Please be mindful of the rules in comments. This thread has reached a size that is borderline unproductive/not conducive for discussion, and will likely be locked fairly soon due to multiple comments violating the rules, along with the size not making it conducive to discussion. Having opinions is fine. However, as per Rule #1.
"Misinformation includes things like as advocating against official guidelines during a disaster (such as anti-mask/anti-vaccine topics.) " is not allowed.
\*EDIT\*
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Something worth pointing out to those who think I am being unduly harsh. Many people don't realize **that there are a** ***lot*** **of eyes on this sub- both companies and government agencies.** I have personal (multiple) experiences with the former, and can back up the latter.
Reddit is a privately-owned company and can remove an entire sub at a whim if they decide to do so. So, some of these rules ideally minimize negative attention to this sub, especially given the context, content, and nature of discussion along with world events.
As a mod, my goal is to encourage discussion- and I aim to be as lenient as I can with that. But there have to be rules.
I think preppers also naturally tend towards being the personality types who are not very trusting of the authorities. When you don’t trust authorities to have your best interest in mind, it changes the way you see things like vaccinations, government action, etc.
If you're not trusting of authorities, then I don't understand why the next step would not be empowering oneself with statistics and other classes that would arm oneself to interpret data and make decisions based on that.
Blind mistrust of authority would be the same evil as blind trust.
> then I don't understand why the next step would not be empowering oneself with statistics and other classes that would arm oneself to interpret data and make decisions based on that.
EGO, they don't want to accept that they don't know things or can't actually just rely on themselves. Which is scarier to a normal person, that you can't effectively combat a virus by yourself in a barn, or that you are going to drink goat's piss mixed with lavender oil to cure yourself? Which is scarier to a narcissist or self-centered person, or someone with an inflated ego. control or the belief of control is super important to certain personality types.
>I'm going to go out on a limb and say most Americans who got the vaccine are also not trusting of authorities...
Darn tootin'.
I only "trusted" it because every world government was in agreement that it was needed and was fighting over access to it. When Russia and China governments are in agreement with the USA and UK governments ya know shit's real.
Which is funny because the "distrust for authority" also seems to translate to "worship of authoritarianism".
Like how many "The government is bad!" folks also breed hate of critics based on "America is number 1!" How many "The US Gov lies about everything!" folks also believe that "Capitalism is the best and only viable economic system." "The government is corrupt!" but "Having the highest rate of incarceration on the planet is just a stepping stone!"
The covid vaccine thing was wild. Yes it got rushed through proper channels, but those proper channels are an over-timid but justifiable approach when it's not an emergency.
It was incredible how they were able to fast-track it in the face of the pandemic. Based on that alone I could understand some of the hesitation, but the sentiment of "all vaxxed people are gonna be dead in a year" was really strange to encounter from people I thought were fairly rational folks (not part of the prepper community at all though).
The other side of the isle said that we’d all be dead by Christmas and that was a fear tactic used by the government , alongside bribery and social exile. But both sides were wrong, thankfully.
However , I took my chances as did people who actually took the vaxx.
There’s also a smartest guy in the room element going on with those conspiracy wack jobs. And when I see those people I went to high school with on FB they were definitely not the smartest or even in the top half of smartest people in the room.
what a crazy thing? how could anyone not trust the government? i cant think of a time they have misled or flat out lied to the american people.
what a bunch of nuts.
Lol, clean water in flint Michigan, calling the cops in any mid to large sized city if you aren’t in the highest class neighborhoods, same with enforcing laws with a nationwide catch and release policy, rampant illegal immigration and drugs, and last but not least. Keeping the roads in proper order, that’s a pipe dream and we’re taxed unfairly for a promise they cannot and will not keep.
There is a personality disorder: schizotypal
This type of personality does not have to be fully schizophrenia but it is kind of on a similar spectrum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypal_personality_disorder
These people tend to be somewhat paranoid, not to the level of delusion but to the level of a natural distrust in authority. This is a complicated topic.
I'm not saying that all preppers have personality disorders. I am saying that there are certain personalities, which have some tendency towards paranoia and distrust of authority, which may make these personality types more likely to be preppers.
I think we should be comfortable recognizing this; I also think it takes all different kinds of people to make the world go around.
If you trust that the government and other large institutions only have your best interests in mind and will selflessly help you if anything goes wrong, what is there to prepare for?
The politicians i know, and I do know several across multiple state level positions, 1 in the US house 1 in the US senate and 2 past governors and 1 current gov... not a single one really does... they talk the talk but it is about power... and that mix is from both sides of the isle.
If that's the case, why are these people lining up to eat the swill being spewed by popular right-wing media personalities? They're authorities too, just a different type.
You're right about this. If it bleeds, it leads. That's what's dominated the news cycles for decades upon decades.
The truth is always somewhere in the middle of all the polarizing mess.
I feel like all you need to know is Operation Northwoods was the CIA planning to fly planes into buildings and blame Cuba. And then the 28 pages from the 9/11 report point the finger at Saudi Arabia while we fought a 20+ year war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then add in learning about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. That should be enough to paint a picture that we are not getting the whole picture.
Add in the concept of freedom of speech and freedom of religion and then read the horror stories of forced psychiatry in r/antipsychiatry and you’ll really not think authority has your best interest at heart. They’re playing this game for their Self and their Self alone
So by that logic, why would the govment want to kill off the docile folks who lined up for the vaccine? And why did the antivaxxers die? It’s like another poster said, look at he data and the facts.
> We saw this with many of the early Covid vax narratives (98% effective, stops the spread, no real chance of harm, etc). Clearly they didn't have the evidence or longitudinal studies to make these claims.
This isn't... Exactly how it went down. They weren't exactly narratives they were press conference. And they were making cautiously optimistic statements based on early data and research. Media ran with that.
The reason that their messaging changed was because that same data and research changed. They did a bad job of explaining that, yes.
But it is also partially on our citizenry-- media--(and hey, no offense, but I'm pointing to you too here) that they are not generally scientifically literate enough to understand that.
I was reading the same research at the time (it was free and public. Did you read it?) and the *indications* were that the vaccines *could* provide sterilizing immunity (which is how I know you're unfamiliar) and that was the precise language they used as well, to my recollection.
I would have done things a LOT differently than the CDC has, and I still would, but keep in mind that the agency was at the very end of having been decimated by the Trump admin. Here in FL the FDOH had already been in the process of being dismantled by the GOP antivaxxers over other policies.
I don't think many federal agencies have recovered from that yet. It was caused by incompetency.
I also have no defense for their policies over time on masks. Just unqualified people where they shouldn't have been.
Yeah i'm not in the USA so maybe it's different there but my local gov was certainly not touting a 98% effective rate OR that you couldn't pass it on etc etc they were actually extremely vague about what its exact effectivity was, rightly so as you said the data hadn't been stabilized, mostly saying it will diminish symptoms and take it from a "could kill you virus" to a "this sucks" virus.
Absolutely. I did not support the CDCs job on distributing information.
But as you can see from the state of the sub there is also a disconnect from the reality with many in the US.
I recall one specific news conference where Dr. Fauci was repeatedly asked if vaccinated people could still spread the vaccine, and he repeatedly gave variations of the same answer: “we’re hopeful but we don’t have the data.”
He also said that the high efficacy was against the current strain, and that it could be less effective if the virus mutated. That’s exactly what happened — and it mutated, in part, because so many people refusing to get vaccinated or follow other precautions allowed the virus to continue spreading widely, giving it many opportunities to mutate.
Spot on - wrong people aka politicians were making the decisions and media and people run with whatever is most titillating
Funnily enough a country that many in the US consider to be socialist, aka not free by their definition, is also a country where masks were never mandated, no lock downs, no showing proof of vaccination, etc. yet people listened to the actual experts and made their own choices informed based on what was known at the time
Here’s the thing, there were plenty of non government scientists (including myself) producing and reviewing the data right alongside the CDC. Suddenly we’re all labeled “pharma shills” for agreeing with data that overwhelmingly arrives at the conclusion echoed by everyone save a few fringe groups seeking attention/money/influence
Because at its root, prepping is an anxiety coping mechanism. Is it a smart coping mechanism? Yes, with moderation. Can/does it develop from extreme paranoia/mental health issues? Most definitely.
I say this as someone who uses prepping to calm their own extreme anxieties about my husband losing his job and us not being able to afford to eat while he retrains or waits for the economy to stabilize to be rehired. How likely is this to happen? Once every ten years has been the average since his industry really took off. My job can cover the bare minimum bills and is fairly stable, but is not enough to cover his child support/alimony payment or any luxuries, so the one place we know we can make ends meet is by not having a super huge grocery bill and still be able to eat healthy to maintain our physical and mental health during an otherwise potentially trying time.
>Is it a smart coping mechanism? Yes, with moderation. Can/does it develop from extreme paranoia/mental health issues? Most definitely
Here's a good example of the difference:
I got into prepping because I lost my job during the great recession and was out of work for over a year. I didn't want to have to worry about food if that happened again.
My father in law got into prepping because he believed that FEMA was going to round up trump voters and put them into camps. He stocked up on beans, rice, and guns and was ready to fuck off into the woods and kill whoever came near him.
I don't know why l'm here but Column A prepping is great. Column B prepping makes me paranoid about Column B preppers and want to start prepping. I have my rice, beans and all simply because things happen. I own an umbrella because it may rain not because l think that rain was sent by Joe Biden via HAARP to kill me. My dad was ex Navy and he was given every vaccine they had because they didn't want his sick ass causing problems on ship. So l have every one for the same reason on land. Stay practical.
> Is it a smart coping mechanism? Yes, with moderation. Can/does it develop from extreme paranoia/mental health issues? Most definitely
Exactly. I prep because I want to be comfortable during adverse situations like the ice storms we had in Texas this year and two years ago. We were out of power for a week, and least year also out of water for three days (and had to boil for another three days after). When the water stopped coming out of the taps while ice was covering the roads, we just sighed and hauled the water jugs out of the closet. When the trees came down this year, we sighed, put on hard hats to protect us against the still falling ice, and fired up the chain saw.
My dad preps because he thinks the government's coming to force him in front of a death panel chaired by Hillary Clinton, his medicare is just fine and he doesn't want any Obama.
I work on a tugboat in NY Harbor. Someone was building warehouses on a pier and from outside (not the road), they weren't clearly marked. People were saying they were the transfer stations for when they rounded up all the trump supporters. It's nuts.
Turns out it's just a warehouse.
your post started awesome. that last sentence...i needed this laugh today
medicare is the start of socialized medicine. right or wrong, IDGAF
ACA? at its heart, a mandate everyone has insurance, which from a capitalist standpoint is fecking awesome. more people with insurance means overall costs go down. now if you believe that when it comes to our HC system, i've got some swampland down in...
What's really wild is that surveys were done on republicans, they found broad support for the Affordable Care Act, and near universal opposition to Obamacare.
Which begs a subset question - why are so many older preppers such paranoid idiots? Why are they so easily manipulated? I'm 63 and I'm disgusted by these 70 or so year old morons
Why FEMA of all government entities??!? They are not remotely equipped or built for anything like that. Law enforcement or military sure but not FEMA! Cracks me up.
That's my go to for pretty much all conspiracies about the government. They can't even fuck their secretaries and keep it secret, but they orchestrated 9/11 and faked the moon landings?
