An open letter to the Vaccinated

It's time we built some bridges, but there are conversations that need to happen

A lot of the people I want to read this will already be sneering at the title. I know, I understand. The last few years have been crazy, and division has set in deep. Please though, I ask you, hear me out, even though you may find that there are harsh truths incoming.

This isn’t what you probably think it is, but something different. This hand, whilst it might be pointing at you, has no hostile intent. In fact, it is stretched out towards you, in possible friendship and peace. The only question now is - what will you do? Is that even what you want anymore? For people to be somewhat unified again, to be a community, to be friends who help each other?

If it is, we need to have a serious conversation about what happened back there, and where we stand today as a result.

I chose to not get vaccinated for Covid. I had my reasons, they were numerous. I worked in risk at the time, I’m more than qualified to make that risk vs benefit assessment, and I made my call. A lot of people chose to go the same way as I did, and let’s be clear here - that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

I certainly try not to judge any of you that made a different choice, even though I know many of you judge me as a conspiracy theorist. After all, my own philosophy on the matter is that people should have the freedom to make medical choices. We were all presented a choice. I made mine, you made yours.

But just like someone who takes a new anti-depressant, or a weight-loss drug, or anything, really, if someone asked me “should I do this?”, I’d say “Do you want to be in one of the first batches? Maybe wait a bit, see how it goes?”. This just seems like common sense to me. Don’t be the lab rat, sometimes things don’t go well for them.

The pharmaceutical industry is, after all, not famed for its ethics, or looking after people it has injured with new products. In this, they’re not particularly different than any other corporation, but they do have an unusually high potential for harm when compared to other products, so a higher degree of caution is warranted.

So just like I’d advise against buying a new model series of car in its infancy, I’d usually advise a “wait-and-see” approach instead. Often the first versions of a product need some fine tuning, at least.

Sometimes though, they’re an unmitigated disaster. This has happened many times, it’s nothing new, sometimes humans mess up when making new stuff. It’s totally understandable, people make mistakes or are sometimes neglectful. Again though, when talking about pharmaceuticals, the risk for harm is unusually high.

In 2020, we were told that people in China were “dying in the streets” from a new type of flu. Quickly dubbed Covid19, the global population were basically told that an especially deadly type of coronavirus was a terrible threat to us all. At face value this didn’t seem an unreasonable proposition - there have previously been pandemics, and the notion of a particularly virulent pathogen wreaking havoc on the population isn’t one that is particularly difficult to swallow. After all it has been foreshadowed in movies for quite some time.

Most of us accepted what we were being told without much question. Most of us were just busy at work, and didn’t have time to delve into conspiracies about lab-leak origins, Bill Gates, 5g, and all the rest. It all seemed pretty reasonable, really. Maybe it did leak from a lab? That it didn’t change the situation much, there was still a new virus out there.

Then we saw China go into lockdown. This was probably the beginning of seeing something truly sinister begin to emerge. Footage from China of people having their doors kicked in, being dragged from their homes to be put into enormous quarantine camps whether they were sick or not, armies of “big whites” terrorizing the population, pets being killed, and so on.

I guess we all just looked on and thought “oh well that’s a totalitarian country what do you expect”, because even when footage emerged of starving people screaming from their apartment blocks (that they were locked into), there was no international outrage.

In fact, the Western World quickly moved to ape China’s response. On what scientific basis? None, as it turns out. Perhaps this is where humanity should have caught on, and the population said “hey put the brakes on, we’re not in communist China”, but I think the truth is that we all meant well.

We all wanted to help. So we went along with things.

I know I did. Early days I worked on several Covid-related projects in my industry and did so enthusiastically, thinking I was doing my part. It was there that I first got my first glimpses of something really not adding up though.

But our governments pleaded with us. They told us “We’re all in this together” and asked us to stay home for a few weeks to “flatten the curve”. Again, what with all the hysteria surrounding Covid, at face value, most of us simply accepted this.

