J. B. Thompson

The jab reveals.

(The AR awakens from his months long sleep and greets his readers once again.)

In socially distanced conversations or otherwise, at the workplace, on Facebook, gossip by phone and text, in mainstream media or the media’s fetid shallows, whether one has had the jab(s) or what one says about it/them is not just a rorschach test but more like a lie detector with its scientific charting of data. The subject presents revelations that happy smiles and jocular badinage usually disguise. Friends surprise, even shock. Acquaintances and strangers annoy.

Titmarsh has had his — jab, that is. He taps his arm. “Felt nothing. Well organized. Can’t wait for number two.”

He and the AR are scheduled for the second one this month. “No question about it,” he cries. “Personal safety and a social duty.”

But what about those friends and acquaintances who reject being jabbed? They are unsure about its effect, they want to wait a while; or they believe they are strong enough to be safe; or they believe the numbers of infections and deaths are distorted or work in their favour; or they distrust governments and experts; or they are sure governments and experts are lying to them; or they hate Big Pharma; or they just want to get on with life and don’t want to think about dangers. And there are those who imagine microchips, laser beams from space, politicians murdering children in pizza stores, the shadowy cabals of Jews or Catholics or Muslims or socialists destroying their freedom and taking over the world, one jab at a time.

“Legislate it!” shouts Titmarsh. “Force them to be vaccinated. We can’t be safe as a society until we reach about 80 or 90 percent fully vaccinated.”

The AR has received vaccinations all his life, for polio, typhoid, typhus, mumps, chicken pox, smallpox, mad rabbit disease (did it work?), the flu, pneumonia, shingles, yellow fever, etc. He did not become autistic (or did he?), he did not hear the whisper of microchips in his stool samples, did not grow an extra tail (one is enough), has not slumped into a hypnotized zombie-hood (or has he?).

He remembers a childhood friend afflicted with polio, one day running with him in the fields, the next day his lying in an iron lung and eventually emerging sadly to walk with braces the rest of his life.

How should one approach the darker skeptics or refuseniks?

Perhaps by beginning with the assumption often forgotten that the human (and lepus) animal is imperfect (including the AR, and even Titmarsh!). And free will in the final analysis is an illusion. We are governed in our opinions by an infinite and ancient and mostly invisible catalogue of forces. Religious certainty notwithstanding, no mortal can be sure of anything. After which may come — should come — not doubt of everything but considered reflection of everything: the brave use of reason, tempered by tolerance and compassion.

It is less than common knowledge that passionate belief, whether belief in an orange president or a human-sized white rabbit named not AR but perhaps Harvey, will not submit easily or at all to rational argument.

And you are right
And we are right
And all is right, is right as right can be!

Where the emotions have gone, reason fears to follow.

But follow it must. Knowledge is always incomplete. The enlightenment’s job is never finished.

Turning away is no answer. Patience, quiet resolution and gentle example are.