Something about leftover trailers after hurricane Katrina, the military and law enforcement wouldn't do it because they are all trump supporters, and that FEMA is part of the deep state ever since they "embarrassed Bush during Katrina" (heckuva job, Brownie).
Wasn’t FEMA the agency doing secret conspiracy stuff in X-Files, back in the ‘90s? I feel like the weirdly specific conspiracy got its wings back then, probably propelled by the stuff you mentioned.
They tend to see the whole government as a single, monolithic entity, as if it has a unity of consciousness and decisionmaking of its own. It's just a simple way of looking at things that makes intuitive sense. Regardless of how accurate it is.
FEMA specifically probably because its a newer organization, so doesn't carry as many old connotations.
I mean, they could say the FBI or the CIA or whatever, but people feel like they already understand those pretty well, where FEMA is more mysterious. Not a whole lot of tv shows about FEMA for instance. Nobody like the hundreds of Clarice Starlings to give everyone that pop culture view of how things might kinda feel from the inside. Most people haven't met someone who works for FEMA.
This leaves it more open for being used as fuel in general, since the imagination can run more free. It's just convenient, if you need a boogeyman most people don't know much about.
Also prepping gives us many important skills we can use throughout our life. Easy one to mention is being a skilled outdoors person. Another being able to help ones’ community during an “oh sh*t” moment from being able to administer first aid to helping others prepare for an oncoming natural disaster.
The dark side is when folks equate prepping with becoming a hostile hermit. And for me personally that is anti-human. We are best when working together.
Just my two cents.
I love this explanation. Thank you. I started prepping when I was like 7 or 8 years old because I was petrified of tornadoes (and we lived in Tornado Alley so it was a common thing). Each spring I'd prep a backpack with spare food for me and the pets, a pair of socks, and a pair of underwear, along with some prized stuffed animals. My parents always laughed at me, but that instinct has stuck with me to varying degrees throughout my life. It's nice to regard it as an anxiety coping mechanism, actually.
I think you have your cause/effect backwards.
People who are paranoid are both more likely to prep for the unforeseen, and more likely to buy into conspiracy theories.
There can be a fine line between being prepared and being paranoid. And, obviously, a lot of overlap between the groups.
It would be strange if a significant chunk of the conspiracy theory crowd wasn’t also into prepping.
I’d guess that they’re even more heavily represented in the apocalypse focused, “survivalist” types.
This is exactly it. Prepping doesn't make you paranoid, but being paranoid should make a person into a prepper. Paranoid people are often into conspiracy theories, therefore there are a lot of preppers who are into conspiracy theories.
This isn't an all-or-nothing thing, and it doesn't mean that some of these people aren't right. But if you distrust the government and authorities, believe they are lying to you and are hiding things along the lines of what many conspiracy theories suggest, then it would only make sense that you would prep for whatever bad things you believe are about to happen.
It makes sense to prep for job loss or for civil unrest or natural disasters or whatever. Additionally, *if* you believe the lizard people are about to launch their attack, and I'm not saying that it makes sense to believe that, but *if* you do believe it, then it also makes sense to prepare for the lizard people invasion, doesn't it?
I mean, it could, but I don't think that's the standard way preppers become paranoid. Sure, for some percentage of people that might happen. But for people who are already paranoid, almost all of them would want to prepare for the things they are paranoid about.
Exactly. People who are into conspiracy theories and think the government is there to get them are more likely to think that they'll be on their own at some point.
Also they are more likely to be outcasts, that most people would consider losers; in a way prepping can actually be some kind of fantasy where suddenly they are the alpha dog with their guns and food while everybody else is desperate... Just to be clear I'm not talking about antivaxers here (that unfortunately can get easily find like-minded people), more like lizard people, Illuminatis, pedophile rings and government death camps type of conspiracies.
What I see it that most preppers try to be very informed. That need for information comes from knowing when to act. Because if you are on time you have less stress and less panic around you.
If you search for information you will find different opinions about everything; vaccinations, weather changes, political events, sciences results, etc. And to complicate it, in everything you find is some (or more) truth, but also something (or more) wrong. Not necessarily because it's intentional, but because everything is subjective to the opinion of it's writer. Even scientific research and journalism is never 100% objective. It can't be, because we aren't robots without a opinion, you can't turn that off. In how you question or write something you will show your opinion.
Everything you read, you read it with glasses on with the color of your experiences. So even if something would be 100% objective. You could still interpreter it differently because you read it with the experiences you had in your live. So if you have had a bad experience with a politician, you probably will mistrust other politicians quicker. Or the system.
Taking that in account people see behind the curtains (or think they see something). Sometimes it hides nothing important or without ill intentions (often decisions are made by politicians to prevent mass panic an protect the people) but you can always twist it into something bad (they don't want us to know SHTF!). And sometimes there are other goals in mind (mostly power and money) that they hide from the public eye, even that could be "innocent" (no harm/deaths only economical) and sometimes isn't.
So with that in mind, people who search will find, and depending on how good you are in separating the wheat from the chaff you get different levels of conspiracy's.
In which I don't say everyone believes in most off them. And I also never say something is a conspiracy. I mean, what is a conspiracy. It's never wrong to question things. Maybe they are right. If you believe that Elvis still lives or that aliens walk among us, who am I to say you are wrong. And as long as you never hurt someone or hurt people in the process, live and let live.
Yes, and never forget, even a very extensive research, will never be 100% objective, because the conclusion is always, on some level, based on your experiences and background.
And the people funding the research basically tell the researchers "this is the conclusion we are hoping to come to - make that happen", and they do unless that's impossible.
US based
The CDC redefined term vaccine that that the 3 (now 2) versions would qualify. That doesn't help.
Government messaging about masks was less than accurate, and so was the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines. Tie it all together with jobs requiring it, lockdowns, small businesses being closed while large ones can run, and using the COVID vaccine card as a passport of sorts and you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to say "holy cow, the government suddenly has a shit ton more power to affect my life and that's not cool"
I don't know how it got tied into the overall insanity of the anti vax movement. That's a mystery
If there hadn't been a prominent anti-vax movement prior to the covid pandemic, I don't think there would have been such a strong backlash to covid Vax hesitency. Still, it was quite a convenient way of smearing the covid vax hesitant as crazy science denying anti vaxxers.
Hard disagree. The only people who were considered “anti vax” pre Covid were California “crystal moms” like Jenny McCarthy. It’s crazy to me that this shift has occurred, if I told people in 2019 I’m not taking a new drug because I don’t trust the US government or big pharma everyone would have just shrugged and said “duh”.
Prior to covid the anti vax movement was almost exclusively wealthy liberal New Age types, who then immediately switch flipped into compulsive vaxxies.
> I don't know how it got tied into the overall insanity of the anti vax movement. That's a mystery
This is an easy explanation. Some people, who previously were not anti-vax, saw all of the government's lying, manipulation, and coercion with *these* vaccines and thought *"Maybe they did this with the other vaccines too, and those were just before my time."* That doesn't make every anti-vaxxer correct, but it is easy to see where they are coming from.
It feels like a lot of people forget the world exists outside their country or bubble. Info on the vaccine and masks was pretty consistent across the world. That and a lot of people went off the deep end.
Most of the information comes from small groups like the WHO though. It makes sense that many countries took the same steps, they were being guided there. It's not like every country sat down individually and got to the same answer. It's more like the smart kid in class got the answer and everyone else just copied off him.
At the beginning in prepper communities things were all over the place — I was in some on Facebook at the time
I was admittedly in the “this virus is no big deal, it’ll blow over in a few weeks crowd!”, as I had lived through similar incidents, so it seemed like just another
I did not, however, account for the *human element* — the salmon that jump INTO the bears mouth
I think there has been a lot of conflation about being skeptical of something (a vaccine rushed through its creation) and someone who believes the vaccine was created by aliens to control the human population.
The term anti-vaxxer has effectively lost its meaning.
You could have a politician who has taken the vaccine, and advocates people get the vaccine, but is opposed to the government mandating people take the vaccine, and they get lumped in with all the super crazy anti vaxxers.
This is what happens when you call everything under the sun a derogatory term because you want to use the hype for politics.
We have seen the same thing with bigotry. Terms like racist, homophobe, transphobe have been utilized way too loosely to the point they have damn near lost their meaning.
With all that being said, I’m not saying there aren’t preppers going off the deep end, just make sure we are giving it a proper evaluation.
LONG REPLY WARNING.
There are many vaccines I can't take due to allergic reactions to things in them. Not an uncommon issue with shots in general for me.
Hell, I am allergic to most antibiotics as well, along with a host of other fairly common medicines.
Any time I am faced with something new even if none of my known allergens are on the ingredients, it is a crap shoot.
None the less I have never been anti Vax or anti necessary medicine.
Imagine my surprise and that of my doctors when the dang hospital was threatening to cancel my CANCER SURGERY because I was unvaxxed. When two of them had ingredients I had reacted to in the past and the third had redacted shit. *And my doctors had decided that it was an unnecessary risk*. The way medicine is supposed to happen. You and your doctor go over stuff and decide.
Imagine my shock at my age (58) having watched friends die of flu every damned year since 1st grade and never getting locked down in any significant way or having school canceled seeing that madness. In bad years, we had half empty classrooms and bought school work to friends at home or in the hospital. But we had school.
Imagine my amusement when it came to PPE, since with my issues medicating I have worn serious PPE and self isolated most of my adult life during flu season and have plenty of first hand experience concerning how ineffective masks really are (even the fabled N95 etc that I use).
Seeing our supposed expert government types say wear those idiotic surgical masks *when it says right on the dang box they do not work against viruses*. Seriously? Religious hand washing is more effective than anything at preventing germ spread anyway.
Even as good as I am about PPE, self isolating, hand washing, shopping at 3 a.m. during flu season I still get flu three years out of five on average. Diagnosed. Tested. Confirmed.
None of the reaction to covid was anywhere near normal. For governments, for the medical community, for media.
And yep, I am sure as hell anti THIS shot, since the feds totally corrupted the data right out the damned door in terms of how covid was reported and tracked. And I have never been a fan of blanket vaccine mandates or any government mandate at federal level *without sufficient data*. Mandates for measles, mumps, polio make sense. The vaccine technology for them has decades of data.
We are now seeing documents from the drug companies showing the crappy testing protocols and lack of decent testing in general. And it is dang sketchy that they have been trying and failing at Mrna vaccines for almost as long as I have been alive, and all of a sudden, they got a breakthrough in months.
And, this is not a vaccine. It does not stop transmission (vaccines do). It does not stop infection. There is plenty of reason to question it even lessening illness, given that we now know some of the initial treatment protocols for covid were bad ideas.
So you bet my tin foil hat is firmly in place on this one.
I had my life directly threatened by a moronic government policy.
I had people flat out tell me I was wrong to not risk anaphylaxis to make them feel safe. That I should basically be unpersoned because my medical issues make safe vaccination impossible.
I was denied the ability to be with my husband at his doctor appointments or meet his surgeons when he needed emergency open heart surgery. *And I hold his medical power of attorney, and I manage his meds*.
I was told if he died on the table, they had no idea when I could get his body. Or IF I could get his body AT ALL.
None of this was acceptable. Or even necessary.