In Australia, the government has always been somewhat of a nanny-state, but somewhat benevolent. It didn’t occur to many what would happen next.

In short, there was no really huge reason to think anything was seriously wrong. The response, whilst hysterical and overblown, wasn’t so disproportionate that it seemed unreasonable. So most of us, meaning well, just went along with things. Ineffective masks, standing on dots at the supermarket, and all the other ridiculous nonsense, most of us played along with parts of it, at the very least.

Then as time went by, things escalated and started looking quite a bit stranger. Lockdowns were glorified, many people citing them as being beneficial for the environment. Incredibly creepy videos of supposedly overworked but somehow also dancing healthcare workers began to emerge on social media.

Talk about a new vaccine happened almost straight away, within a couple of months. Those of us who pointed out that coronaviruses have never successfully been controlled with a vaccine were quickly shouted down, this was “new technology”, and it was going to save us all.

Some folks even tried to warn us and tell us that trying to vaccinate against a highly mutable virus was likely to create a bigger problem with immunity and variants. But nobody listened, the reports of people dying in their thousands in New York and Italy took precedence and Covid’s lethality was highlighted instead.

That’s where the alarm bells should have really started ringing. A new technology, against a new form of an old virus? The whole thing seemed instantly sketchy.

It was obvious to me and many others, straight away, that this vaccine was going to become a really big deal, and probably a massive failure too. Who took it, and who didn’t was going to become a defining feature in your future participation in society. Many of us tried to warn people that vaccine passes were incoming, but were laughed off as conspiracy theorists. I remember people telling me “they’d never get away with something like that in Australia”.

Governments paid massive amounts of money to “secure” these new vaccines and rolled them out as soon as they could. At this point, everything was voluntary, but also free. Getting the vaccine was marketed as a good idea, and as a neighbourly thing to do, as you wouldn’t then get the virus and pass it on to others.

Although later this turned out to be completely wrong, this all still seemed pretty reasonable, but then the narrative started shifting. It very quickly changed from “getting it is a good idea” to “not getting it is a bad idea” to “you’re a bad person if you don’t get it”. Good medical products speak for themselves and don’t require this sort of marketing, so this was a very suspicious shift in tone.

We watched in horror on social media as suddenly normal people started championing the notion of governments coercing ordinary folks with measures like no-jab, no-job mandates. What was a silly conspiracy theory a few months ago was suddenly not a conspiracy, but a great idea. The majority of the population, hypnotised by the TV, started literally hating the unvaccinated.

For those of us who hadn’t made up our minds about whether to take it or not yet, this was the final nail in the coffin. How can you “trust the science” when you’re looking down the barrel of a gun? Do you normally trust people who threaten you, and encourage hate against you?

I don’t know about you, but for me, that is a red flag!

It was probably at this point the great divide over the vaccine truly began. The old line of “We are all in this together” was quickly abandoned in favour of vilifying those who chose not to get the vaccine, in defiance of government mandates. The hate set in and many people gleefully got on board. Many are still on board, too.

This is the part we really need to talk about. Some of you did some really inhuman things back there, and truly did hate us. The sad truth too is that many of you still do hate us, and ultimately wish we’d died back there, during Covid, rather than surviving and proving that the vaccine was never necessary by our very survival.

Just pause for a second and think about that - many of you would rather see us dead than be proven wrong about your decision.

WTF guys…take a good long look in the mirror, if this describes you, you have some big issues to work through.

The very sad thing is that many of us got to see the true face of our supposed friends, colleagues and families, and what we saw was very ugly.

This chap summed it up very well, I think. Some things to think about, if you were part of this during this period. I know, I know, a lot of you didn’t descend to the levels he describes in this video, but stick around, because you’re not off the hook yet.

So during this period those of us who chose not to take the vaccine were hated and vilified. Celebrities derided us, mocked us, even wished us dead. Politicians called us names, and promised to make our lives a misery, and they certainly made an attempt at that. A lot of the general population just clapped, laughed and cheered as if this was all perfectly acceptable.

