Oppositional Defiance Disorder & Vaccines

 I am by no means a mental health expert.  I know very little about my own mental health, honestly.  I don't know that I am qualified to diagnose all of my quirks, but this one I am a little bit smarter than I used to be about, anyway.

As a child, and well into adulthood, I found that there was something inside my head which would immediately push back when told what or how to do something.  Not when it was a training situation, you understand, but when someone - especially someone who did not have the direct authority or need to tell me what to do.  

Now, before you start screaming at your screen, let me be perfectly clear.  I do recognize when I am in a professional situation there are superiors who are responsible for keeping me busy - that is, keeping me profitable - and in some of the jobs I have been able to hold over the years, I have also been responsible to peers and every member of the organization, for whom I was a resource.  I want to make it very clear that those situations were never a problem for me. 

Where my ODD would kick up was when someone who lacked the authority or the necessity to direct who chose to direct me.  That makes me something of a nightmare to advertisers.  I will dig in my heels and resist certain organizations simply because I dislike their advertising.  Fortunately, my wife is the master of our financial house, otherwise I'd be torn into small pieces when it comes to things like insurance.  For some years we used an insurance company because they were cheapest, but their ad campaigns became so irritating I went shopping.  And picked another insurer.  Who then changed from a relatively laid-back, calm approach to a full on whack-a-doodle attack.  And so we switched again.  And this was, fortunately, my wife's doing.

But in other areas, I do tend to resist things simply because I'm told to do them and there's no good reason provided why I should. And a few years ago I pulled that part of my brain out and looked at it.  I suspect a good portion of that "Oh Hell No" was installed during my childhood when I was often directed to other topics when I might ask a question.  Now, mind you, this was almost never the response from my parents.  One of the things I learned very early on was that it was most beneficial to know what it was one was asking about - or better yet, it might be far more profitable for one to research, before asking about a subject.  

And there I benefited from being the child of a bibliophile.  My father loved words.  And he loved them so much he very literally owned the biggest dictionary I'd ever seen.  In fact, he owned two of them.  The Random House Complete Unabridged Dictionary, and the Oxford Press Complete Dictionary of The English Language.  Now, many homes own a dictionary or two - or at least, did before Dictionary.com showed up.  But I've not been in another house that had on the bookshelf (or a dedicated stand, for that matter) a book that was in excess of 2000 pages of 8-point type that measured easily twenty inches tall by fourteen inches wide by seven inches tall.  And that was the Random House.  The OED, as we referred to it, was somewhat smaller in being only about sixteen by sixteen by eight inches - and it used 6 point font and thinner paper.  It ran nearly 2800 pages, if memory serves.

But I learned as a child that some adults, some people of authority would become less pleased with you if you asked certain questions within their field which challenged that which they had some alleged expertise and held dearly.

So you can guess that as a good little Catholic child, I had lots of problems.  And more than a few years ago, I came to the realization that I was no longer considering myself Catholic.  It really started late during the papacy of John Paul II.  While the church thinks the main may have been a saint, I cannot agree.  I find the man to be rather disturbing when it comes to being responsible for the safety of his flock.  He didn't do anywhere near enough to protect children from predators, and it is apparent that he and his cronies encouraged silence and the limitation of fiscal exposure of their corporate interest.

And so yeah, that was something that probably pushed me over an edge, but this ain't about that.  There are many people, including some in the health care field, who are flat refusing to take responsibility for themselves, their families, and their health by getting vaccinated against a pandemic disease that can easily kill them.

And I suspect that there are more than a few of the anti-vaxers out there who are victims of their own undiagnosed ODD.  When the opportunity to avoid a highly infective and dangerous disease, only fools would ignore that protection.  I am not a clinician, I do not do peer-reviewed research.  I am not even beginning to suggest that I have expertise in any medical field what so ever.  

I am, however, someone who has, to this point, survived because he followed certain rules.  That is, I do not run out into the middle of a busy street, lay down, and wait for traffic to stop around me.  I do not pick up unattended fire arms, look down the barrel to determine if it is loaded, and if I cannot discover with any level of certainty, I do not pull the trigger to see if my eye will see the bullet before it passes through the eyeball and into the brain.  I am, generally, a fairly cautious man.  I will not be jumping out of a perfectly good airplane just for fun.  If I happen to be flying, and it becomes obvious that the plane is unlikely to return to the ground safely, if the opportunity presents itself, I will absolutely rely on a parachute if one is available.  But I'm not going to toss gasoline on an already-burning fire, and I'm not going to try to taunt alligators, snakes, bears, or any other animal which may be dangerous - and that includes my fellow human being who may for whatever reason be more dangerous than I am.  

