Chris Schillig: No black oil lurks in coronavirus vaccines

Many Americans must have been scared and scarred by repeated viewing of “The X-Files” 20 years ago. 

How else to explain the widespread societal reticence, conspiracy theories and flat-out zaniness surrounding opposition to an imminent coronavirus vaccine? 

I’m not talking about normal caution accompanying anything new. That, I get. People want assurances from the medical community, the Food and Drug Administration and independent review boards before they put anything into their bodies or their children’s bodies.

Even during a global pandemic that has sickened and killed millions, this is sensible. 

No, I’m talking about far-fringe theories — a concerted plan among the world’s elites to eradicate millions by engineering a pandemic and then offering a fatal solution, or using the occasion of an unplanned pandemic to insert microchips into the body.

These sound like plots ripped directly from “The X-Files,” where, if memory serves, a shadowy cabal introduced alien DNA through the smallpox vaccine. Some weird black oil was involved too. Whatever. I mean, it makes no sense because, well, “X-Files.” 

Any real-world plan rotating on the same wobbly axis is just as risible. 

First, where’s the proof? Conspiracists point to one badly made “Plandemic” video, a smattering of rogue scientists and so-called medical professionals who appear to enjoy the notoriety that comes from telling some people what they want to believe. 

Definitive evidence? Hardly. 

Second, would the planet’s elites really want to rub out much of the global population that provides the raw labor necessary for them to continue to lord it over the rank-and-file? Answer: They wouldn’t, even if they could somehow manage to cobble together a conspiracy of this magnitude, which they can’t. 

Third, Watergate. A relatively small group of people couldn’t cover up a bungled plan to wiretap the DNC headquarters in Washington, an operation miniscule in comparison to a global culling of the herd via vaccination. 

Most of us can’t stay quiet about a surprise party. Imagine how many minions would need to keep mum about international genocide. 

Yet the only people who seem to have any knowledge of this massive conspiracy are a few hairdressers posting on Facebook, some semi-regular callers to AM-radio talk shows, and the unemployed guy down the street who runs his own website from a backyard shed. 

Fourth, intention. Maybe the plan isn’t to kill us, but to track us. Hence, microchips in our bloodstreams. 

There are much easier ways. I surrender more sensitive information on my phone than would ever be gleaned from tracking me through a microchip. 

Think of all the third-party apps we opt into, the websites that collect information about our buying habits, the insurance companies we allow to monitor our driving in exchange for reduced premiums. 

The sad truth is many of us have an inflated sense of our self-worth. The government has no need to track most of us. They can find us whenever they need to, and they will never need to. 

It’s fun and exciting to live in a world where shadowy operatives are arrayed against us, where only Joe from Pougkeepsie knows the real truth, which he is revealing to just a select few. And we’re among the few. 

It’s like James Bond minus the suave sophistication and cool cars. Without the buxom models. Sans the shaken, not stirred. 

So not really much like Bond. 

This imaginary world and the myths surrounding it are intoxicating. Strip it away, and all that remains is the glum reality: Roll up your sleeve, here comes the needle. 

Boring, with a high degree of safety and security, but nevertheless wondrous because coronavirus vaccines will save lives. 

Ponder all these researchers, toiling in obscurity, not to hide tiny cameras in syringes, but to alleviate suffering and death and allow us to get on with our glorious, messy, non-controversial and non-conspiratorial lives. 

Where the only concerning cameras aren’t embedded in our bloodstream, but mounted above our streets, snapping images of speeders to fatten municipal coffers. 

If we are so worried about privacy, let’s start there. 

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter 

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