I will end this substack with a selection of examples of what I’m talking about. Take a look, take a really good look at what happened back there. I have so many of these that I simply cannot include them all, there is so much more.

I think those on the other side of the divide, if they haven’t already, should take a look at this material, pause for a moment, and ask yourself how you would feel if all this had been directed at you, not at somebody else?

Also ask yourself, if this happens again, what will you do? What the chap said back there was dead right, they ran a test on you. We slid into about stage 7 of the known Ten Stages of Genocide (link below), and many of you cheered it on, or at least meekly complied.

If you think they’d decided to take things further, how far do you think they would have got? After what I saw, I think it could have gone all the way as most of you would have simply done nothing at all.

Would the world have been a better place if such a cull had occurred, you think? Was the hate against the unvaccinated justified when you think about it in retrospect?

The 10 Stages of Genocide

Those of us who were subject to this hate will never forget some of you, of that you can be sure. It was an eye-opening experience for us, seeing people we previously respected, maybe even loved, shun us over a vaccine. We thought humanity was better than that, but we were so wrong.

Personally, I’ll never get that idealism and my positive view of humanity totally back, I think, and I think the same is true for many.

We need to be clear - the sort of behaviour and ideology we saw happen over these vaccines was completely unacceptable. For the most part, there has been no acknowledgement, self-reflection or apology about this from either celebrities, politicians and most importantly, the vaccinated public at large.

From some people, even apologies and accountability are unlikely to be sufficient to heal the wounds they’ve caused.

But again, I understand that this does not describe most of you.

What describes the majority better is - we were all up against a wall. We had to keep our jobs. We wanted to travel. We wanted to fit in. Or maybe we just didn’t want to be hated. The government’s constant message to be vaccinated in order to be a good citizen was heeded by many with the best of intentions. All that is perfectly understandable.

So some of you made a different choice to me. Some of you did so quietly, and didn’t even participate in any of the vitriolic discourse about the vaccines. Some of you just took the vaccines and got on with your lives, probably wondering what all the fuss was about. Some of you were actually decent enough to champion my right not to take it, but not many, far too many of you felt self righteous, so you didn’t mind seeing the rest of us going under the bus.

You are really the people I want to speak to today. I don’t hold much hope for the vaccine bigots, covid zealots and other Marxist crazies, but I think many of you normal people, who fit into the category I’ve described above can be reached, and I believe we can heal the divides and wounds we’ve inflicted on ourselves at the behest of malevolent governments.

My hope for the world rests on you folks, in fact, because the way we react to the next crisis is crucial for the future of humanity.

But we still do really need a chat. I’m sorry, but this has to happen. I want to mend these bridges and get on with life as much as you do, so we need to clear things up properly.

See, a lot of unvaccinated folks are really angry with you lot. Really angry, still. A lot of them simply put you into that hateful vaccine bigot category (which is silly), but there’s more to it than that.

There are arguments made out there that include “your compliance strengthened their tyranny”, and I think that is undoubtedly true. That said, in my view, people still did have their back against the wall, so personally, I’m not angry about that part. But you should realise, a lot of people are, and the greater harm done to them, the greater that anger.

Some of us have been harmed quite a lot. Broken marriages and lost homes, lost jobs/crushed careers, financial losses, public/reputational losses, criminal and civil penalties from authorities. Not to mention all the public shaming and insults, and being locked out of places, like some sort of lepers or vermin. You don’t forget stuff like that too quickly, I assure you.

It was despicable, I think we all need to face up to it so we can move on from it. Ignoring it is only going to make things fester.

So please understand, the anger is pretty palpable, and it’s likely to remain so until there’s some form of justice and accountability for what happened and continues to happen. How would you feel if someone in your family had been hurt, or if you’d lost thousands in income, or whatever? Of course you’d be angry, and wanting justice, payback, revenge and so on.

But this isn’t about that either.

