HOME BREWING IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY
A NEW form of hysteria is fomenting like a dangerously concocted full-bodied stout matured and aged in total darkness by rural rudimentary bright sparks using a basic home brew kit to whip up a creamy head and a wildly intoxicating body of mind altering and potent beer.
Fear of death from COVID-19 has been converted in double-quick time to fear of death from taking the vaccines without proper informed consent.
“They are out to kill us and our children,” is the message being proudly and perplexingly persistently promulgated by protestors who perch on a roundabout on a Sunday in Newport in all weathers to distribute The Light, a free newspaper proclaiming to tell “The uncensored truth” and, this Sunday, some worrying Pfizer figures about the threat of side effects which could kill and anyway the vaccines have depressingly low efficacy.
Getting off the bus and carefully navigating my way onto the grass in the centre of a new highway planner’s idea of progress but my idea of unmitigated needless traffic light madness, I ventured out in search of elevated, educated, insightful and improving discussion and debate using my customary tactic of appearing to the interviewee to totally disagree with whatever they stood for (part years of journalistic training part a natural disposition to not agree because of my natural fear of the consequences of congregations and of group-think) to generate authentic face-to-face debate and dispute in the hope of real light and truth.
I focused on the eldest male and began what I hoped would be a meeting of minds by introducing myself and explaining that I was a fully trained journalist with qualifications and a member of the Free Speech Union, mentioning its chair Toby Young, who is a lockdown and vaccine sceptic with his own Sceptical website https://dailysceptic.org/, pointing to my own natural suspicions and deep distress about the issue and broad agreement that something has gone seriously wrong.
It started badly, as meetings in the centre of a roundabout on a blustery Sunday in Newport – a converted rundown town not naturally noted for depth of debate – might always be expected to.
“You might be lucky,” he said, after I volunteered the information about my vaccines, “you might have had the placebo.”
So, I was more or less forced under great pressure and duress to have a life-saving vaccine which was not a vaccine but a watery substance containing nothing by a political, scientific and medical elite I always thought had my best interests in mind (silly me!).
This was where my rudimentary knowledge of science and biotechnology based upon what I had read and researched was set against, rather than with, his and the five or six other bright sparks venturing out dangerously onto a busy road to bring The Light into the vehicles of passing motorists while enjoying the occasional hoots of horny motorists halted by red lights (never an ideal way to start a conversation, in my experience).
These are zealots latching on to the Stand in the Park organisation https://www.astandinthepark.org/ who meet at Tredegar House at 10am on Sunday then process onto the roundabout to evangelise armed only with free newspapers and a set of beliefs, strong and sometimes bizarre beliefs.
Our political elite have not had the vaccine for some mysterious reason, Pfizer have banned anyone from knowing the truth, people are falling over dead from strokes and heart attacks because of being jabbed, and they were always jabbed first and given information about the possible side-effects of mRNA technology after, Sir Christopher Chope, the Tory MP, has been given the cold shoulder when trying to pursue compensation for all those millions negatively affected by BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca jabs.
Zealots are terribly difficult to talk to – especially while racing to and fro on a roundabout rabble-rousing exercise – because they choose one side of an issue and unilaterally arm themselves only with anything and everything which confirms their beliefs while discarding or destroying anything which contradicts them.
Searching for reason and some forensic rigour to prevent it deteriorating into a full gospel meeting where I am removed by my hair for expressing doubts that God exists at all then burned as a heretic at the stake, I started out by trying to sound authoritative and informed and opened with the undoubted success of biotechnology in the treatment of some AIDS and cancer sufferers.
That didn’t seem to register.
So I tried the obvious line about all prescribed drugs carrying the risk of possible side-effects and the undisputed truth that life expectancy has gone up not down since the advent of modern medicine with biotech discoveries first tested on animals working well on humans so actively saving lives.
That, again, provoked rather than placated and there was a robust and slightly rampant response about side-effects being hidden in the small print.
It ended with him sidling off to have a smoke and me gingerly stepping off the roundabout to catch the next bus clutching my copy of The Light, still desperately seeking it anywhere but on a roundabout in Newport.
GARRY W GIBBS 