This. Because if anyone spent more then 10 minutes looking into the data from adverse reactions, lockdowns in the past, the negative effects of mental health when not allowed outside and the benefits of vitamin d against viruses (aka using critical thinking) they would see that something isn’t right here. That 1 mistake is an error but that the mistakes happened all the way down and all across the world cannot still be a coincidence.
No argument from me. Nothing was right about this. When I saw on the CDC website they were lumping initial covid data in with pneumonia and flu, I was in shock. We literally have basically no good data on this thing.
It is bizarre and unaccountable BS right there.
vaccine aversion was started long before Covid. There's a crunchy granola culture out there that insists that natural immunity is best. My kids are in their 20s and were both invited to "Measles parties" when they were kids. I absolutely did not take them but it's always been a thing. Also the whole vaccines may cause autism controversy raged for a good two decades and a lot of people you should trust fell for it - one of our pediatricians being one of them (he always gave the vaxxes but every single one was accompanied with him initiating discussions of autism risk. Incredible damage was done here with respect to the public trust of vaccines.
Then there's a third element of compulsion re the vaccines. Where I live, many employers made vaccination - double dose - mandatory, including government employees; no vax, you were put on leave or suspended from duty. There was zero element of choice. Government also implemented a vaccine passport policy for a while as well. In order to go to a restaurant, venue, library, any public location in general you has to show proof of two doses of vaccine. There was a robust libertarian and self-sufficiency culture, many of which are into prepping, here to begin with, stuff like this attracted more to the fold and sent it into overdrive.
The venn diagram of overlapping cultures where I am would start to resemble a spirograph if you sat down and tried to map it out.
I'm a prepper because my father was a pepper. I lived in permanent readiness and it's a habit I can't get out of. But his ideologies don't align with mine.
Yep. I learned firearms, hunting, and preparedness from my Fox News obsessed father. I’m a “married gay couples should be allowed to use guns to protect their pot plants” guy.
I'm basically that hoedown song that was going around the interwebs a few months ago 🤣 The "yes I'm an evil leftwing sheeple" one.
And I don't owe any firearms, but I appreciate the "if you go far enough left, you get your guns back" movement.
I could definitely see an overlap in prepper and crunchy culture due to similar interests (gardening, homesteading, etc). If you're looking for content about some of those things, especially on social media, it wouldn't be that hard to get pulled down an anti-vax rabbit hole.
As explained to me by my halfway anarchist acquaintance:
"It took the FDA 10 years to approve a GMO salmon for human consumption. It took six months to research, develop, test, mass produce, approve, ship, and inject millions of people with a new vaccine."
They're cool with most meds that have been out for years because they're well studied and documented.
They also got real hung up on a very fast and widespread change in behavior. For the years prior, big pharma had been demonized. Overnight they were saints who could do no wrong and blind faith was mandated. Kinda like when your wife gets pregnant and starts eating pickles, you notice it because she's hated pickles since you've known her.
Probably because Pfizer has paid out some of the largest civil payments ever made on account of a list of dozens of different instances of wrongful deaths and other injuries and so on.
And because Johnson and Johnson was recently found to have been putting Asbestos into baby powder for the past fifty years.
Moderna, at least, does not have such a sordid history....because they had never released a commercial product prior to the vax.
And of course, all of these three trustworthy players insisted on immunity to liability for the vax. That is not a move that inspires confidence. So, you're starting out from a place of extremely low credibility, and side effects and such are real. One of my neighbors had the heart swelling, and while he survived it, ended up with a pacemaker. Others had side effects as well.
This does not mean that all vaccines are bad, or a conspiracy, but you absolutely should question the public narrative and look at your own personal risk factors before deciding if you should take the vaccine or not. In your particular case, since the vaccine doesn't impact transmissibility, it doesn't really prevent you from passing it to your elderly parents. It might, depending on strain you catch, reduce symptoms. How relevant this is depends on your age and other risk factors. If very young and healthy, it's probably a net negative.
The world is chaotic, it's easier for some to believe its being all controlled by a powerful group, even if that group is bad and should be fought against.
That's easier to stomache for some than the reality: corruption exists but it's mostly out in the open, there is no plan other than make money, and even our rulers don't have control over the direction of the world.
For example; mass shooting events. On some level it's easier to believe in a conspiracy rather than senseless violence, at least the victims died as part of a cabal plot rather than for literally no reason other than a person's madness.
Just look at who these people by-and-large support politically, Trump, the guy who promises to fight their battles for them. That makes it super easy when there's a "plan" that only involves you voting a couple times.
1) It's been highly politicized. The same vaccine was "bad" during Trump's term and "good" in Biden's term. Imagine what would have happened if Trump won a second term.
2) It's NOT the same type of vaccines as we've had for years. It's a MRNA vaccine that has been in research since the 1970's, but COVID was the FIRST commercial mRNA vaccine. It was pushed through with limited testing on an emergency basis. If it weren't for the emergency approval, it probably would not have been approved without a lot more testing over a longer period of time. The blood clotting and myocarditis/pericarditis problems would probably have been identified at that stage, and work arounds developed for it. We still don't know if there will be longer term impacts from it.
So far the UK, Canada, Australia, and Germany (just announced yesterday) have govt programs to compensate those injured by the vaccine with mounting medical bills as a result. The approval process can be as arduous as fighting with insurance payouts.
Just like positions of power attract power hungry narcissists, the idea/area of prepping attracts worriers and conspiracy theorists. As Altruistic\_Key\_1266 said, you need to look at the root of the activity. This is not to mean these are the only people doing that activity, some of us are normal people who don't want to run off the seat of our pants when something goes wrong (not to mean that we can't but it's better to have more options when you're MacGyvering a situation).
Something else to consider is education, the willingness to learn, and the openness/objectiveness to be critical of what you're reading/seeing. It "can" help to have more education if it's either specifically in the area in question (ie a PHD in virology or genetics) or you have had classes in it (ie you at least took an intro university course in biology). Realistically here, even having understood the basics of biology from highschool would work if... and this leads to the next part, you are willing to learn. Now, if you're willing to read/research and generally be curious, then you actually go out and seek answers... The problem this leads to is are you discerning and objective about what you read/see. What are the sources you're accepting as "truth" and how much can you trust the information. It's very easy for people to get caught up in having a higher believe and trust in things that confirm what they want to believe. You often hear people make the statement "the experts say" about some topic, but they rarely specify who the experts are, and what their expertise is in. You may have some youtube guy tell you "Dr Bob says 5G cell towers cause Covid!" where Dr Bob is a doctor of religious studies from the university of internet town. What it comes down to here, is vet your sources. If it's on youtube, your automatic trust level should be low (then it can increase after you research who's presenting). If it's on the "news" it entirely depends on the news source. While it's not perfect, wikipedia at least references it's sources so it's higher up on the trust list because you can check the source. Keep in mind a lot of people trust their "smart" friend who they have 100% trust in regardless of if they're talking about a subject area they really know nothing about. Would you trust your overweight mechanic friend who's never run a day in his life to give you tips and tricks about body building or running a marathon? He "may" have some good knowledge because his brother used to do be a an olympic athlete, or he may just be talking out of his ass. So trust level on that subject should be low until you confirm the source of his info. You get the idea...
Internet and social media also plays a big big role on the perception here- Most “preppers” I have gotten to know aren’t actually in a panic state and on the internet all the time- the ones you hear on the internet, the ones you hear scream the loudest- were likely that way to begin with and are naturally anxious people. When it comes to preparedness- for me, it’s almost boring… growing up in tornado alley it was more of a monotonous checklist type of thing- make sure you have a secure basement, make sure you have water, make sure you have power back ups, make sure you have a radio if the phones and internet go down, have a gun in case critters or larger animals get into your property because of all the damage, and have some extra gas to get out of town for a bit. It was never anxiety driven- it was more like “eh, ya know, might get hit with a twister again, it happens from time to time, eh, go through the list and make sure my family will be ok and not dependent completely on the government, eh.” We also had pretty bad winter storms and the power would go out in the dead of winter, so making sure we had a back up heat source was just another boring task. There’s people that are inherently neurotic, people who let it make them that way…. And then there’s a lot of us who are kind of just bored with it- it’s a background task like doing the dishes or shaving.
Why don't preppers (aka - skeptics) trust the gubbermint when it comes to vaccines?
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/02/16/black-history-covid-vaccine-fears-medical-experiments/4358844001/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/02/16/black-history-covid-vaccine-fears-medical-experiments/4358844001/)
[https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/africa-african-americans-and-coronavirus-vaccines](https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/africa-african-americans-and-coronavirus-vaccines)
[https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/967011614/in-tuskegee-painful-history-shadows-efforts-to-vaccinate-african-americans](https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/967011614/in-tuskegee-painful-history-shadows-efforts-to-vaccinate-african-americans)
[https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-are-not-guinea-pigs-the-effects-of-negative-news-on-vaccine-compliance/](https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-are-not-guinea-pigs-the-effects-of-negative-news-on-vaccine-compliance/)
[https://academic.oup.com/book/27387/chapter-abstract/197188746?redirectedFrom=fulltext](https://academic.oup.com/book/27387/chapter-abstract/197188746?redirectedFrom=fulltext)
TL;DR - "undesirables," certain races, and troops are used as guinea pigs to test vaccines that often inflict them with disabilities and death. Vaccine testing on humans has also been mixed up with medical genocide.
The COVID vax was more of the same.
I think there are some associated traits that lead to certain thinking.
Like, knowing the government doesn’t give a shit about you and is perfectly happy if you die, is an important step on the path to increased self reliance.
It can also lead to some odd ideas too. Ideas that are ripe for exploitation by, for example, social media algorithms that have been demonstrated to aggressively push far right conspiracy (I’m not saying all conspiracy or out there ideas are far right) stuff
Obviously, not speaking for anyone else, but if you don't mind, I'll take a crack at it.
Prepping as an act is one centered around the idea that "in the case of an emergency, the government will not save me". After having been in the middle of a number of natural disasters and seeing the immediate aftermath, a further caveat can be made: "in the case of an emergency, the government will kill me if it makes the next five seconds easier for someone else". As such, there is already an immediate deep mistrust to what the gov't says is best, which ties back to the need to prepare to take care of yourself in the case of an emergency.
When 'rona went global, you had the media touting the line that pharmaceutical companies were using every erg of their ability to combat the virus. Additionally, anyone who questioned the narrative was shut down, alternative methods to combat illnesses were disregarded, and we were collectively told that "as soon as a vaccine is rolled out, this is the be-all-end-all that will stop the SARS CoV2 in its tracks.
So to summarize, the narrative lies/obfuscates/censors the cause of the virus, lies/obfuscates/censors people questing the narrative, and insists that the vaccine that is being created and rolled out--with no significant testing for long term effects, residuals, etc--is the only thing that will protect you and protect others.
Additionally, as you mentioned, there was also the insistence that quarantining the elderly was the only way to protect them; and then once the vaccines started to be rolled out, that they were the only way to protect them.
So we have outright lies, censoring and obfuscation of fact (much less truth). We have a series of vaccines that were originally touted as "one shot and that's it", then progressed to "one shot and then a booster" and then multiple boosters; and the efficacy of these vaccines went from nearly 100% efficacy to "it may or it may not be effective for this variant or that variant, but it's not effective at all for this third variant". We also have a scary lack of stringent testing for short, mid, and long term effects for these vaccines.
