Show the Mark

There has been much brushing off of Covid ‘passports’ as merely more tinhat foilery. Yet, in Australia, Quantas have already declared you are not getting on their planes without proof of vaccination. To their rare credit, Ryanair will impose no such restriction. So far.

In America, Dr. Faust has insisted that mandatory vaccination for travel is not off the table. The UK government has said it has no plans for a Covid passport but has commissioned two pilot schemes to see how it could work. Quite a few companies, worldwide, are going to demand proof of vaccination as a condition of employment. Others are not making it compulsory but offering bonuses to those who accept it.

There is a really hard push to implement this. Why? Money, mostly.

This is the equivalent of ‘we just want a nonsmoking area in restaurants’. It’s the foot in the door. You know, surely, that mandatory medication will not be just this one vaccine, right?

It isn’t going to stop there. The first thing you will notice about your shiny new Covid passport is that it has multiple blank pages where the next vaccine, the next medication, the next drug you need to be ‘safe to travel’ can be stamped in. Oh, it’s ‘for the safety of other people’ now. This is no different to the old ‘for the cheeldren’ mantra. It’s bollocks. If the vaccine works you can’t catch the disease even if nobody else is vaccinated. Any other response means you know the vaccine doesn’t work – so why did you get it?

This virus is less deadly than flu and far, far less deadly than measles and many other diseases. So why compulsory vaccination just for this one? It’s that foot in the door. You accept compulsory vaccination for this one, and next thing you hear is ‘Oh but this and this and this are even more dangerous, you have to be compulsory vaccinated against them too. And you need blood pressure control and sugar level control and cholesterol control and…” The list will never end.

New Scientist spotted this several decades ago. There is no money in curing disease. There is endless money in treating disease. Type 2 diabetes? Lose weight, change your diet, it’ll go away as long as you haven’t completely wrecked your pancreas. Type 1 doesn’t, I’m afraid. You’re born with that one. Ah but it’s so much better to live on your preferred pizza and chocolate diet and also take these pills. High blood pressure? Stop watching the news for a start. That’ll help. Ah, but you can flob out in front of the TV with a beer and some pills. Keep watching TV. Keep taking the pills. Watch the profits roll in. Watch the greenbacks tumble.

People imagine that pharmaceutical companies are there to help them. No. They are not. They are there to make money. That is their only goal. You are the ones they make money from, but if they cure you, the money stops flowing.

It is the dream of every pharmer that you will be forced to take their product forever. Sounds bad?

Well, what if McDonald’s or Coca-Cola could persuade government that you had to have at least one Crappy Meal or glass of chemical fizz every day or you won’t be allowed to get on a train? Do you think they’d turn that opportunity down? Of course it won’t happen, they can’t claim any medicinal benefit but if they could…

…then they’d be Pharmers. Feeling ill? We have a treatment for that. You’ll have to take it forever but it will improve your life (note that in some cases of chronic illness this is true). Nowadays it’s ‘Not feeling ill? We have a test to see if you are,’ and so many dopey fuckers have fallen for it. Pharmer boardroom cleaners must be sick of cleaning laughter piss off chairs. How the hell did non-sick people get convinced they have to be tested for something when they’re not sick at all?

It was the ‘asymptomatic spread’ which has now been repeatedly shown to be not a thing at all. The ‘masks protect others from you’ when they actually achieve nothing and even if they did, if you don’t feel ill you aren’t spreading anything. If you are ill with a virus the mask won’t stop it anyway.

People are now demanding a vaccine that the makers say won’t stop them getting the disease, won’t stop them spreading it, but might make their experience a little less uncomfortable.

I have been vaccinated against tetanus, polio, so many other things. They all promise a good chance of me not getting the disease at all and if I do, it’ll be trivial. They promise I won’t be spreading it. The only exception was rabies vaccine which only promised it would give me enough time to get to a hospital. Since rabies makes Covid look like a bit of a sniffle, I took those odds.

Now, Pharmers are immune to prosecution in a way you could only hope to be from any disease. They don’t care if it’s safe. They don’t care if it kills more of you than the disease it’s supposed to prevent. Neither do their shareholders. It’s not going to cost them anything if the vaccine for a 99% survivable virus has a 99% kill rate. Not. One. Penny.

Do not imagine that the business of pharmacology cares about your health. They care about money. Nothing else. You are going to need the Mark of the Beast to do anything soon, the proof that you have taken the Pharmer dose of this week’s drug.

You are of course free to scoff and ignore me, and I genuinely hope you are right to do so.

But you aren’t.

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I haven’t run a competition for ages. There is a line in an old song in there. Band and song name, year for a bonus mystery gift. If you find it I’ll send you three books of your choice from Leg Iron Books.