOT selfless. I’m not the type who swallows everything that comes out of the medical world. I won’t just jump out there and take a vaccine because they are about. I will ask questions about many of their panaceas. I’m old enough to be on the list for yearly flu vaccines. I don’t take them, and I’m not in line for more Covid-19 vaccines. But if the WHO says those vaccines are no longer an individual choice, it is essential to take them for the good of the people, they won’t have to order me to go get my jab.
It’s understandable that people of color are not too trusting of the Europeans; that’s because they are the architects of many atrocities perpetrated on people who look like us. But the UN is not the white world. The white in the UN is not for the supremacy of people who look like the Jesus phenotype that was concocted.
The world owes the vaccine guinea pigs, people who put their lives on the line with vaccines that have not yet been proven safe for human beings. Hey, I’m not too worried that my message here isn’t going anywhere. It doesn’t need to. If the WHO calls for any jab, I’ll go get it, and then I’ll join the Gestapo, go out to help hold down reluctant people so they get theirs.
Zodiac cherry picker
One of the first things that pops up whenever I open Google on my phone is a Zodiac reading. I hope I got that right, Zodiac reading. It came up once, I tapped it, and ever since it’s on my daily menu.
I recall when I was more involved in the village where I live, that the advice from the sages to villagers running to represent in the Village Council was that they ensure that their names appear as near as possible to the top of the list. Bah, many a good candidate got lost because their number was double-digit, and only 7 can make it. It’s fair logic that the first in line will get more eye time. So, this Zodiac is up there in my face, and I don’t complain, because sometimes it is quite entertaining.
I have heard that the first PM was big into numerology, which I think is Zodiac business. It is for certain that God is a mathematician first. God is lots of things; wait, God is everything, but first in line it had to be the math.
When it’s something nice and my Zodiac is in it, I read the entire paragraph. When it’s a bad trait and my Zodiac is in it, I skip quickly to the political and the sports news in the world. Ouch, I am so familiar, peeping in on the Zodiac readings, the characteristics part, that the architects, bully for them, put up a disclaimer the other day. I don’t remember the exact lesson, I just glanced at it, but the advice was, well, that people who buy into science aren’t into astrology.
The Times of India said, “Astrology, the study of how the stars and planets affect life on Earth, has been mingling with religious beliefs from way back.” The Times story said it is more prominent in Hinduism and Buddhism, and that today, “Horoscopes and zodiac signs are everywhere, but they are more like fun things to read than serious religious stuff. Modern astrology focuses more on understanding yourself than predicting the future.”
I see how this Zodiac could lead to a lot of mischief. I say, if you want to please someone and you know their Zodiac, you can go deeper, enter their daily forecast. If the special thing for the person you want to please says they will get ice cream today, there, you have the scoop. I don’t know if our first PM checked the counsel and the predictions. But our independence day is supposed to be based on numerology. I am not surprised. The NIP had a story that PM George consulted certain people to choose election dates, and on election night kyandl bon till daylight pahn Pickstock Street. The man used to win all the elections. I bet he helped make the Zodiac stock shoot up.
Essentially, we all have the same traits, but not in the same doses, and our character traits become more pronounced or are suffocated depending on the environment in which we grow up. I don’t want to get in a tangle here, so I skip out, for now.