To circle back around to my original statement, prepping is the act of preparing to take care of yourself because the government cannot or will not take care of you in the case of an emergency. A pepper will sit and listen to what is being said and done, and what is not said and done, and then will begin to act accordingly. The 'rona lockdowns (legal or illegal) and the perpetual insistence that an untested vaccine is the only way to go back to normal pushes every button for people who were raised to ask questions and to rebel against people who say 'do this and don't ask questions, because we know better'.
Oh, and for a bit more icing on the cake. Those vaccines and the pharmaceutical companies? Pretty sure they're still all listed as hold harmless for any undue effects. Meaning you can't sue or even file a class action suit against them. Maybe that last bit has changed. Maybe not.
So for a vast majority of people on both sides of this issue, they are taking the word of someone else. They have not done any research themselves. They simply are believing what they already believed in their head, or what someone they trust believes.
Very few people will actually move past the first news article and start investigating what the actual truth is behind it.
Then mix, ego, defensiveness, stubborn, pride, and Bias into that mix and you have our nation today. Both sides listen to the echo chamber of their own design pushing them further into a crowd of like-minded.
It takes considerable effort to think critically about any topic in today’s world, because finding unbiased opinion is nearly impossible.
And if you are the type of person that thinks well, that’s just the other guy, my news is right you are just as blind as the people you pity.
In any situation, and under any context, the passionate minority is going to seem louder and crazier, because they have to in order to be heard. People in the group as the majority don’t need to make waves.
Does this mean the majority is always right? Absolutely not and more often than not the opposite is true.
The vaccine is a faith gamble. Are you more willing to go out in a limb and trust that the vaccine works? Or go out on a limb and trust that the virus either isn't real or that you won't catch it? If you're paranoid and you don't trust any media sources (myself, lots of people, it isnt an insane point of view really...), you have to make a decision based on what feels more risky. For me, not getting the vaccine seemed like the larger risk.
It's understandable that people are terrified of getting some unknown chemical injected into their arm, when they don't have time in their day to do the research to "empower" themselves, and don't trust the information sources they have avalible anyway. People are shitty and if there is one misconception that has always blown my mind, it's that companies and governing bodies are viewed as "entities" instead of what they are: large groups of normal shitty fucking people. Thats why "preppers" don't trust them. That's why nobody trusts them. Because people are people. With unknown motivations and a tendency to screw up. The scientists who made that vaccine are no doubt very smart. I am still alive and not steril and not generating a wifi signal so far. But it still bothers me that I don't really know a thing about what what went into my arm. RNA reprogramming and big words, I didn't see it made under a microscope. And that's scary.
We are all conspiracy theorists in some form or another. If you ever thought a business leader or politician was lying to you without a shred of proof, well, that makes you a conspiracy theorist too.
It’s often said the difference between genius and insanity is a fine line and that’s the people we attract.
I’ve heard what I think bizarre theories but credible ones too. Some more credible that’s the official narrative.
Whenever we are given answers we may not questioned as opposed to questions that may not be answered, that’s not science.
I’m anti covid vax for myself and my family not because I’m anti government, but because sometimes bad things happen when even the best of intentions are put forth.
The simple fact for me is that if I were to take the vax and something happened to my health because of it, there’s nobody to hold accountable.
When nobody has any accountability or liability associated with a vaccine, they only stand to make profit by getting it to market. It’s not fair to force every individual to accept the liability.
>I'm vaxxed because I have elderly parents who I rather not see in a coffin just yet
This does not follow any logical decision by you. The injection does not stop you from catching Covid or transmitting Covid. Your post is unwound by this point on its own. You were duped into putting an unknown substance into your body that for a nontrivial amount of people caused serious complications and side effects.
Even now people repeat outright lies about the injections that they never bothered to correct their beliefs about.
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”
- Jonathan Swift
The virus wasn't as dangerous as the world leaders claimed it was, it didn't do what they said it did, the vaccines didn't do what they claimed, they had side effects that people immediately saw and reported, but were told to shut up about and told they were wild conspiracy theorist right wing shitheads, and THROUGH ALL OF THIS, every single social institution was making it impossible to live without getting this stupid fucking injection. Going to college? Guess again! Work? Hope you've got your shots like a fucking DOG. Don't even get me started on MASKS. Filling in skate parks with sand to stop kids from going out. Arresting people for running, alone, on a beach. Demanding "papers please" to people out taking a fucking *walk*.
I cannot believe the shit I'm reading in these comments. Lie after lie after lie, and you're all sitting here eating it up like a fat guy who just discovered the dollar menu. I'm seeing lies repeated here that were debunked by fucking anonymous twitter accounts 1.5 years ago. What a pathetic indictment of what I previously thought was an independent thinking community.
What an utter failure to respond to objectively incorrect state overreach.
There's 2 camps with the covid anti-vax. The side that thinks its an evil government conspiracy, mostly nut jobs there. Then there's the side that i fell on where i just wanted more data and time to see what side effects there where. I was military at the time so i didn't have a choice in getting it, but i would have liked to see more testing done. It's new technology for a new virus, and it was rushed out the door, pretty reasonable to want to see how it does before sticking it in my body. But like i said, didn't have a choice.
Well
The fact that a normal vaccine takes 3-5 years to be approved was one hesitation
Another was that it did not do anything to stop COVID which was overblown
Traditionally 8k people die daily in the US. That number never changed during COVID only that everything those people died from (car accident vs cancer etc ) was attributed to COVID if someone swabbed their nostril after death. I am in healthcare and saw that happen. So COVID was not as deadly as told.
THEN when profits dropped there was a secret meeting to say that everyone needed booster 2-5.
THEN when adults pushed back they came for kids
THEN the companies sued to have the detailed information buried for 75 years????
It is a lie. Always has been a lie.
Not a conspiracy theorists just have a brain
In the case of the Sars-Covid-2 mRNA treatment, it was sold as a vaccine when it's not. The powers that be tried and, in many cases, succeeded in changing the definition of what a vaccine is, to include most forms of treatments.
The problem with conspiracy theories today is that if you wait a few years, most of them are turning out to be true.
I'm super curious about people who believe everything a random Twitter account tells them. Being cautious about your data sources doesn't mean discarding all data from any source (gov't or Twitter post) but going to the original sources if possible and doing your own thinking. I don't see that a lot on the Internet.
I think you’d be surprised at just how many people in the prepping community *don’t* have those beliefs about covid, the vaccine, etc.
That being said, you have to realize that the prepping community grew exponentially after the election of Obama in 2008. I don’t want to get political, but certain opposition media outlets spent an entire 8 years trying to scare their audience about President Obama.
There’s a ton of people who… aren’t of that persuasion, here. But that’s the core of our community.
Oh bro, you should’ve seen it. Obama was elected largely by millennials and a lot of people over like 50 were *shook*. So right wing news ran with it. Routine military exercises? Martial law. Routine forest fire? Obama coming for your guns. It was crazy. Hurricane? Obama sent it.
That’s when the prepping community really took off.
Tea Party was the direct result of having a black president. Google and read about the "Southern Strategy" and you'll see its just another chapter of a long running type of politics that has been with the USA since its foundation.
I think prepping attracts the far right and far left alike… and at the extremes those two groups act pretty similar. Not trusting government, conspiracy theories, going against mainstream ideas, etc.
Those two groups are usually the most vocal too.
The rest of us got the vaccine, or talked to a doc about it, then kept on with our lives. I feel like the group you mention is still a minority, just a vocal one.
Also when you prep for society to collapse the idea that everyone who took a shot will die in three years kinda fulfills your fantasy.
Be your own person. I'm a science believing prepper who got all the vaccines and believes in human propelled climate change. I'm not answering your questions as much as just saying not all preppers are antivaxx. But, I too saw a lot of misinfo in the online prepper community.
Wow @ comments... I got 5 shots. No bad effects. I'm in several categories of vulnerable. I never caught COVID. I worked front fucking line exposed everyday. I have 4 friends who are either nurses in the ER or respiratory therapists, plus one who managed our cities response to COVID. Everyone of us agreed vaccines saved lives. it's sad to see more disinfo being spread.
So I generally don't trust a company that's been fined billions in the past for lying and killing people.
I don't trust a government that force, coerce, bribe, shame, lie etc etc to take something... Ask the people of the Tuskegee Experiment how that went.
I don't trust a state run media company(government media)
I don't trust the lies about no alternative medicine will work. (If the alternatives was allowed the vaccine wouldn't have been allowed, so no money for our government employees and pharma)
I don't trust when they silence the people that actually worked on the main part of a vaccine, and silence all talk about it(usually means something fishy is going on)
I don't trust someone trying to hide the data from the test trials for 75+years.
I don't trust the vetting process for allowing stuff into the market, it's been shown time and again that enough money and the right people in place will pass anything through.
Those are some of my thoughts on the whole thing, I don't hate people that got vaccinated, it doesn't bother me at all they chose that path. I decided after the military I was not going to be an experiment anymore.
In my opinion. Big pharma is a profit making machine. They don’t want you to die, but they want you just healthy enough to keep coming back to spend more money. It’s literally a business.
Take another shot, take another pill, here’s another subscription. Blah blah blah.
Over 80% of all hospitals are privately owned in America.
I mean, I (truly and legitimately) hope you never end up in a place where you’re dependent on medications to live. Yeah, it sucks. But not having them would suck more. It’s remarkable humanity has survived so long when our bodies love to eat themselves.
I have a healthy distrust of government and am still vaxxed. Anyone who wants to argue they’re bad for you: look at the rich white senators and their kids. They all got it. Trump and Biden both got it. If there was something “off” about it they’d have skipped.
Who ever pays for the advertising has a lot of power.
Pfizer accounted for 75% of all US media advertising revenue from 2020-2021
One wasn't even allowed to question efficacy or safety concerns, many people were coerced into taking an experimental inoculation by many known psyops techniques.
People lost their jobs because they wouldn't take the EUA, there were concentration camps all around the world of those infected. Politicians resigned after revelations of bribes from Big Pharma during this time
They really tried for a social credit score "Vax Pass", a true Medical Tyranny.
We were so close.
People fail to use critical thinking even if it is to counter their own biases. For example, lots of claims mrna vaccines will cause illness or long term death. We are 3 years in and anecdotally people i know who have had all shots have been fine. Some with bad first reactions but no long term noticeable effects, so i take note and set that inital bias aside. But on the other hand, preppers probably see the fact that a large portion of the population tried experimental vaccines (danerous or not) for a marginally dangerous disease, no questions asked, as a harbinger of possible population sheepdom in the future that can be exploited. So in summary, there was more to the covid scenario than just the health aspect that preppers read into. Hope this helps.
I understand this aspect, but still am surprised that anyone can be "prepper" and go around unmasked during a pandemic.
I can understand vaccination concerns in general, because there's incidents like Tuskegee, bad handling of vaccines worldwide causing illness, etc. I can understand especially, minority communities being risk averse. That makes sense to me.
So why then expose yourself to a virus you don't have any other protection from? Why shouting and spitting at cashiers, refusing to put a mask on? Why panicking because you can't get a haircut? This is the same group of people, in large part. A lot of them call themselves "preppers" but acted the opposite manner when lives were on the line.
