i don’t mean to sound pompous or anything, but if this really needs explaining, then i don’t think most people on twitter could probably pass kittengarten…
I would add "A republic is where I draw a line on a sand and say 'This is the hill I am willing to die on. If the government is going to take my rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness away from me, then let them come and try and take them, because I will not willingly surrender them. I will not live in a world without those freedoms, and neither will anyone who tries to take them away from me.' I think more and more are coming around to such a point of view." Interesting times ahead, like it or not.
I'm still waiting to hear what my oh-so-reluctant employer is going to do now that Biden's mandate has been put on hold. They told us, "It's not us, it's the mean Mr. President who is forcing us to require the vax. We promise that we'll stop if a court strikes down the mandate." Yet I check my email today and, crickets. Hey, Mr. CEO, are you gonna pause the vaccine mandate or what?
At my company they were supposed to go back to the office in September, no vaccine mandate. Since then it's only the threat of vaccine requirement coming anytime soon. Did corona changed so much since September ? Don't think so ... They change their mind and rules every 3 months or so and we are suppose to follow. Fu** that.
And imagine... this is the most deadly, world ending virus in world history (I'm being sarcastic, but they aren't) and even in the middle of the most deadly, life ending, world ending "pandemic".... we do have the option to move the dates around on the so-called solution. Unreal. 15 days to flatten the curve...
Coworker said they were going to turn off our pass cards Dec08 if we didn't update the internal database w/ vax info. dunno if I believe it since there hasn't been an email to that effect. Guess I'll find out soon enough.
Thank you for posting this. I knew that a framework of this sort existed, but I didn't know what it was called and just how exactly it matches what has been happening to our society.
WHO ARE YOU --- Bad Cat? I want to know more about you. I want to support you! I'm paying $6 a month to Alex Berenson. Can't I do the same for you?!?!?!!
Blanks are for the "special" people. lol Oh, I mean "sophisticated" people (as was said of the maskless people at several "high society" parties over the last year. Disgusting.
My favorite are the images of the "special people" going maskless at their fancy parties, while their servants are forced to run around in matching uniforms and plain black face masks. It's the elitist fantasy come true.
I'm with you, and in some senses this policy might be the fastest way to make completely obvious that fallacies related to jabbed and non jabbed. No unjabbed present, who else do they blame when the case/hosp/death rates increase again?
I sincerely hope so. In the Netherlands they want to move away from allowing unvaxxed to access the same facilities with a negative test. Once they remove that option, "cases" will likely go down as testing goes down. So they can say, "see it was the unvaxxed! the vaccines work!" SMH Unless hospitalizations rise and we have transparant numbers, it won't help the cause. Right now people are panicking about the cases while hospitalizations remain relatively low.
It's been blown into the open now, but libs have never supported choice. Just think of a policy, any policy, and ask if the libs are for more or less freedom. They have always wanted to mandate or prohibit. Even on matters of sexual perversion, they have mandated their way, and prohibited alternative policies.
As regards government heavy-handed response to the pandemic, true. However, like many words, the term "liberal" has essentially turned into the exact opposite of its original meaning. Originally, "liberal" (now sometimes called classical liberalism) meant generally an advocacy for more rights for the individual. There still are vestiges of this, for example in the legalization of marijuana in some areas. I have no problem with individual freedom of choice or action, but only in private spheres. I'd term such an attitude "libertarian." (note the lowercase "l"). Modern liberalism is more about claiming to champion some underdog, but almost always, any proposed remedies require laws essentially granting special rights to a "protected class" and/or taking away what previously were rights of other groups. I'm not saying the distinction is always easy. For example, when States routinely discriminated racially in voting tests, that would be a clear denial of rights. But what about private affairs? Long ago, there was right to freedom of association. And yes, employers, landlords, etc. excluded against certain groups. But did they have a right to? I will leave that up to you. But please note a distinction between government and private spheres. At best "democracy" becomes the dictatorship of the 50%+1; at worst, it becomes something unrecognizable from tyranny.
