Just to make sure I understand, Marty: You personally do not dispute the scientific consensus on the effectiveness of vaccines and masks. The issue you are raising, however, is that a large portion of the citizens are viewing the issue through the frame of political/ideological conflict, so they choose to believe the sources they align with politically/ideologically.
The corollary is that we could quote high-quality studies until we’re blue in the face, but that will not convince most of the vaccine-hesitant. Instead, we need to try to find agreement wherever possible. Also, we should do our best to avoid framing the debate as a conflict between science and ignorance because the emphasis on conflict will only confirm the narrative frame of most of the vaccine hesitant.
Hope that is a good summary of your message. I invite you to correct any misunderstandings.
Thanks Marty. I think that’s good advice. I did actually spend hours engaging in their view. For the first couple of conversations I listened for an hour and barely said anything in return, just to try to gather where they were coming from. I even thought they may have been correct about some things. I wrote their points down and then looked into each point to see if they were true.
Unfortunately, when I did have the conversation where I gave a response with my reasons why their ideas were mistaken, they basically told me they do not rely on ‘reason’, but rather their ‘conscience’. It was at that point I realized it would not be easy for them to change their position. I even tried explaining that conscience needs to be well informed. They didn’t seem to understand that. Again, too much reason for their liking.
“It is not actually a vaccine.”
If a vaccine has to be 100% effective, then it wouldn’t be a vaccine. But a vaccine doesn’t need to be 100% effective. It is a substance used to stimulate antibodies to a disease without actually causing the disease. So in this case, yes, the current COVID vaccines are vaccines.
Masks don’t work
If masks need to be 100% effective to be considered as working, then this statement would be true. But obviously masks do make a very significant difference, it’s far too simplistic to say they don’t work.
Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are wonderful cures, but the government has banned them.
Our government has banned them for use on patients to cure COVID-19, but are they wonderful cures? Hydroxychloroquine has been proven to do more harm than good for COVID patients. Ivermectin is still in trials and hopefully we’ll know soon.
The Vaccine companies are making a lot of money out of this and don’t actually care about our health.
Yes they are making money out of this. The vaccine companies themselves are made up of individuals, and I am sure some of those individuals don’t care about our health. To conspiracy theorists, however, all vaccine companies are lumped into one big category, “Big Pharma”. What they don’t seem to consider is that each individual company has differing ethics, are competing against each other, and therefore have that extra pressure to create a sincerely good product. It doesn’t even have to be out of the kindness of their hearts. If they create a bad product, another company is going to get the money. Just because they are making money out of it doesn’t mean the vaccines are bad. In fact, it puts extra pressure on them to make sure they are good and wont be recalled.
The Great Reset seems to be happening.
Well, if they mean “The Great Reset” initiative by The World Economic Forum, then sure, it’s happening. But what they actually mean is the conspiracy theory that the leaders of the world are coming together to bring a new world order in which there will eventually be a dictator of the whole world to usher in the anti-Christ. Because of this, we shouldn’t get vaccinated because we will be supporting this new, world-wide, evil dictatorship. I think it’s obvious that this is a stretch of the imagination.
Can you please check if a magnet sticks to your arm?
It didn’t.
So yes, I can see elements of truth in all of them (except the magnet). I think this is the issue. Conspiracy theories always have an element of truth. That’s why people believe them so readily. It’s the same trick Satan tried to use on Jesus in the desert.
I’m leaning more toward this now. It seems talking about it more, even in a loving tone, is doing damage to our relationship. It is a really sad realization for me that I can no longer talk to my parents about anything that’s on my heart. I need to be careful around them. I’m grieving the relationship I once had with them. But once restrictions are over here and we’re able to see them a little more, I think setting boundaries and keeping to topics we at least partly agree about will be beneficial.
This is me presumptuously daring to butt in when I know so little about you, your parents, and the relationship between … So I’ll only add this as a possibility for consideration:
Maybe it would be helpful to think of these things, not in terms of a relationship ending, but a certain chapter of that whole story giving way to another one. Your love for your parents (and hence your relationship with them) won’t be ending entirely (I hope!). But it is changed. New dynamics are in place as both of you grow - in different directions in some cases. But change was inevitable anyway. Speaking for myself and similar situations I have with loved ones (my own parents are gone by now) I have faith that Love will still faithfully navigate those relationship changes as it must.