See, the issue that I have with a lot of vaccinated people I know, ultimately, is a couple of things -

1. You stood silent, or maybe even had a chuckle, as your supposed friends were vilified, shut out of work and public venues. You did nothing, for the most part, most of you uttered not a word in our defence. You just let it happen through your inaction. You can bet that if the reaction to mandates and segregation based on vaccination status had been an overwhelming “you can get lost with that idea” from the public, it never would have happened. So those of you who were silent, and stood by and watched as it happened are indeed partly culpable not only for what happened back there, but what will happen next.

2. You refuse to talk about it openly, or in good faith. Now I’m not talking about random internet strangers here, I’m realistic, I know that good faith online conversations are actually a rarity these days. I’m talking about the disappointment I feel when people I care about and try to talk to simply switch off or don’t want to talk about what happened or the harms caused.

It feels to me like many of you just want to pretend it all just never happened, or if it did, it wasn’t such a big deal. Can’t we all just move on? I mean, isn’t that what we all want?

I hear that loud and clear, but some of you don’t seem to understand that there are many people out there who are still suffering, either physically from the effects of the vaccines, or in other indirect ways, such as loss of jobs, relationships, family goodwill, and so on. This suffering goes on amongst your friends and family, yet nobody wants to talk about it.

Martin Luther King famously said - “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”, and sadly that holds very true for many of us.

Whilst many of our friends didn’t outright condemn us, it seems some are happy to sit by and watch us be condemned by others, and say or do nothing.

So there has been real hurt and harm done, to thousands, nay millions of friendships around the world.

People are crippled by the vaccine, killed by it, some have committed suicide because they couldn’t deal with the effects. Others have been hurt in innumerable indirect ways. It’s all so horribly wrong, and because of propaganda, a taboo subject.

On the flipside, did the vaccines really help with anything? There are studies to suggest they did, but they’re all based on hypothetical mathematical models. The truth is there’s no real-world evidence of their efficacy other than those hypotheses, but plenty of mounting evidence suggesting they could be quite harmful.

Most of you have already stopped taking these shots, thank goodness. There were certainly plenty of us sounding the alarm. So ultimately, most of you ended up joining the ranks of us “antivaxers”, who were simply people like you, who made a different decision at what was admittedly a very strange and dramatic time.

But now that we’ve arrived at the same place (these vaccines aren’t needed, even if you don’t agree they’re dangerous), can we at least start talking about it? Can we at least acknowledge, for a start, that the segregation, mandates, insults and all the rest was…pretty messed up, when you think about it?

Can we publicise and make vaccine injuries a real community concern that the government can’t just sweep under the rug anymore? How about that?

Can we bury this vaccine-based division as the nonsense it is, once and for all?

Further, can we agree amongst ourselves, that if this ever happens again (which it undoubtedly will), we will:

1. Not give into government fear messaging and hate our fellow citizens and wish death upon them.

2. Stick up for whoever is being vilified (even if it isn’t you), by making your voice heard, stating you do not consent, and that you stand with those vilified.

3. Not agree to comply with rules that are patently stupid and make no common sense, and that if push comes to shove, we will unite against any further overt attempts to oppress us, and resist this time, like we should should have last time.

But if you’re vaccinated, and you’ve simply been avoiding this discussion with me, I want you to know this -

“I love humanity, and that includes you especially.

I want you on board. That’s why you’re my friend. That’s why I wrote this.

We can have this discussion in good will. Big things are coming, I want you to be a part of them.

I will welcome you with open arms.

I hope to hear from you soon.”

I’ll end with a snippet of a poem. Written not by me, but an avid covid cultist.

Even though we are worlds apart, these words have haunted me ever since, since I can relate to them so much. It ended like this:

But what I miss most
Is who I thought people were
Before all of this

It always makes me sad, that ending, because as much hope as I have for the future, I don’t think that can ever be fixed.

But I’m willing and happy to be proven wrong.

Thanks as always for reading, and I’ll be in touch again soon.