I am all for free speech and a difference of opinion. It would be a boring world if we all thought – and did – the same things.
What I have a problem with is the way people use those opinions.
A local business was attacked this week for proudly heralding the fact that its small workforce was 100 per cent vaccinated.
The response to their boast on social media was appalling.
The Facebook post evoked over 500 reactions and comments – mostly negative.
The company was wrongly accused of sharing the medical records of staff, of coercing staff to be vaccinated and violating their human rights.
The facts are that the staff members were happy to get the Covid-19 vaccine to help keep themselves and others safe and be able to open up again.
The business owners knew they hadn’t done anything wrong and largely dismissed the comments of a “loud minority”.
It is important to remember that, although the social media negativity seemed large, it represented a minority view that platform algorithms allow to multiply disproportionately.
If someone with a particular view comments on a post it then attracts others swayed by the same narrative and the vitriol is then allowed to snowball.
What I find amusing is that these people decry their lack of choice and then bully those who have willfully chosen another path.
Our hospital ICUs are full of people who deny the existence of Covid-19 and then beg to have the vaccine they have previously refused before being put on a ventilator.
Those who go out of their way not to conform are actually the biggest slaves of conformity. Those of us who have happily had the jab are getting on with our lives as those who refuse get angrier and more selfish by the day.
Last week hundreds of people gathered at the site of the assassination of former US President John Kennedy back in 1963 under the banner of QAnon, which is described as a far-right conspiracy movement centred on false claims that a cabal of Satanic and cannibalistic peodophiles operate a global child sex trafficking ring that conspired against former US President Donald Trump.
They were gathered to await the arrival of JFK’s son John Kennedy Junior, who died 20 years ago, to stand alongside Trump as his Vice President in the next US election.
And these idiots think we’re the gullible ones!
Most of those who have jumped on the anti-vax bandwagon of late are equally delusional, absorbing and then pedaling nonsensical conspiracy theories that defy logic.
It’s time we stopped listening.
– Garry Howe