I'm a fairly safe person, but I'm also willing to accept certain risks.  I go outside of my home daily.  And I do things cautiously, but I do take risks.  And I accept that there are times I will have to rely on certain expert advice to make a decision.  And when it comes to medical health, and my own in particular, I will do my best to follow the doctor's orders.  And if the health community tells me there is a dangerous disease which can be prevented, reduced, or even eliminated by the simple injection of something into me or my loved ones, you can damned well bet that I will check the available information, but it is very likely that I will take advantage of their hard work and do what I can to make this world a better and safer place by getting that shot.  

I have several advantages there.  They start with being alive, and having had as the prime example of masculinity in my early life a man who himself contracted a wretched, now-preventable disease which stole his muscle tone, his ability to walk normally or do many things I take for granted daily.  Having seen the limitations the disease bestowed upon my father, you can be absolutely certain that I will do what I can to prevent anything like that from spreading.

And yes, I recognize that, especially to those who do not understand all of it, the endless list of chemicals and materials which appear to be in modern vaccines can sound terrifying.  But I will tell you this - the list of chemicals in a polio vaccine is nowhere near as terrifying as the thought that I or one of my loved ones may not be able to draw a breath - because the muscles that work their diaphragm - that big muscle below your lungs which pulls the air in, and pushes the exhaust gasses out (not from your rear end, from your lungs, though I suspect it may have a helping hand in a ruddy good fart, too) - that terrifies me. Because some of the polio victims died in iron lungs - that is, machines which, through the use of air pressure, attempted to create an environment where someone paralyzed from an extreme case of polio might almost pretend to breathe.

And if that was the option if the current crop of Covid variants got worse, I'd be near the head of the line for the next round of vaccines.  And I would be looking to avoid by a country mile any unvaccinated individual, because every person who does not get vaccinated is another festering petri dish of infectious variant-host being that might as well be looking for brains, because they're modern zombies.  I am certain some of them are turning their backs on vaccines because the majority seems engaged to get the vaccine.  And they don't want to run with the crowd.  But the problem is, if they don't get vaccinated, they will most likely end up being buried with the crowd.  And that's their problem.  But consider this - if you choose, for whatever reason you feel valid, not to get vaccinated, why should the rest of us continue to spend time with/around you?

The best analogies I've seen so far have been along the lines of being on a cruise ship, and one of your fellow passengers is convinced there's a nearly unlimited amount of gold bullion hidden somewhere below his feet in the ship.  And he has a shovel and he will continue to dig until he finds that bullion.  Or there's the fellow who has decided that he's just flat out enjoying running through the neighborhood where he lives, tossing grenades around.  Hey, look, they're avoidable, they're small, and it's something he likes to do - and it's not illegal, how dare you prevent him from having some fun?

While I would like to think it could go without saying, the bottom-line fact is that any hole in a boat tends to let water in, which is pretty much the opposite of that which you would like.  Now, if someone keeps digging, convinced they haven't yet found the right spot, well, eventually the hole will get too big, the pumps won't be able to keep up.  And sooner or later, one of those small grenades might fly through your window, or under your chair, or somewhere near the base of a tree that might just happen to fall on you.  Or heck, maybe the shrapnel will get you.  I mean, it's all small stuff, right?

But we're closing in on a time where those who choose to deliberately, willingly, and insanely chose to continue to threaten all of us with their refusal to accept the obvious and get the vaccine, we're going to need to find a modern leper colony.  While that might be difficult, I quite honestly see the state of Texas continuing to step up and volunteer to be the bleeding edge of stupidity for modern society.  I mean, a governor who is willing to put his name - for all of the future to see - on a flat-out prevention of standard, reasonable, realistic, and safe disease-prevention measures just because he doesn't want someone else telling him what he has to do, well, there's a certain amount of bravery there.  I submit that it requires such a deficit of intellect and compassion for one's fellows that one, as a leader, would not only willingly walk into the ocean surrounded by sharks while he's got open, bleeding wounds, it takes a true idiot of titanic stature to chum the waters before taking that first step in.  

But hey, I'm no elected leader. I've chosen to focus on that where I can do the most good.  And do the least harm.  Unlike many of our elected reps, who seem to be hell bent on proving their own ignorance, dislike, and outright hatred for the rest of us.  But that's on their watch.  They are responsible for themselves.  And when that extreme debt of karma comes around, I hope I'm a heck of a long way away from that particular ground zero.  And I hope that many innocents are nowhere near their implosion.

And they can rot where ever karma sends that level of fool for eternity.  Hopefully it's cold, dead ground with nothing to be damaged or destroyed by their rotting corpse, and nothing else.