A Buddhist’s Position on the Coronavirus, the Vaccines, and the Mandates

     I’m pretty sure that I’ve written about my attitude toward the recent pandemic before, maybe as long ago as last year (plus one comparing the irl pandemic to the one in Stephen King’s novel The Stand); but this pandemic is a big deal, arguably rather important, and I feel like writing about it again. When I first wrote, assuming that I did, and I seem to remember vaguely that I did, the vaccines, and also the attempts of various governments to persuade or coerce everyone to be vaccinated, were not such an issue. So this little essay or diatribe or whatever will be a review of my position as a red-pilled western Buddhist person.

     With regard to the origins of the virus (the Wuhan flu, the lung pao sicken, Chinese pulmonary syphilis, the boomer remover, the ‘Rona, the coof, etc.) my opinion is essentially unchanged from the first few months of its (the virus’s) infamy. It has always been fairly clear to me that the virus probably leaked out of a laboratory in China. Also it has always seemed very likely to me that it was genetically modified to make a bat virus communicable to humans. Also it has been common knowledge, or should have been, that the charlatan and and criminal against humanity Dr. Anthony Fauci was involved in overseeing experiments conducted on bat viruses, including gain of function research, at the Chinese laboratory back during the Obama administration, although of course he lies about it continually nowadays.

     Whether the virus was unleashed intentionally or not I don’t know, and personally I am inclined to doubt it. The Chinese are slipshod enough with their health protocols to account for the disaster. I consider the opinions of Internet commentator Styxhexenhammer666 to be worthy of consideration, but I am very skeptical of his theory that the Chinese developed the virus specifically for the purpose of wiping out their elderly citizens, for the sake of eliminating a huge burden on a Communist economy and healthcare system. What I consider to be slightly more likely is that someone, possibly even someone working for Dr. Fauci, unleashed the virus for the sake of preventing arch-nationalist Donald Trump from winning a second term. The globalists, the left especially, but neoliberal and neoconservative politicians too, have shown themselves quite willing to sabotage grotesquely their own nation, and civilization as a whole, for the sake of furthering their own corrupt agendas. But I consider a stupid mistake by one of the Wuhan lab workers to be the most likely cause of the spread of the virus.

     My main worry about the virus over a year ago was that, since it was genetically modified (allegedly the outer spikes of the virus were modified to allow them to more easily penetrate human cell membranes), I was concerned that it could have been an escaped bioweapon. Even though people were mostly recovering from the flu-like symptoms I thought maybe infected people might, in a few years or so, start melting or turning into zombies, or some such. But now it seems more likely that the virus was in a preliminary and experimental stage of development, and may not have been moving in the direction of bioweapons anyway, and so it probably isn’t any more dangerous than a natural virus of the same type. Fauci still belongs in prison though, but there are so many unpunished villains and felons in American politics at this point that it is unlikely that he will ever have justice dealt to him in this lifetime.

     So at this point we appear to be stuck with a new disease that on the one hand could not and cannot be stopped from becoming endemic around the world, though on the other hand it has a mortality rate of a fraction of 1%. It is mostly people who are already very unhealthy who die of the virus; otherwise it can be anywhere from resembling a nasty case of the flu to literally asymptomatic. The disease finishes off people who are at the verge of death anyhow, which is not nearly so bad as, say, a disease that kills otherwise healthy children.

     Consequently, I see the shutting down of national economies during the shutdowns to have been totally unnecessary and symptomatic of a degenerate, spineless population. The human race has dealt with plagues and pestilences for thousands of years, since we became urban animals at the latest, and mostly during prescientific times when people literally didn’t even know how to cure them, how to prevent them (aside from just avoiding others), or even what caused them. Yet now, with a mortality rate at a fraction of 1% overall, a timid and degenerate generation cowers in fear and hysteria, and the globalist establishment and their lackeys in the media whip up that fear and hysteria to control us. It’s essentially like a contagious, bad form of influenza, no worse than many others that have existed, and somehow we have allowed it to wreck the American economy, and deprive people of common human rights, just for starters.

     It always seemed to me that former President Donald Trump knew all this, but he was unable to treat the virus as it should be treated—with caution and common sense but not with mass hysteria and nationwide shutdowns—but he also knew that the globalist establishment hated his freaking guts and would blame him for every single case of sickness and death, which of course they did. (Now of course the recently installed incompetent figurehead of a President is NOT held accountable for the increased number of deaths under his watch, but rather Republican governors and Republican voters reluctant to be vaccinated are alleged to be the murderers.) Anyway, Trump scrambled to have vaccines developed, which leftists at the time said they didn’t trust and wouldn’t take, because Orange Man Bad.