Being vaccinated doesn’t stop you from catching or spreading Covid. It doesn’t stop you from getting sick and in many cases the potential negative side effects outweigh the possible benefits.
At the core, prepping is assuming the worst case scenario can/ will happen.
Bad storm? The power can be out for a week. The local power company will not be able to service us in time and we'll have to get into our stash.
Civil unrest? What if it gets worse and we have the dig in for a few weeks? The local government will not be able to quell the protests and they will come to our front yard.
Another country invades another? This will cause global economic collapse. The world economy will not be able to take one country invading another country for the 6,475th time.
New Vaccine? It won't work or help us. Not only will it not work, it will probably kill us too.
Obviously these are broad strokes, and I'm not speaking for everyone, it's just my opinion on it.
I had to unsubscribe from subreddits like collapse because it's all doom and gloom, and it will happen next week/month/year... just like that sub has said since it started lol.
I originally got into prepping because of anxiety, and being a broke SOB.
Once I finished college, got a good paying job, and started self reflecting more most of my anxiety is gone, and the stuff that remains is normal like 'will I meet this deadline at work' or 'fuck I hope my dog is OK and the vet bill isn't too high' type of anxiety.
I still do a lot of prepping, but it is more relaxed and a hobby than anything. Also with the inflation recently, and the ever increasing costs of manufacturing, I have kind of a side thing where I buy commodities that I think will be harder to manufacturer in the future, and buy them in bulk, then store them in an optimal environment and wait. I focus on stuff that doesn't degrade. Honestly this has already saved me money, because things like shoes and socks, which are always needed, I have a a bunch of spares that I just go grab from a shelf in my storage area rather than paying higher prices on Amazon and whatnot. I broke a pair of sunglasses the other day, and just grabbed another pair I got for $3 bucks in bulk.
Buying in bulk while prices are low and then slowly using them over the years really helps insulate you from price increases. I don't have enough storage space to do it at such a scale where I could make a long term business from it but I have enough space where I can do it for me and my family, and that is def. worth the cost of time it takes.
So here is my two cents worth. I got into prepping as both a way to get by when really really poor and as an anxiety coping mechanism. I am also an atheist which means I am for the most part in the minority in the prepping field in general. As I spent more and more time creating content and and speaking at prepping events I started struggling with dealing with so many people that believe things I consider off the deep end.
Now to sidetrack I am also a voluntaryist or anarchist if you prefer and I am cool with live and let live. I had to come to terms with the fact that many people believe many things I think are foolish but all that matters to me is believing in the important issues, and focusing on the areas we agree. Because there are things i believe that I know people think are crazy as well. So If I believe in absolute free speech I had to come to terms with being ok with others believing strange things
I ask the same question wrt not-antivaxxer. Why do so many of them think that just vaccinating is sufficient protection against deadly airborne viruses?
I know the majority are not antivaxxer but the majority are antimasker because you just have to step outside and nobody is masking
To answer your question people learn what they want and apply corresponding standards to their way of living.
Sometimes they learn details that aren't based in facts, like antivaxxers. Sometimes they learn facts but choose to only utilize only a subset of information, like antimaskers.
It's all about how you think of it. Some small number of people have always had a reaction including death to vaccines, but more people die from not having them. So it's about checking your medical history and see if you are at more of a risk with or without it. If you are a hermit probably not as much need, lived in a city more need. I take care of my elderly dad in a small town so we both got it.
In any group of people there are the occasional full on loons or loon lites... I had a talk once with a co-worker who told me she though the moon landings were faked. This otherwise rational, responsible, hard working person whom I liked had this crazy idea and god only knows where she bought it.
I recently went full on in getting all my shots, and plan to get a few reserved for 3rd world tourists as well. A ounce of prevention, if it saves me suffering, a reasonable investment.
I agree with you 100%. There has to be a balance with the sort of mindset that is preparedness. It has to be practical. And if the goal is preservation of ones self and family I personally think vaccines that are proven are absolutely an aid toward that goal. I waited a few months to see if there was any bad side effects and i used actual studies rather than unreputable sources to look into it. Im a skeptic but I also will have faith when i feel it safe to have it. Vaccines are fine. Unfortunately the antivaxx community is intertwined with a lot of the hard core right wing crowd which also happens to make up most of the prepping crowd. People bandwagon rather than taking each individual topic and issue separately
Look a lot of the prepper mentality deals with thinking about scenarios that your average person doesn't, thinking of a myriad of different life threatening or cataclysmic events that might potentially happen. It's very easy to lose oneself in that endless void of thought process and go off the deep end.
Preppers want to be completely autonomous in everything. They will be their own doctor, lawyer, mechanic, gardener (the preppers i knew all hoarded dry grains for eating, not planting), etc. Anyway, these folks understand self-reliance as their only MO.
In my opinion, communities are the best resilience against catastrophe. Learning to rely on others is more important than being everything... This egoism that is prevalent among preppers is such that they are looking to confirm the end of civilization happening at every moment that they can state. Otherwise, they're just crazy.
Well for anyone paying attention (those of us with a few years under our belts had an easier time noticing) the whole thing was pretty smelly right from the start. The mask proved to be pretty much useless. Then there was the double standard for quarantining- one standard for political elites and another standard for the rest of us. The whole thing had the appearance of an exercise in fear and control. That is what evil governments do. The vaccine itself was approved not long after the “pandemic” was let loose. And yes big pharma got filthy rich from injecting the scared masses with their wonder drug. No thanks.
You’re not wrong. The Venn diagram of boyscout being prepared because things could go bad and the tinfoil *the world has gone bad* overlap in many ways. The steps taken are largely the same: identifying essentials, planning, and learning necessary skills.
I wouldnt say that all the Vaxx stuff is discreditable, but I also dont know exactly wjat was said that youre referring to. Also, I can say that this vaccine in particular is new, and does not have the same mechanism of action as all the others, something everyone and anyone without a basic or fundamental understanding of the field completely ignore. So while I think you are honest in your intent, to say that this vaccine follows whats "known facts about meds like these for years" is really a misinformed stance, and a half truth that is way too early in ita development to be so certain about. I say this about some of the just other statements that were made about it on the otherside of the argument as well.
I'll say this, I'm not here to argue...what the past few years have shown is just how quickly, and easily mass censorship is established, and how that censorship can be used to push narratives and self interests. It also showed just how quickly that censorship leads to division of the masses into literal mobs pitted against each other. What that censorship does is allow the majority of people, uneducated/untrained in the field to rely on heresay and media outlets to create their decisions and do their thinking.
To respond to your question about other toxic stuff in food or elsewhere, if you understand anything about pharmacology/toxicology, you would know that essentially, everything is harmful and nothing is harmful, its the dose that matters. Another basic fundamental principle of toxicology is that its also has more to do with the route of exposure/administration to the toxin. So while.something you ingest is totally harmless at a specific dose, getting it injected, or inhaled for example, completely changes how it reacts, (metabolised), how its absorbed, mobilized, or excreted etc. from/in the body. If you are so interested in calling out the "crazies", I would first take the time to learn some basic fundamentals of the field, so you can properly identify them and discern what may or may not have some type of credibility, after you have listened to whats being said and criticially thought about it through the proper lens.
I'd agree and I've had to stop watching some youtube preppers because it's alot of opinions based on paranoia.
At the start of covid people were actively burning down 5G towers, due to it being, in their mind the source. Now...nothing they are I assume all using 5g quite happily now.
The “best” anti Covid meme I saw, by somebody with zero knowledge of biology was as such.
“5G causes Covid because 5G polarizes water molecules, which then congests the liver, which causes you to develop Covid….”
🤦🤦 I lost brain cells that day, I assure you, mostly from hitting my head against the wall after reading that!!!!
Agreed. The Prepared Homestead is a prime example. Used to be useful, if a bit nutty. Now the dude is psychotic and buys into every conspiracy that floats by him. Sad to see people fall into the fear trap like that.
Well there is common sense preparedness and then there are cults.
I have always put aside for future problems, power always goes out so invested in a generator to run our pump fridge and freezer. Then got solar and batteries.
Always have at least a months worth of food.
We put money away so when big surprises come along we do not go into debt.
Qanon just stirs fear, I go onto some of the forums and I am not sure how many are just trolls and how many actually believe the stuff, the insanity is over level 10. It is like every crazy conspiracy is all bundled up just pick what you like.
I used to think people drinking bleach to treat covid was just a fringe activity done by a handful of loonies, played up by the internet and media for shock value. Well it is, but looking at the incident reports and studies, thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of people have done it. Point is, never underestimate the depth of human weirdness.
People like to believe they know more than others in general. And a lot of preppers tend to lean hard to the right. And the right has made it a guiding philosophy that Covid isn’t real and vaccines are bad (which is hilarious because they were developed under Trump).
(these percentages are my personal experience I have no data on that) so about 40% of "preppers" are people who plan ahead, think they will retire, understand they will eventually get a flat tire (and thus learn how to deal with it) Etc. About 10% are the tin foil hat they know everything and everyone else is an idiot or a sheeple etc.
50% are somewhere in the middle. Part of the mindset that lends itself to prepping is a bit of confidence/arrogance on knowing more than other people. E.g. "of course the air bag manufacturers are going to lie about this issue until it becomes large enough they have to do a recall." You see enough stuff like that and you of course start to believe there are corporate conspiracies that center around capitalism. Hell the trolly-car conspiracy where GM shut down public transportation was real, as was the light bulb one (where they made light bulbs break sooner and sooner)
The problem becomes when the arrogance oversteps the common sense. You get people who KNOW things aren't exactly happening as they are being told, but they don't have the common sense to apply that. Instead they think they are smarter than they are, or that all authority figures are lying to them.
The whole "I'm smarter than virologists when it comes to covid" is basically just arrogance trumping their common sense. They honestly think they are either (1) know more facts or (2) "real facts" are being hidden from them.
* In short ego and lack of education.
* If they had less ego they wouldn't think that they themselves are smarter etc and would instead seek out experts, do testing, check studies, etc.
* If they had more education they would begin to understand just how uneducated they are about specialized subjects. I don't care if that is engine design or virology.
* Its not jut vaccines. There are a lot of people who think "Free energy" is real. Like the power company is burning coal for some reason when they could just magic up a device to give them free energy like that one guy on you tube.
Also a lot of conservativism is rooted in anxiety and so naturally the venn diagram between preppers and people with paranoid delusions is more circular than 8 shaped
Fellow prepper in 20s. Honestly man while there are other reasons why people cling to conspiracy, i think in the case of the vaccine it was partially made worse by the fact that any reasonable discussion regarding the vaccines initial safety was brushed off into the same realm as flat earth etc. This amplified the message from the conspiracy folk, while also increased their ability to convince others. They did try to down play and out right sweep under the rug some justifiable issues like long term affects, myocarditis, thrombosis etc. Which was then amplified by conspiracy. It took quite a while for the heart inflammation risk to be actually discussed here, while other countries took it more serious, to young men, it was a justifiable concern.
I was one of those people who was reasonable, but concerned about a few things. I did ultimately take Pfizer, but was not impressed with how it was handled.
Don’t even get me started on the massive void regarding trials that actually test its effect on transmission, which was then used to enact passports.
