Child Covid-19 Vaccinations Arrive In Oklahoma This Week
As if the last year and a half of arguing about microchips and Bill Gates, aborted fetuses and 5G wireless connections weren't enough in the arguments surrounding the Covid-19 vaccination, Oklahoma will toss an emphasis on child vaccinations this week as supplies arrive in the Sooner State.
Like most older millennials, I have a couple of Baby Boomer parents that have leaned further towards the conspiracy camp on Covid-19 and the various vaccines rather than trusting peer-reviewed science.
I blame it on their retirement. They have nothing to occupy their time, except to get their news from a Facebook feed and crazy infotainment entertainers on the cable news channels. Naturally, for them, Covid-19 is a political issue, not a health issue... which is weird considering how hard a time my father had with his round of the rona. He lead on that it wasn't that bad, but it was. I'm not sure if it changed his perception of the virus or not, we really don't talk much when we talk.
Months ago when the testing began on the effectiveness of the vaccine in children categorized as "under 18," I remember my mom being pretty upset that the hidden powers that be were now "going after the children" in whatever nefarious plot a new world order had in store.
Still, I don't blame them. They're like that grandpa or uncle that came up in a different time in this world. Things were different, people tend to grow more stubborn in their views with age, and I accept this as just normalcy to the human experience. I grew further into this belief late last year in a funny change with, as the Zoomers say "the rents..."
My siblings and I all have jobs where having time off around the holidays is rather rare. I wiggled my way into getting a few days before Christmas off and went home early to spend some time with my nephews. Unfortunately, as they grow older, they had other plans so I ended up just sitting around with my parents doing nothing for a few days.
While it wasn't a bad way to spend a day, the difference in sleep and meal schedules was awful, and the time we had together to just shoot the breeze kept coming back to one of my most hated topics to discuss, politics. Nobody likes to discuss politics, especially with their family. Even the sister that agrees with them doesn't agree all the time. I'm not political hardly at all, so it was torture.
Around this time, there was a video floating around with an emphasis that if you were to accept the Pfizer vaccine, it would modify your DNA, therefore, allowing Pfizer to have complete ownership rights over a person's physical body.
Yeah, this was a real thing. I mean, you know it was fake and totally false, but that was a real hit-piece of anti-medicine propaganda floating around. People bought into it because it was so well put together, production values were stonks.
My parents told me the roundabout theory about Pfizer modifying DNA and owning physical bodies and how it "was true" to which I replied, mouth probably agape "That's insane." Then what I was told made total sense of this wild child-parent cycle of sanity.
My mom said something like "You laugh, but we used to say the same thing to our parents about (some other crazy theory from forty years ago) and look at the world today..." That's when I realized this whole exchange was most likely pretty normal parent to child. I realized they had experienced the exact feelings I was in that moment at some point throughout their lives. It makes me confident that everyone probably has moments like this with the ones they love the most, and as it's not cool to air family laundry out in public, we generally just keep it to ourselves because what would level-headed people think?
Don't let me fool you, I see the irony in that statement too.
I know it's been a long way around the barn, but there's a point to my story here. As the child vaccinations roll out locally here in Oklahoma and the talking points take on the most insane levels of shenanary, try to keep in mind that the walk we each take to the facts is a different length for each individual. It's also normal for facts to change. That's primarily because most people present theories as facts, so I use that term loosely.
As we head into the big family holidays, try to remember that someones opposing view have zero effect on your own views and vice versa. There's no reason to make family time weird over something as trivial and unimportant as who has to be right.