     Now, with regard to the vaccines, I am of the opinion that whether one takes them or not should be a personal choice. I personally trust my own immune system against a disease that is very unlikely to kill me more than I trust the hastily developed vaccines. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the vaccines are as dangerous, especially to people not particularly in danger, than the virus itself…especially if booster shots and new vaccines designed to cope with new strains are continually foisted upon us. The people who claim that the unvaccinated are evil and are trying to kill Grandma are essentially indoctrinated fools or amoral indoctrinators as far as I can see, considering that anyone who doesn’t want to get sick is free to take the vaccine if they choose. Arguments that if everyone were vaccinated the virus would die out, or somehow at least stop mutating (as coronaviruses naturally do, just as the common cold, also caused by a coronavirus, does, so that to this day there is no vaccine for it), strike me as unrealistic. The virus is already endemic throughout the world and is mutating fairly rapidly, and it seems as unlikely that it will be wiped out as it is that the common cold will be wiped out—possible someday, but not realistic at present. Especially with an open southern border with infected illegal immigrants flooding in practically unchecked and resettled throughout the country by the same crooks who insist that it is conservatives wary of the vaccine who are the real vectors of disease.

     Orthodox Theravada Buddhism is not at all opposed to people, including monks, taking medicine for health, nor does it require them to do so. Vaccines presumably didn’t exist in the Buddha’s time, but even if they did I doubt there would be any injunction against them. Alleged fetal cells in the vaccines may be an ethical complication, but still I feel that receiving or not receiving the vaccine is pretty much ethically neutral (depending on motives), and should be a matter of personal choice.

     On the other hand, there is evidence that the vaccines are not nearly as safe as they are claimed to be, and dangerous side effects do occur. And of course there is no way to know at present what the long-term effects of the vaccines are, or the long-term effects of taking them over and over at the commands of corrupt and dishonest governments. For many people I really think the vaccine may be more dangerous than the virus—much as the lockdowns very probably caused more deaths through suicide, intoxicant abuse, health issues untreated because of the widespread house arrest, etc., than they prevented from the virus which, as I say, has a mortality rate of a fraction of 1%.

     Recently various governments have begun pressuring their citizens mightily to be vaccinated—to the point that vaccination is virtually compelled. People are required in some parts of the world to show proof of vaccination even to buy food. This is justified by whipping up the populace into a mass hysteria of fear, with fear resulting in sheeplike obedience, because if everyone does not get the vaccine then somehow those who voluntarily received the vaccine will die anyway.

     With regard to these attempts at mandatory vaccination of 100% of the population (except maybe for the illegal immigrants), I think there is probably some truth to the idea that it is simply a ruthless, Machiavellian attempt by globalists to control the hearts and minds of a population that no longer believes in much of anything else to unify them in obedience to the ruling class. Then again, much of it is no doubt the result of female “Karen” politicians treating their subjects like children and forcing them to take the bad medicine for their own good. And of course these same Karens are cowards who would rather sacrifice personal rights and freedoms for the sake of security from anything marginally scary.

     So although I have no quarrel with people who volunteer to receive the vaccine, and I can at least comprehend the rationale of pressuring medical staff at hospitals and nursing homes to receive it for the sake of the very health-compromised people with whom they come into contact, even so I consider mandatory vaccines even to people who consider them to be unethical (like maybe because of the alleged fetal cells used in their formulation), to be unethical, and unjust, and something to be justifiably resisted and defied.

     In conclusion, as a Buddhist, I would say that caution is called for, and relatively frequent washing of hands, and not touching one’s face after touching a public doorknob, and coughing into the crook of one’s elbow, and so on; but that fear and worry are akusala kamma, that is, they are unwholesome mental states conducive to more suffering than a mere coronavirus. If you look after Dhamma, Dhamma looks after you, which is a philosophy I have lived with for many years. I refused to take vaccines even when living in tropical Asia (though I admit that I’d be dead several times over by now if I hadn’t taken anti-malaria medications). Do what you think is right, and if an obviously authoritarian government begins forcing you to do what you think is wrong, you really ought to consider some peaceful non-cooperation. And if enough people do the same, then any law that is resisted will be unenforceable. And if people hate you for it, well, they’re the ones who are the haters.

     May all who read this be well and healthy.

Murder Hornet vs. Coronamonster