I wonder how many people would understand the difference between choice and coercion if women were required to be impregnated and bear children every year.
coercion is sooooo ugly!!! here in NZ, people are crying when they go to get the jab to save their job. the govt here says they're disgusted when that happens, because those people are listening to misinformation. it's going to get uglier here at the end of this month.
Pretty sure JFK warned about this.. we've been on a fast track with exploding covert powers and security theater since 9-11.. all in the name of keeping us safe we have grannies patted down at the airport now we have medical screening too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpmi7dBet0c
It's the soft tyranny we're living under. There is no crime in being unvaccinated, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished for "choosing" not to get a vaccine.
" don’t think most people on twitter could probably pass kittengarten"
Didn't you get the memo? Twitter is a giant crèche so that people don't have to talk to deranged "journalists". Think of it as an IRL containment board.
It’s completely unfathomable that smart educated people have turned into diehard fascists who have no clue the damage they are inflicting on our social fabric. I don’t even want to go to restaurants with these people. You can have your “social lives” with other sociopaths. I’m happy to stay home at this point….
In their own minds these people are righteous. They are punishing the disobedient for the greater good. It's a crusade of sort for them. They remind me of church dwellers in Silent Hill movie.
Gato has noted many times that he does not need/want the money...many of us have volunteered more than once. But the other things you have to share...hmmm...out of my league. :)
If that's the case, he might suggest other places to donate to, in support of our revolutionary movement. "In lieu of flowers, the family requests that mourners purchase small-arms ammunition, canned food and a country retreat." Perhaps? 😏
Thanks for this. I'm a recent subscriber, and I didn't see any way to "contribute". boriquagato would be worth supporting. It's good to know I can direct the resources elsewhere (unityproject, deborah conrad, for example). One can only subscribe to so much.
Driving is what I always use for a comparison. I tell people I'll get the vax when they give up all forms of vehicular travel (including trains, bicycles, and mopeds). Usually changes the subject pretty quickly.
When arguing against relying on alarmist media trumpeting of COVID-19 statistics, I often use driving (actually, auto accidents). My point usually is that we don't judge the safety of car transit solely by counting the number of auto accident victims who pass through emergency rooms. Author Rolf Dobelli in his book "The Art of Clear Thinking" calls this the fallacy of the silent [overlooked or ignored] evidence. Air travel is another common metaphor. No passenger wants to plunge screaming to a fiery death, but decades of statistics tell us that that risk is literally one in several millions. If the risk were one in several thousands, I suspect a lot fewer people would willingly board a jumbo jet. But apparently billions of people are willing to take an experimental jab that seems* to have death/morbidity risks of the same order.
*It's hard to tell, because governments are not exactly making it easy to collect such data. You'd think monitoring public health, especially with a novel unproven "vaccine" would be a top priority of the so-called "public health" agencies, but on-the-ground reports seem to indicate quite the opposite. Makes one wonder just what the hell is going on!
I see people driving on the roads using their phones all the time. I'm sure most of them took one heroic jab or two to save humanity, but can't for the life of them put down their phones while steering a fucking death metal machine. Seriously, fuck all of them! The ones who took it voluntarily and the ones who succumbed to pressure.
Yep. I don't know the precise term (Is there a psychologist in the house?) but call it misestimation of true risk. Like the three-pack-a-day smoker who is worried about radon gas infiltration into his basement.
Then tell them that they've already killed someone. After 30, 50 years of catching colds and flus every year, somebody downstream of them has died. I'd be willing to bet. They should throw themselves off a bridge.
Amazing. I've said it before in other places... no one ever got sick, no one ever died, we never went through pandemics, new viruses were never discovered, (and the list goes on) until March of 2020. It's like there was no life at all before then. We all just magically appeared on the Earth in March of 2020 and there was a scary virus. You know Matt, I can handle the insane government telling me what I "have" to do so I don't kill someone because I expect that from government. It's been the utter ignorance and lack of thinking skills from a huge swath of the public that has had me riled up this whole time. WTH????
