Rant #2,654: Trust Me

Well, the scoreboard now reads Coronavirus 7, the New York Yankees 0.
 
I am sure you heard that there are now seven members of the Yankees’ team and traveling party—at least three coaches and four executives—who tested positive for the virus even though they were all vaccinated.
 
And at least one player was held out of last night’s game because they believe he had a false positive, because he was also vaccinated and previously, he had the virus, so how could he get it again?
 
That is what I mean by the experts knowing as much as your garbage man about the virus and its peculiarities.
 
I believe that I have heard that others have gotten the virus more than once, so why is it automatically a false positive when someone contracts it again even after being vaccinated?
 
And guess which vaccine they all took, and presumably the entire team took?
 
Johnson & Johnson.
 
Say what you want, but its efficiency in warding off the virus—which was originally pegged at 71 percent but suddenly has fallen to 67 percent the last I read—tells me that this is not the vaccine you want to get, even if it supposedly has a 100 percent efficiency in keeping you out of the hospital if somehow, like these people, you contract the virus while this is in your body.
 
And yes, all the above Yankee personnel have no symptoms, save one, who reportedly has mild symptoms.
 
And you wonder why people refuse to get vaccinated.
 
There is still so much we don’t know about COVID-19—and so much we don’t know about the vaccines scientists have created to ward off this scourge—that every time something like what happened to the Yankees happens, people who were sitting on the fence fall off that fence on the side of caution, and refuse to get inoculated.
 
You can’t blame them, and now, with 12 year olds eligible to get the Pfizer shot, sure, many people are jumping at the chance of getting their kids vaccinated, but there are others that say “no way” … and you can’t blame them.
 
And I read yesterday that states are so desperate to get people inoculated that one state has a plan that if you agree to get inoculated, you are eligible for a $1 million prize.
 
Heck, maybe I should have held out … all I got was a lot of agitation and eventually, thank you.
 
Today is Thursday the 13th, so it supposedly isn’t as bad as Friday the 13th, but in this wacky world we live in now, you throw out old conventions and just go with the flow, so superstitions are also out the window.
 
I have no superstitions, or at least I don’t think I have any, but related to the coronavirus, I did take my shot both times in my left arm.
 
I don’t know if it was a superstition, per se, but I just felt more comfortable taking it in the arm that I less favor than my right arm.
 
Being a righty, and hearing all the stories about the tremendous pain some felt when they got inoculated, I guess I didn’t want my right arm to hurt, so I took it in the other arm.
 
But funny, I didn’t hurt in my left arm, and didn’t have any negative reactions to the vaccine at all.
 
I think the media really put in our heads that we will experience some ill effects from getting the shot, so if the media says it, you must obey and believe it.
 
Look, I have been getting shots regularly for years, and every once in a blue moon I will get an allergy shot that will hit something in me and hurt for a day or two, and then the pain goes away as quickly as it came.
 
I don’t know why the media didn’t explain this to the public, that any shot can hurt, and more importantly, that any inoculation you get can have side effects, but they didn’t, so they put in peoples’ heads that this shot was going to carry side effects with it, almost 100 percent guaranteed.
 
I am not going to say “mind over matter”—even though I just did—but when the bug gets put in peoples’ heads, somehow, the bug stays there, and if you are expecting something, you will get what you are expecting.
 
My 90 year old mother did, in fact, get the mildest of responses to the shot; each time she got it was followed by a day of sleepiness and no appetite.
 
But even during the following day, by the evening, she was ready to eat everything in her refrigerator at one sitting, so yes, she felt some after effects, but I mean, she is 90 years old, so I guess it was to be expected.
 
But me, then nearly 64 years old, I had absolutely zero after effects, and I think part of it was certainly because I didn’t listen to any experts, media or naysayers who said I would certainly feel something afterward.
 
This all goes back to the original premise I was talking about here, that I don’t trust anybody or any thing when it comes to this malady.
 
I trust myself, and my own instincts, and that is it.
 
I am sick of the self-righteous people on both sides of the ledger, who profess to know what they are talking about but in the end, know nothing.
 
Trust yourself and yourself alone … that is the way we are going to get through this thing, and get through it in the healthiest way possible.