The gates of COVID | Opinion | theprogressnews.com – Clearfield Progress
Recently, I overheard someone talking about why it’s a bad idea to get the coronavirus vaccine. Their reasoning actually surprised me. You see, Bill Gates (everyone’s favorite techno-boogeyman) has these microchips in the vaccine that will collect in your brain and allow him to control you like a puppet.
I suggest you let that marinate.
I mean, in this age of COVID misinformation, the theories get crazier by the day. First, it was tracking chips. Then, it rewrote your DNA to turn you into some sort of X-Man. Next, it gave you 5G in your brain, which would be an improvement over my internet service provider, if I could use my brain as a wifi hotspot. Now, it’s mind control.
The amazing thing to me is that this is a new information age. With the internet, you can find out useful, credible information easily. But thanks to some evil (or foolish) people, we have lost all trust in any source other than ones that are a random letter of the alphabet and write in vaguely coherent (and easily disproven) screeds. There are those who call this a post-truth era, but I think that’s inaccurate. Truth is truth, but we just choose to ignore it. And that’s what’s happening. From claims of election fraud (after this election has been proven and re-proven and re-re-proven to have had no substantial fraud) to “Censored” masks as if asking someone to take a pandemic that has killed 573,000 Americans seriously is a violation of their free speech, we have become willfully ignorant. And there are consequences.
But let’s break down this newest conspiracy. Bill Gates designed nanoprobes like the Borg have in Star Trek. Those nanoprobes are independent, microscopic devices that flow through your bloodstream to your brain, where they assimilate you into the Microsoft Collective. Or they build themselves like Transformers into a microchip. Then, in his “Secret Lair,” Gates sits at a supercomputer and controls each individual American – all 331 million of us – like he’s playing a Sims game. We then all sell our Apple devices and buy Windows devices, thereby throwing off the national economy and making him one of the richest men in the world.
Wait! He already is one of the richest men in the world! And most of us either own or work on Windows devices already! What’s his endgame? Buying Disney so he can own the top movie franchises in the world? Having us manufacture an endless supply of blue button-down shirts so he never has to do laundry? Renewing DuckTales?
(I’d support that last one.)
But even if the Borg nanoprobes exist in the real world (which they don’t), if they’re Gates-designed Windows nanoprobes, he would lose control of all of us instantly when the next Windows Update crashes all the nanoprobes. Those of us who have Windows computers know that moment of dread when the computer alerts us that it needs to install updates. How do you reboot a nanoprobe when it locks up, anyway? Do you pull it out of your bloodstream and stick a ballpoint pen in a little slot for 30 seconds? Do you turn it off and back on again? And what happens if the nanoprobes get into hipster blood? Do they stop mind-controlling you because mind control became too mainstream?
The problem with misinformation is that it starts out plausible enough. Usually, conspiracy theorists take something true and then spin lies upon lies to create controversy or gain some sort of following. Lately, thanks to the internet, these theories spin further out of control and become crazier with each iteration. But they don’t feel crazy or stupid when you’re caught up in them. And intelligent people are getting caught in the spin. Because that first click, that first little conspiracy theory, is plausible, we sometimes don’t notice that we’re caught in a digital black hole’s event horizon. The edge is fine, maybe a fun thought experiment, but as it pulls us in deeper, we begin to let our minds run away with us.
For those of us outside the black hole, these ideas are fantastical and crazy. To those figuratively gasping for air inside it, they seem more and more plausible until we’re crushed by the black hole and leave sanity behind.
If people don’t get the vaccine because of this black hole, they will literally be gasping for air in the hospital. We need to remember that the person was probably misled. (We all fall for something sometimes. That’s why they’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.) Plus, there are people who love those who died from COVID and are hurting now because someone, however many people ago in the chain, lied for political reasons.
And if we are the ones who spread the misinformation that led to their deaths, may God forgive us.