It happens. I have been realizing for at least a decade that I can’t talk to my parents, now just my mom, about anything really important anymore. Mom’s favorite strategy for dealing with disagreement anymore is to get critical of me (wrong news sources, don’t pay enough attention to the really important news, etc.) I have started ending these conversations with statements like, “I don’t think this is a fruitful conversation. I am changing the subject.” Maybe not high-level diplomacy, but better than a cat fight.
All this to say that it’s painful to have important relationships change, but they do. The current willingness to participate in a culture of polarization only exacerbates the problem, too.
You are not alone in this painful experience.
Some of the participants here have provided good advice about handling these situations better than I am doing. I’m trying to absorb some of their ideas.
Your listening skills, and self control are an outstanding example. This is so hard to do, without confronting the nonsense up front. Honestly, how did you manage this?
Fill a church with lies, slander, conspiracies, and rebel against authorities
Joel Shaffer:
“Running for office or churches going public against the 2020 election, CRT, Anti-Vaccination, Anti-Masks have become church growth strategies. Creating tirades of anger and rage against the government is a sure way to get anti-government folks to leave their current churches ( who they believe are not standing up against tyranny and not publicly standing for freedom). There’s one pastor in our area that has created over 100 YouTube videos railing against the government and against what he calls cowardly pastors and churches for not publicly standing against Biden, Governor Whitmer, and anyone else who is pro-mask, pro COVID vaccine, and etc…
For 7 years, his church only had 30 people, but now it is at 130 because of his anti-government message.”
My comment: who may I ask is building this church?
I think perhaps we should reconsider what we think is important. The questions and discussions I wish I could have with my parents if they were alive would center more on how they lived and how they handled the various struggles of life, what they would do differently, what they saw and experienced and how they reacted, I would not care about what they thought about politics and so forth.
I wish they would put GPS-tracking nanochips in the vaccines. Then after the next few months when my dementia fully kicks in, less time and other resources would be expended looking for my errant old bod.
This is really helpful, thank you for sharing this.
Thank you, that is very encouraging. I didn’t do perfectly, I did get a bit emotional toward the end of the conversations, especially when obvious conspiracy theories were being presented. But overall, I tried to keep these scriptures in mind:
“Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father” -1 Timothy 5:1a
“Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” -Romans 14:4
Update: My teen and I had a really good visit with my mom yesterday. It revolved around the pie I brought, which is a nearly universal tool of promoting peace, and just catching up. There was plenty to talk about. We had a good visit.
My mom lived to age 93. My dad is almost 99. I’ve found that as people age it’s not uncommon for them to develop outlandish ideas and even paranoia. My father is in a nursing home and he actually does better when we watch PBS television shows together instead of a lot of talking. It gives him something positive to focus on and helps him dial back on the crazy.
As I have said several times (to people who don’t think microchips make sense, which is virtually everyone [don’t know but doubt it on the rest] I know, thankfully)
1: blood is a horrible medium for putting tiny, sensitive electronics in.
2: to make nanochips like that, we would need to have better than quantum computers to get enough storage packed in. Also, how are you signaling them when they have a detector that is too small to detect anything except gamma-rays ?
Uh-oh. My wife has a pacemaker that connects wirelessly via a ‘radio’ which interrogates it and uploads a report daily using a dialup internet connection. It never occurred to me that the info might be used for something nefarious and maybe it could work the other way, too, even downloading instructions! Think how many sleeper automatons there might be, an expendable army ready to do the Illuminati’s bidding at a moment’s notice! And in conjunction with the nanochips in the vaccine! Wow!
I think that’s good advice. I did actually spend hours engaging in their view. For the first couple of conversations I listened for an hour and barely said anything in return, just to try to gather where they were coming from. I even thought they may have been correct about some things. I wrote their points down and then looked into each point to see if they were true.
