Unvaccinated, unmasked, and unafraid.

I’m going to be up front from the start: I have trust issues.

I have really serious trust issues. I have so little trust/faith in humanity that I actually look both ways before crossing a one way street.

So, when it comes to showing trust and/or faith in a person or institution, I do not have the currency to afford it with regards to anyone. This kind of distrust, doubt, or what I prefer to call it, skepticism, comes from a healthy need to think critically and not accept anything presented at face value. I don’t care what person, or government, presents the information because I refuse to take any of it on faith and will ask the necessary questions before accepting their story if I do at all.

When it comes to controversial subject such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the events that occurred on 9/11, and even the moon landings, I have considered and investigated some opinions that cause some people to wonder what kind of tinfoil that I wear on my head. Yet the looks I get for questioning those issues pale in comparison to the real statement that offends people to the point where they make threats of violence for just having an opinion that differs from their own. The four little words that make women clutch their pearls, and cause people to get angry enough to make threats of enteral torture and damnation: there is no god.

When it comes to religion, I have always been the skeptic that refused to accept the unproven myths and superstitions that many people subscribe to and practice weekly and even daily. For the last thirty years since I came out as a non-believer, I’ve been subjected to anger, insults and even threats of violence for asking the questions and refusing to take serious subjects about the fundamentals of life on faith. For that, and many other reasons, I am a very outspoken atheist. I know what some of you are thinking; how outspoken are we talking about here? Well, I’m currently in the process of writing my fourth non-fiction book about my atheism right now. I’m hoping to release that book on various websites at the end of summer, it not at least by October.

I remember being kicked out of one of my English classes for having a view that offended my teacher. The teacher had asked the class what was the oldest novel ever written? I had raised my hand, and when called upon proceeded to tell her that my answer was the bible. My teacher attempted to correct me by stating that the bible is not fiction, to which I countered by stating that was her opinion and there were some of us who don’t share it. After making that statement, I was promptly sent to the principal’s office.

Yet my skepticism doesn’t start and end with religion. I go out of my way to question anything that seems fishy to me, especially when someone tells me that I’m not allowed to. If someone tries to tell me “you can’t question this”, then by default I want to question the fuck out of it. My back gets up and I begin to ask why can’t I question that? What are you hiding? What is the truth? Things just usually snowball from there.

So, two years ago when the pandemic was just getting started, there were a few questions that I had people just didn’t want me to ask. How can a natural pandemic outbreak come from a bat that’s not from that region? Also, there’s a huge bio-lab less than 300 meters away from that wet market where this all started. That can’t be a coincidence, right? Just bringing stuff like this up on social media once again got me labeled as a conspiracy theorist, and others were even banned for pushing the idea that Covid was leaked from a lab. Years later and the conspiracy theory we weren’t allowed to talk about was consider fact and is now being reported.

I smelt the bullshit back then, and I still smell it now. This time the story is about the vaccines, and I wasn’t believing a damn word about it. First off, the company in question has a horrid track record. Pfizer has been fined more than another other company in the world, paying billions (with a B) in fines for their corruption and bribery of politicians. So when I heard this company was going to be producing the vaccine to end the pandemic (allegedly), I was like no fucking way. I was dead set against this vaccine to begin with, so when I learned that corners were being cut and it was going to be released without any of the possible long term testing being done… that was a hard no from me and that’s when all the trouble started.

I was being called an anti-vaxxer because I was refusing to take a vaccine that was fully tested. I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to put anything into my body if it was properly tested, vetted, and cleared by all agencies in question… the proper way. Without full testing done, and no idea what potential long term effects could be, how is it possible to be fully informed about what you’re about to take? Being aware of all the risks before agreeing to take anything is significant little thing known as informed consent. With big details and data missing from the companies in question, there was no way in hell informed consent could be achieved, let alone given.

So when the vaccine started to roll out a little over a year ago, I made the only decision I felt was responsible which was the same decision I usually made whenever a new version of windows was released by Microsoft. Whenever a new OS came out, I would often wait and let others try it first. So, if there were any significant bugs within it, others could enjoy the agony of dealing with them first while I patiently waited for the patches to come out first before giving it a try. I would usually wait at least a year after it released before ever giving a new OS a try, and with so many questions lingers that seemed to be the correct way to handle this new vaccines. If there were some harsh side effects (which there were) then it would be easier for me to observe from my isolation rather than take the risk myself.

Even when I got covid, I refused to admit anything. People didn’t hesitate to try to say I told you so. This was all my fault for not getting the shot, which was total bullshit. I had gotten the delta, which studies have already proven can’t be stopped by the vaccine, which means I would have gotten sick anyways regardless if I complied or not. And then after two weeks of soup, tea, vitamins and multiple hot showers per day, I got batter and over my delta on my own, and without having to set foot in a hospital. It’s the first time in my life that someone actually got upset that I had survived something. Despite all the aches and pains I had suffered over the previous fourteen days, it was that statement that had hurt the most. People were hoping to use my death to push their political agenda, and they mourned the opportunity lost. Sorry about that, but the survival rate for people under 50 was 97%, so you can’t be that damn surprised that I lived.

To say that my refusal to fall in line and comply with the vaccine protocol upset a lot of people was a total understatement. That even upset my own government who went out of their way to push, coerce, and even thinly threaten their own citizens in order to comply and just take the damn shots. I didn’t not relent and refused to take any of them, preferring to stay home and be even more of a hermit than to take something I was not sure about or comfortable with. When the vaccine passports were mandated, the very same that were called a conspiracy theory only a year earlier, I was unable to go out to eat or even see a movie, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to be bullied or bribed into taking something I didn’t want and I resisted everything that was tossed my way.

At the start of the next month, the mandates in Ontario as supposed to end. I refused to comply, and with each passing day as more of the data about the vaccines are unearthed, the more confident I am that I made the right choice. I’m still recovering from a stroke that I had in 2018, and suffer from a rare disease that neither myself or my doctors knew if or how it would react to any of the shots, so I made what was the best decision for my own health. I wasn’t trying to be a shit disturber, or stick it to the man, but just going with my gut based on what little data I had in front of me. Now as more and more data is finally coming out, I am pretty sure I dodged a bullet here. Not only are these vaccines not very effecting from stopping infection or spreading the virus, but there are horrible cases of clots, strokes, heat attack, and sudden onsets of cardiac arrest. According to VAERS, over 20,000 people have been killed by this vaccine, and another 100,000 have been permanently disabled just in the US alone. At this point we still don’t know if there are any long term effects or what they might be. This is why I said no, and continue to say no to any of these shots.

As a survivor of the delta, and a hermit created through unnecessary restrictions, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for me and I’m still sure my non-compliance was the right decision for me. If I had just one of this vaccine’s side effects, I do not think I would have lived to talk about it. I would have been another statistic that the government tries to sweep under the rug as I write this. I refused to listen to the fear that the government was trying to throw my way, the attempts to bribe, coerce, and even force this jab onto me… all of which just made me more and more skeptical. I listened to my gut and made what I felt was the best choice for me with the limited data I had available to me at the time. I have no regrets as I remain unvaccinated, unmasked, and unafraid.

Peter