Fear of Vaccines

Screen shot from propaganda sent out via Facebook--
was it made and sent by Russian bots?

Five days after my friend Alicia's mother died, I decided to drive an hour from Santa Monica to Long Beach to visit her with flowers from my garden: magenta sweet peas, huge white Alaskan daisies, and a yellow-and-pink Chicago peace rose.

Of course, we stayed ten feet apart during the visit.  I stood at the gate to her property, and she sat on the front steps of her home.  We talked, and I wore a mask.

It was a relief to see her coping pretty well with this sudden death from the novel corona virus.  She was still teary-eyed at times but not sobbing with grief like last week.

I learned several things during our conversation.



1)  Alicia too had probably had Covid-19.  When her mother became ill, Alicia had been urging her sisters not to take their mother to the hospital.  

"If you take someone to the hospital, you will never see them again.  They will get Covid," she had argued.  

But Alicia herself was too sick to go tend her mother or prevent her from going to the ER.  She was weak and coughing badly enough that she had gone to see her doctor.  The doctor diagnosed bronchitis, prescribed antibiotics and inhaling steam, and sent Alicia home.

"If you are not better in three days, come back and I will test you for Covid," she told Alicia.  "If you test positive, I will put you into the hospital." 

Alicia took the antibiotics and bought a small inhaler to make steam.  She drank tea with lemon and lemon zest and honey and two capsules of oregano oil.  Within three days she was feeling well enough not to return to the doctor.  

2)  But Alicia was determined not to go back to the doctor in any case.

"If you test positive for Covid," a friend told her, "they will put your name on a list.  Everyone on the list will have to have the vaccine when the vaccines are ready.  And when they vaccinate you, they will also insert a chip in you to control you."

"If you have Covid, you don't need the vaccine," I argued.  I didn't even try to argue against the rumor of inserting a chip.

I remembered the headline of an opinion piece by Phoebe Danziger in the New York Times the day before: "A Vaccine Doesn't Work if People Don't Take It."

"A few families even buy into the conspiracy theory that microchips will be implanted into the vaccine...  social conditions like income inequality, educational disparities, racism and gender discrimination... have created a cultural climate in which vaccines represent so much more than simply immunization against infectious disease."


Alicia's fear of having her name put on a list may be partially the result of a year or two of being in the US sin papeles--without proper immigration papers.  Having one's name on a list could get you deported.

She had her green card when I met and hired her, but other family members arrived, and they all lived with a certain level of fear.  A government that keeps 11 million people in fear of deportation is not going to be trusted when it needs to immunize its population.

She has not been tested either for the virus or for antibodies.  (I lamely attempted to explain what antibodies are.)

3)  How do you combat fear and disinformation?

Alicia told me that she does not watch news on television.  "It's always people speaking against each other.  My husband and I, we just go to church and pray."

Without reading a newspaper or watching news reports, her only sources of news are items sent to her on Facebook or oral reports from trusted sources such as family, friends, and visiting pastors.

I thought about maybe giving her a subscription to La Opinion, a newspaper in Spanish owned by the Los Angeles Times.

Meanwhile, her adult daughter joined us as we talked about false information and rumors.

"Yes, like they're saying that Wayfair is part of child trafficking," said Ruth.  

"Yes!" I replied, my anxiety level rising.  I hadn't heard that rumor, but my daughter Roz told me later that this type of rumor is the PizzaGate of 2020.

4)  I learned that Berta will be buried at Rose Hill Memorial Park in Whittier.  

The cost for the mortuary services, coffin, and burial will be around $20,000.  The family has found a way to come up with the money, but the financial impact of these expenses during an economic downtown is significant.  

By the time we said goodbye and I returned to my car, I was exhausted.  The sun had set.

Multiply this family's pain and struggle by 138,000 deaths, and you begin to understand the dimensions of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Of course, if we had President Hillary Rodham Clinton instead of the fool currently in the White House, we would have far fewer deaths, maybe 30,000.  

She would have followed the protocols set up during the Obama administration.  She would have mandated masks and social distancing.  She would have used the Defense Production Act to mobilize industry to produce medical equipment such as N95 masks.

President Clinton would have worn a mask.  She would not have confused the public with lies.  

Berta might still be alive.  Alicia and her family would probably be willing to receive vaccines.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See previous posts in this series:  
https://marthaymaria.blogspot.com/2020/07/praising-god-sharing-virus.html
https://marthaymaria.blogspot.com/2020/05/misinformation-religion-during-covid.html
https://marthaymaria.blogspot.com/2020/05/praise-god-and-pass-virus.html
https://marthaymaria.blogspot.com/2020/07/christians-covid.html