Gotta say, some of us have seen this coming for quite a while now. The dumbed-down government schools, the demoralizing entertainment media complex, the culture wars and infiltration campaigns, the "long march through the institutions", were the decades of forest mismanagement. The virus was just the match.
Until March 2020, no one anywhere had any idea of how many thousands of people die each year of flu and pneumonia. No idea, it's like it doesn't happen.
When I walk into a doctors office and they require masks I know the world has gone insane. Imagine all these decades of going to the doctors sans masks. How did we ever survive. Double stupid points when the doctor is wearing one. Science? How did they practice without the face diaper?
I have to agree. I've been "arguing" via email with my M.D. sister for months now. She berates me to please, please get vaxxed, because she knows unvaxxed people who've died. I send her graphs, charts, and tons of anecdotes about how not-deadly the virus is, and how scary the vaccines are. She can't see it. It's like this otherwise intelligent person has a brick wall around her brain.
I've seen that too. I've had friends be on the side of 'not vaxxing', then they cave and get vaxxed, then they are immediately flipped over to the other side..."the unvaxxed are awful citizens and the cause of all this crap"...WTF?
It's been often remarked in discussions like these (and I believe the claim is true, although I've no medical training.) The Doctor of Medicine is the product of very intensive training it is true. However, this training of necessity is very broad, and therefore shallow. To illustrate this point, allow me to share a story from an undergrad general biology course. The teacher once made a remark along these lines: "You could spend the rest of your life studying palm trees, and you could still not absorb what biology already knows about them." In brief, an MD is a generalist. She cannot possibly know more than the bare surface of the myriad overlapping details of her profession. Even after years in a specialty, that remains true, except that she would have in-depth knowledge of her specialization.
In stark contrast, and here is where ego-building for us comes in: An intelligent layman, which we all are (I hope) can study a narrow field (such as COVID-19 and the good and bad aspects of the "vaccines") for as few as several hours, assuming reasonably reputable sources (a tall order in itself!) and will likely be much better informed than the average MD. This is probably true of many highly detailed areas of knowledge. Given ready access to information, it sounds crazy, but in a very narrow specialty, with moderate study you can probably become better-informed than 99.99% of the general population, in that one narrow field.
Weird that for a ton of people the word “choice” is only in their vocabulary if you agree with them.
I'm super tolerant as long as you agree with everything I say and do
If you don't agree with them, you're being divisive!
@elgato another idiot spammer, please remove!
Democracy is when I tell and you obey, dictatorship is when you tell and I have to obey. That the mote of this pro jab lunatics.
I would add "A republic is where I draw a line on a sand and say 'This is the hill I am willing to die on. If the government is going to take my rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness away from me, then let them come and try and take them, because I will not willingly surrender them. I will not live in a world without those freedoms, and neither will anyone who tries to take them away from me.' I think more and more are coming around to such a point of view." Interesting times ahead, like it or not.
El Gato, Eric the spammer is back...
Someone used a similar (yet darker) comparison on Twatter, and it is accurate:
You could give a woman a "choice" to sleep with you by putting a knife to her throat.
When she does, it isn't a "success", as it was never really a "choice".
I'm still waiting to hear what my oh-so-reluctant employer is going to do now that Biden's mandate has been put on hold. They told us, "It's not us, it's the mean Mr. President who is forcing us to require the vax. We promise that we'll stop if a court strikes down the mandate." Yet I check my email today and, crickets. Hey, Mr. CEO, are you gonna pause the vaccine mandate or what?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/appeals-court-blasts-biden-vaccine-mandate-e2-80-98one-size-fits-all-sledgehammer-e2-80-99/ar-AAQFwpa
At my company they were supposed to go back to the office in September, no vaccine mandate. Since then it's only the threat of vaccine requirement coming anytime soon. Did corona changed so much since September ? Don't think so ... They change their mind and rules every 3 months or so and we are suppose to follow. Fu** that.