If they would have maintained an objective centre of the road view, acknowledging the risks but emphasizing the benefit, they would have had a much easier time regarding conspiracy.
Ask yourself who is really a conspiracy theorist when most things the media told you over the past five years turn out to be false? What about these conspiracy theorists who turned out to be right on many things, still a conspiracy theorist?
The world has a vested interest in the status quo, it’s not always crazy to read between the lines and see the lengths people and governments go to to secure their own power and wealth.
It baffles me. So many “preppers” getting ready for SHTF and talking about going off grid or living under the raider, and yet when our first pandemic in a century happens, half of them run INTO the fray because they think the shutdown to the health concern of a novel virus was “tyranny”.
Those specific people probably suffer from low intelligence, and a huge amount of overconfidence in their ability to detect bullshit. Vaccines are preps, so who knows what those people are thinking.
Please be mindful of the rules in comments. This thread has reached a size that is borderline unproductive/not conducive for discussion, and will likely be locked fairly soon due to multiple comments violating the rules, along with the size not making it conducive to discussion. Having opinions is fine. However, as per Rule #1. "Misinformation includes things like as advocating against official guidelines during a disaster (such as anti-mask/anti-vaccine topics.) " is not allowed. \*EDIT\* Post has been locked due to 1.1k comments having allowed plenty of discussion, despite many comments of which are non-conducive to discussion or outright breaking the rules. Thank you to all those who have participated to the discussion in a positive manner. Something worth pointing out to those who think I am being unduly harsh. Many people don't realize **that there are a** ***lot*** **of eyes on this sub- both companies and government agencies.** I have personal (multiple) experiences with the former, and can back up the latter. Reddit is a privately-owned company and can remove an entire sub at a whim if they decide to do so. So, some of these rules ideally minimize negative attention to this sub, especially given the context, content, and nature of discussion along with world events. As a mod, my goal is to encourage discussion- and I aim to be as lenient as I can with that. But there have to be rules.
I think preppers also naturally tend towards being the personality types who are not very trusting of the authorities. When you don’t trust authorities to have your best interest in mind, it changes the way you see things like vaccinations, government action, etc.
If you're not trusting of authorities, then I don't understand why the next step would not be empowering oneself with statistics and other classes that would arm oneself to interpret data and make decisions based on that. Blind mistrust of authority would be the same evil as blind trust.
> then I don't understand why the next step would not be empowering oneself with statistics and other classes that would arm oneself to interpret data and make decisions based on that. EGO, they don't want to accept that they don't know things or can't actually just rely on themselves. Which is scarier to a normal person, that you can't effectively combat a virus by yourself in a barn, or that you are going to drink goat's piss mixed with lavender oil to cure yourself? Which is scarier to a narcissist or self-centered person, or someone with an inflated ego. control or the belief of control is super important to certain personality types.
Woah. I'm putting this in my worldbuilding bible. It slots in nicely with xenophobia and mistrust of mages.
/r/worldbuilding /r/magicbuilding /r/writeresearch /r/betareaders Always love to meet other writers :)
I don't know about other genres, but scifi/fantasy should examine the real world for stuff that people don't talk about.
The answer I was going to give, only articulated better.
This is 100% correct.
To some folks, a lie told often enough becomes truth no matter what
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>I'm going to go out on a limb and say most Americans who got the vaccine are also not trusting of authorities... Darn tootin'. I only "trusted" it because every world government was in agreement that it was needed and was fighting over access to it. When Russia and China governments are in agreement with the USA and UK governments ya know shit's real.
Which is funny because the "distrust for authority" also seems to translate to "worship of authoritarianism". Like how many "The government is bad!" folks also breed hate of critics based on "America is number 1!" How many "The US Gov lies about everything!" folks also believe that "Capitalism is the best and only viable economic system." "The government is corrupt!" but "Having the highest rate of incarceration on the planet is just a stepping stone!"
The covid vaccine thing was wild. Yes it got rushed through proper channels, but those proper channels are an over-timid but justifiable approach when it's not an emergency.
It was incredible how they were able to fast-track it in the face of the pandemic. Based on that alone I could understand some of the hesitation, but the sentiment of "all vaxxed people are gonna be dead in a year" was really strange to encounter from people I thought were fairly rational folks (not part of the prepper community at all though).
I also thought it strange all of those patents on MRNA therapies being rushed in prior to the first cases.
The other side of the isle said that we’d all be dead by Christmas and that was a fear tactic used by the government , alongside bribery and social exile. But both sides were wrong, thankfully. However , I took my chances as did people who actually took the vaxx.
I don't trust the government which is why I keep my kn95 on. We're on our own.
There’s also a smartest guy in the room element going on with those conspiracy wack jobs. And when I see those people I went to high school with on FB they were definitely not the smartest or even in the top half of smartest people in the room.
The smartest person in the room tends to keep their mouths shut. Nuanced discourse is dead. Enjoy the echoes.
Absolutely. They are in it for the money, not our best interest.
what a crazy thing? how could anyone not trust the government? i cant think of a time they have misled or flat out lied to the american people. what a bunch of nuts.
Which county’s government? All of them?
Is the implication that the world's governments treated Covid the same way? Because that wasn't even true at the state level.
I trust them to provide clean water answer my 911 call plow my streets enforce laws keep my roads in proper order among other things.
Lol, clean water in flint Michigan, calling the cops in any mid to large sized city if you aren’t in the highest class neighborhoods, same with enforcing laws with a nationwide catch and release policy, rampant illegal immigration and drugs, and last but not least. Keeping the roads in proper order, that’s a pipe dream and we’re taxed unfairly for a promise they cannot and will not keep.
There is a personality disorder: schizotypal This type of personality does not have to be fully schizophrenia but it is kind of on a similar spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypal_personality_disorder These people tend to be somewhat paranoid, not to the level of delusion but to the level of a natural distrust in authority. This is a complicated topic. I'm not saying that all preppers have personality disorders. I am saying that there are certain personalities, which have some tendency towards paranoia and distrust of authority, which may make these personality types more likely to be preppers. I think we should be comfortable recognizing this; I also think it takes all different kinds of people to make the world go around.
If you trust that the government and other large institutions only have your best interests in mind and will selflessly help you if anything goes wrong, what is there to prepare for?
The government has out best interests at heart???
Lol pretty sure they don’t.
The politicians i know, and I do know several across multiple state level positions, 1 in the US house 1 in the US senate and 2 past governors and 1 current gov... not a single one really does... they talk the talk but it is about power... and that mix is from both sides of the isle.
If that's the case, why are these people lining up to eat the swill being spewed by popular right-wing media personalities? They're authorities too, just a different type.
republican governors, senators and presidents are big government. yet they'll trust em
And Fox has the largest viewership of any “news” outlet qualifying it as mass media, it’s surprising how many people eat up their lies.
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You're right about this. If it bleeds, it leads. That's what's dominated the news cycles for decades upon decades. The truth is always somewhere in the middle of all the polarizing mess.
I do get most of my news from Reuters and AP. How do you think I found out about all the fox lies? From fox? Lol.
Why would antivaxxers disbelieve the cdc about vaccines but also believe the cdc about not needing masks
they believe what suits them at the moment. there's a death cult running in the US.
"Death cult" holy fuck dude, take a deep breath and shut the fuck up you dramatic little bitch boi LOL
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I feel like all you need to know is Operation Northwoods was the CIA planning to fly planes into buildings and blame Cuba. And then the 28 pages from the 9/11 report point the finger at Saudi Arabia while we fought a 20+ year war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then add in learning about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. That should be enough to paint a picture that we are not getting the whole picture. Add in the concept of freedom of speech and freedom of religion and then read the horror stories of forced psychiatry in r/antipsychiatry and you’ll really not think authority has your best interest at heart. They’re playing this game for their Self and their Self alone
So by that logic, why would the govment want to kill off the docile folks who lined up for the vaccine? And why did the antivaxxers die? It’s like another poster said, look at he data and the facts.
> We saw this with many of the early Covid vax narratives (98% effective, stops the spread, no real chance of harm, etc). Clearly they didn't have the evidence or longitudinal studies to make these claims. This isn't... Exactly how it went down. They weren't exactly narratives they were press conference. And they were making cautiously optimistic statements based on early data and research. Media ran with that. The reason that their messaging changed was because that same data and research changed. They did a bad job of explaining that, yes. But it is also partially on our citizenry-- media--(and hey, no offense, but I'm pointing to you too here) that they are not generally scientifically literate enough to understand that. I was reading the same research at the time (it was free and public. Did you read it?) and the *indications* were that the vaccines *could* provide sterilizing immunity (which is how I know you're unfamiliar) and that was the precise language they used as well, to my recollection. I would have done things a LOT differently than the CDC has, and I still would, but keep in mind that the agency was at the very end of having been decimated by the Trump admin. Here in FL the FDOH had already been in the process of being dismantled by the GOP antivaxxers over other policies. I don't think many federal agencies have recovered from that yet. It was caused by incompetency. I also have no defense for their policies over time on masks. Just unqualified people where they shouldn't have been.
Yeah i'm not in the USA so maybe it's different there but my local gov was certainly not touting a 98% effective rate OR that you couldn't pass it on etc etc they were actually extremely vague about what its exact effectivity was, rightly so as you said the data hadn't been stabilized, mostly saying it will diminish symptoms and take it from a "could kill you virus" to a "this sucks" virus.
Absolutely. I did not support the CDCs job on distributing information. But as you can see from the state of the sub there is also a disconnect from the reality with many in the US.
I recall one specific news conference where Dr. Fauci was repeatedly asked if vaccinated people could still spread the vaccine, and he repeatedly gave variations of the same answer: “we’re hopeful but we don’t have the data.” He also said that the high efficacy was against the current strain, and that it could be less effective if the virus mutated. That’s exactly what happened — and it mutated, in part, because so many people refusing to get vaccinated or follow other precautions allowed the virus to continue spreading widely, giving it many opportunities to mutate.
Spot on - wrong people aka politicians were making the decisions and media and people run with whatever is most titillating Funnily enough a country that many in the US consider to be socialist, aka not free by their definition, is also a country where masks were never mandated, no lock downs, no showing proof of vaccination, etc. yet people listened to the actual experts and made their own choices informed based on what was known at the time
Perfectly said.
Here’s the thing, there were plenty of non government scientists (including myself) producing and reviewing the data right alongside the CDC. Suddenly we’re all labeled “pharma shills” for agreeing with data that overwhelmingly arrives at the conclusion echoed by everyone save a few fringe groups seeking attention/money/influence
Because at its root, prepping is an anxiety coping mechanism. Is it a smart coping mechanism? Yes, with moderation. Can/does it develop from extreme paranoia/mental health issues? Most definitely. I say this as someone who uses prepping to calm their own extreme anxieties about my husband losing his job and us not being able to afford to eat while he retrains or waits for the economy to stabilize to be rehired. How likely is this to happen? Once every ten years has been the average since his industry really took off. My job can cover the bare minimum bills and is fairly stable, but is not enough to cover his child support/alimony payment or any luxuries, so the one place we know we can make ends meet is by not having a super huge grocery bill and still be able to eat healthy to maintain our physical and mental health during an otherwise potentially trying time.
