“Until proven otherwise, it is likely that Covid mRNA vaccines played a significant or primary role in all unexplained heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021.” - Dr. Assem Malhotra, cardiologist and former proponent (October 18, 2022)
Lots of things exist on a continuum.
Every day we season our food with salts and spices, trying to get it just right. Often, we look for clothing or furnishings in a particular hue. Sometimes, we take note that a person of our acquaintance is particularly compassionate or generous with their time as compared to others.
But for the past week or so, I’ve been thinking about the continuums for empathy and sadism- or maybe it’s just one continuum for both.
We all know people who behave callously, but in recent years we’ve been very surprised by the callousness of little old ladies at church fairs, political leadership, hospital administrators, and our own family members who have proclaimed that they hope the unvaccinated all die, that the unvaccinated shouldn’t receive medical care, that the unvaccinated should be charged higher insurance premiums, that the unvaccinated are ineligible for life-saving surgeries, that the unvaccinated shouldn’t be allowed to attend public events or eat out in restaurants, etc. Newspapers and social media were filled with reports of “anti-vaxxers” who died of Covid. Pundits insisted that it was right and proper to take pleasure in their deaths. That “they” were justified in chortling with glee at the death of anyone who was unvaxxed, while ethicists insisted it was the right thing to do in order to pressure skeptics into getting the shot and lawyers insisted it was legal to deny human rights to any who were not compliant with the sanctioned narrative.
We thought these were good people? How could so many be so lacking in empathy as to not just shun the unvaccinated but also engage in hate-speech that results in economic ruin, violence and even deaths among their neighbors?
Despite the signs on lawns proclaiming #BlackLivesMatter #MeToo #MyBodyMyChoice, these people are apparently much lower on the empathy continuum than we assumed. My point of view is that the loudest among them are somewhere on the narcissism continuum and their virtue signaling is symptomatic of communal narcissism. In other words, the purpose of this public behavior is to draw attention to themselves and broadcast a carefully groomed image of themselves as good people that is not representative of the real person they each are.
Now that it’s pretty widely known and admitted to in official documents from the CDC that the vaxxed are just as likely (or more likely) to be infected with transmissible Covid as the unvaxxed and that there is no reason to discriminate based on vax status, some of the zealots are waffling on what should be done going forward. Many are engaging in revision history, even while continuing to shun those they wronged. Some, like Prof. Emily Oster who wrote the infamous amnesty story in The Atlantic where she appealed for amnesty from those she and her cohorts “othered” and censored since 2020, claimed mistakes were made on both sides.
What? It wasn’t a mistake to ask questions, point to data, refer to scientific publications, have a medical exemption, or simply exercise medical consent.
It was a violation of ethics and human dignity to condemn people for doing these things and for using coercive tactics to force people into compliancy.
Lots of people lost their jobs, their health, and their social bonds because of the zealous pro-vax crowd. Many also now have anxiety disorders and C-PTSD.
And many thousands Americans, likely hundreds of thousands, have experienced inflammatory heart conditions which have killed and disabled people in every demographic, but particularly in males under 40, which is why after previously not recommending the shot for children, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, M.D., Ph.D. is recommending men under age 40 not get any more shots. Dr. Ladapo made this decision based on the evidence of an 84% increase in cardiac deaths in the first 28 days after vaccinating. Norway, Denmark and Sweden which similarly had been pumping the brakes on vaccination policies since last spring, have even more stringent restrictions for both men and women under 50 and 65 as we enter the 2022-23 winter season, while the U.S. alphabet agencies expert in disinformation and double-think with the Biden White House which has contracted for millions of doses of the ineffective and risky vaccines continue to claim that vaccination slows the spread, and advises everyone from pregnant women to the elderly will likely need boosters several times a year for the foreseeable future.1
Due to the almost daily reporting of sudden cardiac deaths in previously healthy people, many in their teens and twenties, the pharmaceutical companies have agreed to do a follow-up study specific to inflammatory heart disease. Both Pfizer and the CDC admit to about 55 in a million incidence of heart inflammation after a dose of the vaccine, which is a disingenuous attempt to downplay the seriousness.
BY THE NUMBERS: An incident rate of 55 in a million per dose means that 1 person in 20,000 develops an inflammatory condition that kills heart cells and heightens the risk of developing chronic heart disease and cardiovascular death. That rate increases with each subsequent dose, so it would be at least 1 person in 10,000 of those with two doses. Each booster similarly increase the incidence rate.2
A continuum is a coherent sequence or progression. Having more heart inflammations and other adverse effects aligned with more vaccinations is a coherent progression- a continuum. We also know that narcissism exists on a continuum which ranges from irritating to malignant. So does psychopathy. Which brings us to the sadism continuum.
I’d like to think that most of us feel compassion for another’s misfortune. However, we know that some people seem to take vicarious delight in another’s pain. Schadenfreude is the German word that means “delight in another person's misfortune.” Schadenfreude is not the same thing as intentionally causing pain, but it isn’t compassion, either.
The Dark Tetrad includes Sadists with Narcissists, Psychopaths and Machiavellians in a cluster of malignant personalities. They all lack empathy, have a grandiose sense of entitlement, and find pleasure in the pain they cause in others. But Sadists are particularly motivated to go out of their way for no other reason than to cause pain.3
Metaphorically, their hearts are broken; and both metaphorically and literally they have broken ours.
I suggest that in order to find an exit out this Orwellian shop of horrors in which we find ourselves, we must reject the pleas for amnesty and “grace” from those who exhibited Schadenfreude and worse, because sadists, like narcissists and psychopaths, are compelled to repeat the same destructive patterns.
Myocarditis and Death After COVID Vaccines: Is the Risk Greater Than Public Health Officials Claim?, CHD, Nov. 7, 2022; State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo Issues New Mrna COVID-19 Vaccine Guidance, Florida Health Dept. Oct, 7, 2022.
Other studies document the vaccine results in upwards of 100 cases of inflammatory heart disease per million dose, and even more than a thousand cases per million. This is a moving target. Oster ME, et al. Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021. JAMA. 2022 Jan 25.
Eliminating the blind spot, Cynthia Mathieu, in Dark Personalities in the Workplace, 2021; Psychopathy and Sadism, Brent E. Turvey, in Criminal Profiling (Fourth Edition), 2012