And imagine... this is the most deadly, world ending virus in world history (I'm being sarcastic, but they aren't) and even in the middle of the most deadly, life ending, world ending "pandemic".... we do have the option to move the dates around on the so-called solution. Unreal. 15 days to flatten the curve...
Coworker said they were going to turn off our pass cards Dec08 if we didn't update the internal database w/ vax info. dunno if I believe it since there hasn't been an email to that effect. Guess I'll find out soon enough.
Time for you to publicly ask
Coercion and oppression by Govt morons. Millions of us will never bend the knee. EVER.
A 10 year old could have done a better job with all of this. One little guy I heard said it the best, "I'm not sick. I'm going outside to play."
This is Stage 5 of Biderman’s Chart of Coercion: Threats. I created a nicely typeset version of this chart in my last post (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-tyrant) for anyone who'd like to download it.
Margaret Anna Alice - Fantastic post on your substack. Just finished reading it.
Thank you for the sweet note, Helen!
Must read! Read and share it. Incredible.
Aww, thank you, Rob 🤗
Read it yesterday. Superb as ever!
Bless you, Laurence! :-)
Thank you for posting this. I knew that a framework of this sort existed, but I didn't know what it was called and just how exactly it matches what has been happening to our society.
You’re welcome and so glad you appreciated it! Astonishing how precisely TPTB followed this to the letter, isn’t it?
I've seen two lists and I'm not sure which is the original. One list puts Threats at Stage 4:
Isolation
Monopolization of perception
Induced exhaustion / debilitation
Threats
Occasional indulgences
Demonstrating ‘omnipotence’ and ‘omniscience’
Degradation
Enforcing trivial demands
This is also the order on the wiki page and also:
https://www.psychologytools.com/resource/coercive-methods-for-enforcing-compliance/
Laurence, fascinating and thanks for the heads-up! I based mine on the Amnesty International version (https://www.strath.ac.uk/media/1newwebsite/departmentsubject/socialwork/documents/eshe/Bidermanschartofcoercion.pdf) and just fixed a few stylistic and punctuation issues.
This is now you treat a petulant child.
Which is exactly how our government regards its citizens.
Pretty much the opposite of Sweden, who said - this could be bad, here's some suggestions and pretty much let it go. Let adults be adults.
Poor aged care handling protocols led to lots of early deaths but long-term all cause mortality is on track as per usual there and they are kick it.
While I think of it, Sweden did one other thing that was the complete opposite: Tegnell admitted making mistakes, tried to learn from them.
Show me any other politician anywhere that did the same...
The government has disdain for its citizens and thinks they are all idiots.
Or children at best.
Idiot children!
Which is projection irony at its most bitter, given how they carry on when parliament is in session.
extortion. ransom. kidnapping. criminal behavior for sure.
Coercion, duress, pick your adjective. It's no different than demanding sex from a subordinate to keep their job.
At least that could be memory holed
At least the dick comes out.
And your boss probably doesn’t have aids
AMEN, gatito! Bravo.
EVERYONE should be required to attend your kittengarten class!
WHO ARE YOU --- Bad Cat? I want to know more about you. I want to support you! I'm paying $6 a month to Alex Berenson. Can't I do the same for you?!?!?!!
One way to show support is to share the posts far and wide, I imagine.
Here's a guy with a big public face who would use your subscription money for a good cause: http://stevekirsch.substack.com/
Here's another: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com
I think El Gato is doing just fine and can respect his anonymity.
He can have a paid subscription option and remain anonymous.
If Kirsch can offer a million bucks to anyone who proves him wrong, I doubt he needs the money. (Not that there's any chance he can lose that bet.)
It was $5,000 reward in the offer to debate the science.