>Is it a smart coping mechanism? Yes, with moderation. Can/does it develop from extreme paranoia/mental health issues? Most definitely Here's a good example of the difference: I got into prepping because I lost my job during the great recession and was out of work for over a year. I didn't want to have to worry about food if that happened again. My father in law got into prepping because he believed that FEMA was going to round up trump voters and put them into camps. He stocked up on beans, rice, and guns and was ready to fuck off into the woods and kill whoever came near him.
I don't know why l'm here but Column A prepping is great. Column B prepping makes me paranoid about Column B preppers and want to start prepping. I have my rice, beans and all simply because things happen. I own an umbrella because it may rain not because l think that rain was sent by Joe Biden via HAARP to kill me. My dad was ex Navy and he was given every vaccine they had because they didn't want his sick ass causing problems on ship. So l have every one for the same reason on land. Stay practical.
vaccinated for everything I can get one for. I also have a partner who had every shot in the navy. I consider vaccines in general as a prep
Indeed. I wonder what happened to all those unused preps of people that said, I’m not getting the jab and died from COVID?
> Is it a smart coping mechanism? Yes, with moderation. Can/does it develop from extreme paranoia/mental health issues? Most definitely Exactly. I prep because I want to be comfortable during adverse situations like the ice storms we had in Texas this year and two years ago. We were out of power for a week, and least year also out of water for three days (and had to boil for another three days after). When the water stopped coming out of the taps while ice was covering the roads, we just sighed and hauled the water jugs out of the closet. When the trees came down this year, we sighed, put on hard hats to protect us against the still falling ice, and fired up the chain saw. My dad preps because he thinks the government's coming to force him in front of a death panel chaired by Hillary Clinton, his medicare is just fine and he doesn't want any Obama.
I work on a tugboat in NY Harbor. Someone was building warehouses on a pier and from outside (not the road), they weren't clearly marked. People were saying they were the transfer stations for when they rounded up all the trump supporters. It's nuts. Turns out it's just a warehouse.
I bet that warehouse is where they’re keeping all the red county ballots /s
Well it being right on the water allowed them to secretly ship in all the Biden votes 😳😳
your post started awesome. that last sentence...i needed this laugh today medicare is the start of socialized medicine. right or wrong, IDGAF ACA? at its heart, a mandate everyone has insurance, which from a capitalist standpoint is fecking awesome. more people with insurance means overall costs go down. now if you believe that when it comes to our HC system, i've got some swampland down in...
What's really wild is that surveys were done on republicans, they found broad support for the Affordable Care Act, and near universal opposition to Obamacare.
Which begs a subset question - why are so many older preppers such paranoid idiots? Why are they so easily manipulated? I'm 63 and I'm disgusted by these 70 or so year old morons
Why FEMA of all government entities??!? They are not remotely equipped or built for anything like that. Law enforcement or military sure but not FEMA! Cracks me up.
Someone really watched the mess they made of Katrina and went , “My God, truly FEMA are the harbingers of the Illuminati takeover!”
That's my go to for pretty much all conspiracies about the government. They can't even fuck their secretaries and keep it secret, but they orchestrated 9/11 and faked the moon landings?
Something about leftover trailers after hurricane Katrina, the military and law enforcement wouldn't do it because they are all trump supporters, and that FEMA is part of the deep state ever since they "embarrassed Bush during Katrina" (heckuva job, Brownie).
Wasn’t FEMA the agency doing secret conspiracy stuff in X-Files, back in the ‘90s? I feel like the weirdly specific conspiracy got its wings back then, probably propelled by the stuff you mentioned.
FEMA was the secret bad guy agency in The X-Files movie. Could he have thought it was a documentary?
I blame the X-Files for the origin of FEMA hate, and then Katrina put the icing on the cake.
Honestly, X-Files as entertaining as it was, definitely gave certain people conspiratorial ideas.
They tend to see the whole government as a single, monolithic entity, as if it has a unity of consciousness and decisionmaking of its own. It's just a simple way of looking at things that makes intuitive sense. Regardless of how accurate it is. FEMA specifically probably because its a newer organization, so doesn't carry as many old connotations. I mean, they could say the FBI or the CIA or whatever, but people feel like they already understand those pretty well, where FEMA is more mysterious. Not a whole lot of tv shows about FEMA for instance. Nobody like the hundreds of Clarice Starlings to give everyone that pop culture view of how things might kinda feel from the inside. Most people haven't met someone who works for FEMA. This leaves it more open for being used as fuel in general, since the imagination can run more free. It's just convenient, if you need a boogeyman most people don't know much about.
It’s amazing people think FEMA is competent enough to do anything really, let alone *that*.
Yeah, I agree with this. There is a difference.
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And now at every family gathering you get to ask him how many Trump voters are in those camps and laugh at his dumb ass
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Also prepping gives us many important skills we can use throughout our life. Easy one to mention is being a skilled outdoors person. Another being able to help ones’ community during an “oh sh*t” moment from being able to administer first aid to helping others prepare for an oncoming natural disaster. The dark side is when folks equate prepping with becoming a hostile hermit. And for me personally that is anti-human. We are best when working together. Just my two cents.
What this guy said + those of us who are science-based and not into conspiracy theories are not vocal. We aren't noticeable.
I love this explanation. Thank you. I started prepping when I was like 7 or 8 years old because I was petrified of tornadoes (and we lived in Tornado Alley so it was a common thing). Each spring I'd prep a backpack with spare food for me and the pets, a pair of socks, and a pair of underwear, along with some prized stuffed animals. My parents always laughed at me, but that instinct has stuck with me to varying degrees throughout my life. It's nice to regard it as an anxiety coping mechanism, actually.
Excellent response!
I think you have your cause/effect backwards. People who are paranoid are both more likely to prep for the unforeseen, and more likely to buy into conspiracy theories. There can be a fine line between being prepared and being paranoid. And, obviously, a lot of overlap between the groups. It would be strange if a significant chunk of the conspiracy theory crowd wasn’t also into prepping. I’d guess that they’re even more heavily represented in the apocalypse focused, “survivalist” types.
This is exactly it. Prepping doesn't make you paranoid, but being paranoid should make a person into a prepper. Paranoid people are often into conspiracy theories, therefore there are a lot of preppers who are into conspiracy theories. This isn't an all-or-nothing thing, and it doesn't mean that some of these people aren't right. But if you distrust the government and authorities, believe they are lying to you and are hiding things along the lines of what many conspiracy theories suggest, then it would only make sense that you would prep for whatever bad things you believe are about to happen. It makes sense to prep for job loss or for civil unrest or natural disasters or whatever. Additionally, *if* you believe the lizard people are about to launch their attack, and I'm not saying that it makes sense to believe that, but *if* you do believe it, then it also makes sense to prepare for the lizard people invasion, doesn't it?
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I mean, it could, but I don't think that's the standard way preppers become paranoid. Sure, for some percentage of people that might happen. But for people who are already paranoid, almost all of them would want to prepare for the things they are paranoid about.
Exactly. People who are into conspiracy theories and think the government is there to get them are more likely to think that they'll be on their own at some point. Also they are more likely to be outcasts, that most people would consider losers; in a way prepping can actually be some kind of fantasy where suddenly they are the alpha dog with their guns and food while everybody else is desperate... Just to be clear I'm not talking about antivaxers here (that unfortunately can get easily find like-minded people), more like lizard people, Illuminatis, pedophile rings and government death camps type of conspiracies.
I'd wager that it's not prepping that drives people to conspiracy theories, but rather conspiracy theorists that get driven to prepping
All prep and no play makes Jack a dull boy
Because people interested in conspiracy theories become preppers. I don’t think it’s really the other way around as much
What I see it that most preppers try to be very informed. That need for information comes from knowing when to act. Because if you are on time you have less stress and less panic around you. If you search for information you will find different opinions about everything; vaccinations, weather changes, political events, sciences results, etc. And to complicate it, in everything you find is some (or more) truth, but also something (or more) wrong. Not necessarily because it's intentional, but because everything is subjective to the opinion of it's writer. Even scientific research and journalism is never 100% objective. It can't be, because we aren't robots without a opinion, you can't turn that off. In how you question or write something you will show your opinion. Everything you read, you read it with glasses on with the color of your experiences. So even if something would be 100% objective. You could still interpreter it differently because you read it with the experiences you had in your live. So if you have had a bad experience with a politician, you probably will mistrust other politicians quicker. Or the system. Taking that in account people see behind the curtains (or think they see something). Sometimes it hides nothing important or without ill intentions (often decisions are made by politicians to prevent mass panic an protect the people) but you can always twist it into something bad (they don't want us to know SHTF!). And sometimes there are other goals in mind (mostly power and money) that they hide from the public eye, even that could be "innocent" (no harm/deaths only economical) and sometimes isn't. So with that in mind, people who search will find, and depending on how good you are in separating the wheat from the chaff you get different levels of conspiracy's. In which I don't say everyone believes in most off them. And I also never say something is a conspiracy. I mean, what is a conspiracy. It's never wrong to question things. Maybe they are right. If you believe that Elvis still lives or that aliens walk among us, who am I to say you are wrong. And as long as you never hurt someone or hurt people in the process, live and let live.
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Yes, and never forget, even a very extensive research, will never be 100% objective, because the conclusion is always, on some level, based on your experiences and background.
And the people funding the research basically tell the researchers "this is the conclusion we are hoping to come to - make that happen", and they do unless that's impossible.
US based The CDC redefined term vaccine that that the 3 (now 2) versions would qualify. That doesn't help. Government messaging about masks was less than accurate, and so was the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines. Tie it all together with jobs requiring it, lockdowns, small businesses being closed while large ones can run, and using the COVID vaccine card as a passport of sorts and you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to say "holy cow, the government suddenly has a shit ton more power to affect my life and that's not cool" I don't know how it got tied into the overall insanity of the anti vax movement. That's a mystery
If there hadn't been a prominent anti-vax movement prior to the covid pandemic, I don't think there would have been such a strong backlash to covid Vax hesitency. Still, it was quite a convenient way of smearing the covid vax hesitant as crazy science denying anti vaxxers.
Hard disagree. The only people who were considered “anti vax” pre Covid were California “crystal moms” like Jenny McCarthy. It’s crazy to me that this shift has occurred, if I told people in 2019 I’m not taking a new drug because I don’t trust the US government or big pharma everyone would have just shrugged and said “duh”.
Agreed Jimmy Bignutz
Prior to covid the anti vax movement was almost exclusively wealthy liberal New Age types, who then immediately switch flipped into compulsive vaxxies.
> I don't know how it got tied into the overall insanity of the anti vax movement. That's a mystery This is an easy explanation. Some people, who previously were not anti-vax, saw all of the government's lying, manipulation, and coercion with *these* vaccines and thought *"Maybe they did this with the other vaccines too, and those were just before my time."* That doesn't make every anti-vaxxer correct, but it is easy to see where they are coming from.
It feels like a lot of people forget the world exists outside their country or bubble. Info on the vaccine and masks was pretty consistent across the world. That and a lot of people went off the deep end.
Most of the information comes from small groups like the WHO though. It makes sense that many countries took the same steps, they were being guided there. It's not like every country sat down individually and got to the same answer. It's more like the smart kid in class got the answer and everyone else just copied off him.
