Warning: If you’re anti-vax this will probably trigger you.

When I was a child, my neighbor was in an iron lung for polio. It was a tough time for parents, wondering if or when their child would be stricken. The day the vaccine was made available a literal cheer could be heard in the neighborhood. The next day at school we lined up and were marched into the gym where one by one we pulled up our sleeve and got the shot.

There were no permission slips, no people choosing to abstain, just communities across the nation, and the world, lining up to do, what we then thought of, as our duty. The fact that we each got immunity was a bonus.

That was a time when community and duty to our society were at least as important as self-interest. We-thinking instead of me-thinking was basic to who we were.

I think we learned that during the two world wars. It shaped our idea of what was required to thrive in a world larger than our own backyard. Our backyard had grown. We could no more do our own thing and expect our neighbors to fend for themselves than expect our nation to stand up to madmen on their own.

Even before the wars we understood community. Barn raisings and simply showing up for neighbors–at planting and harvest time, sharing the wealth when the need was present, taking over when a friend or neighbor was ill–these truths were built right into our lives. We didn’t stop and think about what it meant for us, didn’t care if it meant we worked a few hours or days longer. That wasn’t what being part of a social network, a neighborhood, a society meant.

In the years since, that has changed. We personalize every adverse reaction, even though the number of reactions is still miniscule in comparison to the whole. We use that as a reason to turn our back on society, believing our one life is more important than the lives of millions.

We did that with Covid and now we are doing it with Measles, Whooping Cough and more. We are bringing back the age before vaccinations, the age of iron lungs, of death and disability not just for our children, although that should be enough, but for all of us. In many ways, the loss of a sense of community is ushering in a new dark age.

We seem to be more concerned now with the less than five thousand reported reactions (some serious, some not) than we are with the 553 million doses given without problem.

We seem to be more concerned with our inability to trust science, to trust reports. We put more weight on propaganda intended to corrode our willingness to see ourselves as a society, with our fear of what might happen, than we are with the literal deaths happening around us. The confirmed global death toll from Covid is 7 million but when you don’t trust anything or anyone anymore it’s easy to write all those lives off as fake news.

The attack on vaccines is part of the same overreaching plan, to divide us and to instill massive distrust. Vaccines are another issue to rub salt into, like abortion, like immigrants, like ICE, like kidnapping and murder. The vax version just takes a little longer to work than a bullet, but it works immediately to divide and distract.

If we are intent on living as if we are the only one who matters it shouldn’t be surprising that we are now living in a world that acts like we don’t matter, like no one matters, like only the extremely rich have value. That was the plan and we fell for it.

Eventually we’ll be down to the last man. If that’s you … you know the drill.