I wholeheartedly agree. Money is the sincerest form of flattery, or something like that.
Inside every "progressive" is a totalitarian scratching to get out and make everyone comply with his superior ideas.
You can play Russian Roulette or be homeless. Your choice! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCW9NsrV6VM
Russian Roulette has better odds
Yes, good point - not sure the vaccine gun has any blanks :-)
Blanks are for the "special" people. lol Oh, I mean "sophisticated" people (as was said of the maskless people at several "high society" parties over the last year. Disgusting.
My favorite are the images of the "special people" going maskless at their fancy parties, while their servants are forced to run around in matching uniforms and plain black face masks. It's the elitist fantasy come true.
You mean like King County WA requiring vaxx proof to go into a dam restaurant?
Many cities and countries unfortunately my friend! Some worse than that, check out Singapore’s announcement last week re hospital care for unjabbed
My plan is to avoid hospitals at all costs. But I would like to stop paying for something I am not allowed to use.
I'm with you, and in some senses this policy might be the fastest way to make completely obvious that fallacies related to jabbed and non jabbed. No unjabbed present, who else do they blame when the case/hosp/death rates increase again?
I sincerely hope so. In the Netherlands they want to move away from allowing unvaxxed to access the same facilities with a negative test. Once they remove that option, "cases" will likely go down as testing goes down. So they can say, "see it was the unvaxxed! the vaccines work!" SMH Unless hospitalizations rise and we have transparant numbers, it won't help the cause. Right now people are panicking about the cases while hospitalizations remain relatively low.
I know that part of the country is proud of its hydro projects, but really, can't you find a better location for an eatery? 🤡
Mind boggling. The warp speed degradation and redefining of words snd terms is incredible. I mean we really are in an upside down world!
It's been blown into the open now, but libs have never supported choice. Just think of a policy, any policy, and ask if the libs are for more or less freedom. They have always wanted to mandate or prohibit. Even on matters of sexual perversion, they have mandated their way, and prohibited alternative policies.
As regards government heavy-handed response to the pandemic, true. However, like many words, the term "liberal" has essentially turned into the exact opposite of its original meaning. Originally, "liberal" (now sometimes called classical liberalism) meant generally an advocacy for more rights for the individual. There still are vestiges of this, for example in the legalization of marijuana in some areas. I have no problem with individual freedom of choice or action, but only in private spheres. I'd term such an attitude "libertarian." (note the lowercase "l"). Modern liberalism is more about claiming to champion some underdog, but almost always, any proposed remedies require laws essentially granting special rights to a "protected class" and/or taking away what previously were rights of other groups. I'm not saying the distinction is always easy. For example, when States routinely discriminated racially in voting tests, that would be a clear denial of rights. But what about private affairs? Long ago, there was right to freedom of association. And yes, employers, landlords, etc. excluded against certain groups. But did they have a right to? I will leave that up to you. But please note a distinction between government and private spheres. At best "democracy" becomes the dictatorship of the 50%+1; at worst, it becomes something unrecognizable from tyranny.
Very very good point.
I love your posts, bad kitty. You do a great job of saying what needs to be said and that should be obvious but often isn't.
I wonder how many people would understand the difference between choice and coercion if women were required to be impregnated and bear children every year.
Wow. Great response.
Well, there's one thing that Choice & Coercion have in common - they can both be found under the letter C in the dictionary!
coercion is sooooo ugly!!! here in NZ, people are crying when they go to get the jab to save their job. the govt here says they're disgusted when that happens, because those people are listening to misinformation. it's going to get uglier here at the end of this month.
The freedom loving people and free speech liberals of the 1960s/70s will be horrified by what has happened to this country and the world.
Oddly, most of them have now morphed into the people calling the shots today.
I disagree. A dementia person can't be calling the shots. JFK and MLK would be shocked.
Pretty sure JFK warned about this.. we've been on a fast track with exploding covert powers and security theater since 9-11.. all in the name of keeping us safe we have grannies patted down at the airport now we have medical screening too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpmi7dBet0c
Right on! I love what you've been saying!!
The beatings will continue until you make the right choice
17 more reasons https://www.deconstructingconventional.com/post/17-more-reasons-i-won-t-be-getting-a-covid-vaccine
Unsure if this is parenting advice or commentary on government policy. Though hey, in a nanny state, why not both?
It's the soft tyranny we're living under. There is no crime in being unvaccinated, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished for "choosing" not to get a vaccine.
More like blackmail and extortion
TYRANNY
stop unvaccinated hate!
Those people are not human to me, like body snatchers. I just avoid them as much as possible
And taking away benefits is neglect
Damn right it is...
Standard lib playbook
It’s also coercion.
" don’t think most people on twitter could probably pass kittengarten"
Didn't you get the memo? Twitter is a giant crèche so that people don't have to talk to deranged "journalists". Think of it as an IRL containment board.
It’s completely unfathomable that smart educated people have turned into diehard fascists who have no clue the damage they are inflicting on our social fabric. I don’t even want to go to restaurants with these people. You can have your “social lives” with other sociopaths. I’m happy to stay home at this point….
Maybe they have always been like that and Covid just exposed it.
This is so true. That’s exactly what I feel and do rn.
Coercion
I have so many people in my life who need to understand this.
https://twitter.com/TJ0057/status/1459640269087940613?s=20
Quite scary presentation. Hope my immune system could manage the jab.
https://twitter.com/tj0057/status/1459640269087940613?s=21
Personally, I call it blackmail.
I get this feeling every time I go on there
In their own minds these people are righteous. They are punishing the disobedient for the greater good. It's a crusade of sort for them. They remind me of church dwellers in Silent Hill movie.
Where is this from?
and in fact we still do....
Squid game in real life.
I also want to share things with you that you might like.......
Gato has noted many times that he does not need/want the money...many of us have volunteered more than once. But the other things you have to share...hmmm...out of my league. :)
If that's the case, he might suggest other places to donate to, in support of our revolutionary movement. "In lieu of flowers, the family requests that mourners purchase small-arms ammunition, canned food and a country retreat." Perhaps? 😏
Thanks for this. I'm a recent subscriber, and I didn't see any way to "contribute". boriquagato would be worth supporting. It's good to know I can direct the resources elsewhere (unityproject, deborah conrad, for example). One can only subscribe to so much.
He wishes to remain anonymous and reach as many people as possible. Repay by sharing on your favourite social media platform.
I’m pretty sure catnip and fish beat bucks. Or do something entertaining on the beach beneath the windows. Cats like that.
geez mr matt.
you sure do know some dumb people.
i hope they never hear about "driving" because if they ever see the death numbers there, who knows WHAT they might do!?!
Driving is what I always use for a comparison. I tell people I'll get the vax when they give up all forms of vehicular travel (including trains, bicycles, and mopeds). Usually changes the subject pretty quickly.
When arguing against relying on alarmist media trumpeting of COVID-19 statistics, I often use driving (actually, auto accidents). My point usually is that we don't judge the safety of car transit solely by counting the number of auto accident victims who pass through emergency rooms. Author Rolf Dobelli in his book "The Art of Clear Thinking" calls this the fallacy of the silent [overlooked or ignored] evidence. Air travel is another common metaphor. No passenger wants to plunge screaming to a fiery death, but decades of statistics tell us that that risk is literally one in several millions. If the risk were one in several thousands, I suspect a lot fewer people would willingly board a jumbo jet. But apparently billions of people are willing to take an experimental jab that seems* to have death/morbidity risks of the same order.
*It's hard to tell, because governments are not exactly making it easy to collect such data. You'd think monitoring public health, especially with a novel unproven "vaccine" would be a top priority of the so-called "public health" agencies, but on-the-ground reports seem to indicate quite the opposite. Makes one wonder just what the hell is going on!
I see people driving on the roads using their phones all the time. I'm sure most of them took one heroic jab or two to save humanity, but can't for the life of them put down their phones while steering a fucking death metal machine. Seriously, fuck all of them! The ones who took it voluntarily and the ones who succumbed to pressure.
https://youtu.be/LOWo6wNIrmA
Yep. I don't know the precise term (Is there a psychologist in the house?) but call it misestimation of true risk. Like the three-pack-a-day smoker who is worried about radon gas infiltration into his basement.
Then tell them that they've already killed someone. After 30, 50 years of catching colds and flus every year, somebody downstream of them has died. I'd be willing to bet. They should throw themselves off a bridge.
They'd probably have a positive test and be put down as a Covid "victim"!
Amazing. I've said it before in other places... no one ever got sick, no one ever died, we never went through pandemics, new viruses were never discovered, (and the list goes on) until March of 2020. It's like there was no life at all before then. We all just magically appeared on the Earth in March of 2020 and there was a scary virus. You know Matt, I can handle the insane government telling me what I "have" to do so I don't kill someone because I expect that from government. It's been the utter ignorance and lack of thinking skills from a huge swath of the public that has had me riled up this whole time. WTH????
Gotta say, some of us have seen this coming for quite a while now. The dumbed-down government schools, the demoralizing entertainment media complex, the culture wars and infiltration campaigns, the "long march through the institutions", were the decades of forest mismanagement. The virus was just the match.
Until March 2020, no one anywhere had any idea of how many thousands of people die each year of flu and pneumonia. No idea, it's like it doesn't happen.
When I walk into a doctors office and they require masks I know the world has gone insane. Imagine all these decades of going to the doctors sans masks. How did we ever survive. Double stupid points when the doctor is wearing one. Science? How did they practice without the face diaper?
This is what 50 years of 'climate change' can do to a nation...
With stats. And then with mockery.
I have to agree. I've been "arguing" via email with my M.D. sister for months now. She berates me to please, please get vaxxed, because she knows unvaxxed people who've died. I send her graphs, charts, and tons of anecdotes about how not-deadly the virus is, and how scary the vaccines are. She can't see it. It's like this otherwise intelligent person has a brick wall around her brain.
I'm going to burst your bubble.
She's not intelligent!
She's educated. Education has nothing to do with intelligence.
There are many uneducated, but highly intelligent people.
And there are many highly educated, but unintelligent people.
I've seen that too. I've had friends be on the side of 'not vaxxing', then they cave and get vaxxed, then they are immediately flipped over to the other side..."the unvaxxed are awful citizens and the cause of all this crap"...WTF?
Maybe whistling past the graveyard? Subconsciously they may realize they've made a mistake.
It's been often remarked in discussions like these (and I believe the claim is true, although I've no medical training.) The Doctor of Medicine is the product of very intensive training it is true. However, this training of necessity is very broad, and therefore shallow. To illustrate this point, allow me to share a story from an undergrad general biology course. The teacher once made a remark along these lines: "You could spend the rest of your life studying palm trees, and you could still not absorb what biology already knows about them." In brief, an MD is a generalist. She cannot possibly know more than the bare surface of the myriad overlapping details of her profession. Even after years in a specialty, that remains true, except that she would have in-depth knowledge of her specialization.
In stark contrast, and here is where ego-building for us comes in: An intelligent layman, which we all are (I hope) can study a narrow field (such as COVID-19 and the good and bad aspects of the "vaccines") for as few as several hours, assuming reasonably reputable sources (a tall order in itself!) and will likely be much better informed than the average MD. This is probably true of many highly detailed areas of knowledge. Given ready access to information, it sounds crazy, but in a very narrow specialty, with moderate study you can probably become better-informed than 99.99% of the general population, in that one narrow field.
Bingo. Did they skip the microbiology 101 class that the rest of us took?
Stupid is as stupid does, as they say.