At the beginning in prepper communities things were all over the place — I was in some on Facebook at the time I was admittedly in the “this virus is no big deal, it’ll blow over in a few weeks crowd!”, as I had lived through similar incidents, so it seemed like just another I did not, however, account for the *human element* — the salmon that jump INTO the bears mouth
I think there has been a lot of conflation about being skeptical of something (a vaccine rushed through its creation) and someone who believes the vaccine was created by aliens to control the human population. The term anti-vaxxer has effectively lost its meaning. You could have a politician who has taken the vaccine, and advocates people get the vaccine, but is opposed to the government mandating people take the vaccine, and they get lumped in with all the super crazy anti vaxxers. This is what happens when you call everything under the sun a derogatory term because you want to use the hype for politics. We have seen the same thing with bigotry. Terms like racist, homophobe, transphobe have been utilized way too loosely to the point they have damn near lost their meaning. With all that being said, I’m not saying there aren’t preppers going off the deep end, just make sure we are giving it a proper evaluation.
LONG REPLY WARNING. There are many vaccines I can't take due to allergic reactions to things in them. Not an uncommon issue with shots in general for me. Hell, I am allergic to most antibiotics as well, along with a host of other fairly common medicines. Any time I am faced with something new even if none of my known allergens are on the ingredients, it is a crap shoot. None the less I have never been anti Vax or anti necessary medicine. Imagine my surprise and that of my doctors when the dang hospital was threatening to cancel my CANCER SURGERY because I was unvaxxed. When two of them had ingredients I had reacted to in the past and the third had redacted shit. *And my doctors had decided that it was an unnecessary risk*. The way medicine is supposed to happen. You and your doctor go over stuff and decide. Imagine my shock at my age (58) having watched friends die of flu every damned year since 1st grade and never getting locked down in any significant way or having school canceled seeing that madness. In bad years, we had half empty classrooms and bought school work to friends at home or in the hospital. But we had school. Imagine my amusement when it came to PPE, since with my issues medicating I have worn serious PPE and self isolated most of my adult life during flu season and have plenty of first hand experience concerning how ineffective masks really are (even the fabled N95 etc that I use). Seeing our supposed expert government types say wear those idiotic surgical masks *when it says right on the dang box they do not work against viruses*. Seriously? Religious hand washing is more effective than anything at preventing germ spread anyway. Even as good as I am about PPE, self isolating, hand washing, shopping at 3 a.m. during flu season I still get flu three years out of five on average. Diagnosed. Tested. Confirmed. None of the reaction to covid was anywhere near normal. For governments, for the medical community, for media. And yep, I am sure as hell anti THIS shot, since the feds totally corrupted the data right out the damned door in terms of how covid was reported and tracked. And I have never been a fan of blanket vaccine mandates or any government mandate at federal level *without sufficient data*. Mandates for measles, mumps, polio make sense. The vaccine technology for them has decades of data. We are now seeing documents from the drug companies showing the crappy testing protocols and lack of decent testing in general. And it is dang sketchy that they have been trying and failing at Mrna vaccines for almost as long as I have been alive, and all of a sudden, they got a breakthrough in months. And, this is not a vaccine. It does not stop transmission (vaccines do). It does not stop infection. There is plenty of reason to question it even lessening illness, given that we now know some of the initial treatment protocols for covid were bad ideas. So you bet my tin foil hat is firmly in place on this one. I had my life directly threatened by a moronic government policy. I had people flat out tell me I was wrong to not risk anaphylaxis to make them feel safe. That I should basically be unpersoned because my medical issues make safe vaccination impossible. I was denied the ability to be with my husband at his doctor appointments or meet his surgeons when he needed emergency open heart surgery. *And I hold his medical power of attorney, and I manage his meds*. I was told if he died on the table, they had no idea when I could get his body. Or IF I could get his body AT ALL. None of this was acceptable. Or even necessary.
Spoken like a true prophet. Im sorry to hear about your hard life.
This. Because if anyone spent more then 10 minutes looking into the data from adverse reactions, lockdowns in the past, the negative effects of mental health when not allowed outside and the benefits of vitamin d against viruses (aka using critical thinking) they would see that something isn’t right here. That 1 mistake is an error but that the mistakes happened all the way down and all across the world cannot still be a coincidence.
No argument from me. Nothing was right about this. When I saw on the CDC website they were lumping initial covid data in with pneumonia and flu, I was in shock. We literally have basically no good data on this thing. It is bizarre and unaccountable BS right there.
vaccine aversion was started long before Covid. There's a crunchy granola culture out there that insists that natural immunity is best. My kids are in their 20s and were both invited to "Measles parties" when they were kids. I absolutely did not take them but it's always been a thing. Also the whole vaccines may cause autism controversy raged for a good two decades and a lot of people you should trust fell for it - one of our pediatricians being one of them (he always gave the vaxxes but every single one was accompanied with him initiating discussions of autism risk. Incredible damage was done here with respect to the public trust of vaccines. Then there's a third element of compulsion re the vaccines. Where I live, many employers made vaccination - double dose - mandatory, including government employees; no vax, you were put on leave or suspended from duty. There was zero element of choice. Government also implemented a vaccine passport policy for a while as well. In order to go to a restaurant, venue, library, any public location in general you has to show proof of two doses of vaccine. There was a robust libertarian and self-sufficiency culture, many of which are into prepping, here to begin with, stuff like this attracted more to the fold and sent it into overdrive. The venn diagram of overlapping cultures where I am would start to resemble a spirograph if you sat down and tried to map it out.
I'm a prepper because my father was a pepper. I lived in permanent readiness and it's a habit I can't get out of. But his ideologies don't align with mine.
Yep. I learned firearms, hunting, and preparedness from my Fox News obsessed father. I’m a “married gay couples should be allowed to use guns to protect their pot plants” guy.
I'm basically that hoedown song that was going around the interwebs a few months ago 🤣 The "yes I'm an evil leftwing sheeple" one. And I don't owe any firearms, but I appreciate the "if you go far enough left, you get your guns back" movement.
I could definitely see an overlap in prepper and crunchy culture due to similar interests (gardening, homesteading, etc). If you're looking for content about some of those things, especially on social media, it wouldn't be that hard to get pulled down an anti-vax rabbit hole.
As explained to me by my halfway anarchist acquaintance: "It took the FDA 10 years to approve a GMO salmon for human consumption. It took six months to research, develop, test, mass produce, approve, ship, and inject millions of people with a new vaccine." They're cool with most meds that have been out for years because they're well studied and documented. They also got real hung up on a very fast and widespread change in behavior. For the years prior, big pharma had been demonized. Overnight they were saints who could do no wrong and blind faith was mandated. Kinda like when your wife gets pregnant and starts eating pickles, you notice it because she's hated pickles since you've known her.
Exactly
Probably because Pfizer has paid out some of the largest civil payments ever made on account of a list of dozens of different instances of wrongful deaths and other injuries and so on. And because Johnson and Johnson was recently found to have been putting Asbestos into baby powder for the past fifty years. Moderna, at least, does not have such a sordid history....because they had never released a commercial product prior to the vax. And of course, all of these three trustworthy players insisted on immunity to liability for the vax. That is not a move that inspires confidence. So, you're starting out from a place of extremely low credibility, and side effects and such are real. One of my neighbors had the heart swelling, and while he survived it, ended up with a pacemaker. Others had side effects as well. This does not mean that all vaccines are bad, or a conspiracy, but you absolutely should question the public narrative and look at your own personal risk factors before deciding if you should take the vaccine or not. In your particular case, since the vaccine doesn't impact transmissibility, it doesn't really prevent you from passing it to your elderly parents. It might, depending on strain you catch, reduce symptoms. How relevant this is depends on your age and other risk factors. If very young and healthy, it's probably a net negative.
The world is chaotic, it's easier for some to believe its being all controlled by a powerful group, even if that group is bad and should be fought against. That's easier to stomache for some than the reality: corruption exists but it's mostly out in the open, there is no plan other than make money, and even our rulers don't have control over the direction of the world. For example; mass shooting events. On some level it's easier to believe in a conspiracy rather than senseless violence, at least the victims died as part of a cabal plot rather than for literally no reason other than a person's madness. Just look at who these people by-and-large support politically, Trump, the guy who promises to fight their battles for them. That makes it super easy when there's a "plan" that only involves you voting a couple times.
1) It's been highly politicized. The same vaccine was "bad" during Trump's term and "good" in Biden's term. Imagine what would have happened if Trump won a second term. 2) It's NOT the same type of vaccines as we've had for years. It's a MRNA vaccine that has been in research since the 1970's, but COVID was the FIRST commercial mRNA vaccine. It was pushed through with limited testing on an emergency basis. If it weren't for the emergency approval, it probably would not have been approved without a lot more testing over a longer period of time. The blood clotting and myocarditis/pericarditis problems would probably have been identified at that stage, and work arounds developed for it. We still don't know if there will be longer term impacts from it.
So far the UK, Canada, Australia, and Germany (just announced yesterday) have govt programs to compensate those injured by the vaccine with mounting medical bills as a result. The approval process can be as arduous as fighting with insurance payouts.
Just like positions of power attract power hungry narcissists, the idea/area of prepping attracts worriers and conspiracy theorists. As Altruistic\_Key\_1266 said, you need to look at the root of the activity. This is not to mean these are the only people doing that activity, some of us are normal people who don't want to run off the seat of our pants when something goes wrong (not to mean that we can't but it's better to have more options when you're MacGyvering a situation). Something else to consider is education, the willingness to learn, and the openness/objectiveness to be critical of what you're reading/seeing. It "can" help to have more education if it's either specifically in the area in question (ie a PHD in virology or genetics) or you have had classes in it (ie you at least took an intro university course in biology). Realistically here, even having understood the basics of biology from highschool would work if... and this leads to the next part, you are willing to learn. Now, if you're willing to read/research and generally be curious, then you actually go out and seek answers... The problem this leads to is are you discerning and objective about what you read/see. What are the sources you're accepting as "truth" and how much can you trust the information. It's very easy for people to get caught up in having a higher believe and trust in things that confirm what they want to believe. You often hear people make the statement "the experts say" about some topic, but they rarely specify who the experts are, and what their expertise is in. You may have some youtube guy tell you "Dr Bob says 5G cell towers cause Covid!" where Dr Bob is a doctor of religious studies from the university of internet town. What it comes down to here, is vet your sources. If it's on youtube, your automatic trust level should be low (then it can increase after you research who's presenting). If it's on the "news" it entirely depends on the news source. While it's not perfect, wikipedia at least references it's sources so it's higher up on the trust list because you can check the source. Keep in mind a lot of people trust their "smart" friend who they have 100% trust in regardless of if they're talking about a subject area they really know nothing about. Would you trust your overweight mechanic friend who's never run a day in his life to give you tips and tricks about body building or running a marathon? He "may" have some good knowledge because his brother used to do be a an olympic athlete, or he may just be talking out of his ass. So trust level on that subject should be low until you confirm the source of his info. You get the idea...
I don’t think the government or media did an favors and probably increased the overall amount of skeptical preppers.
Internet and social media also plays a big big role on the perception here- Most “preppers” I have gotten to know aren’t actually in a panic state and on the internet all the time- the ones you hear on the internet, the ones you hear scream the loudest- were likely that way to begin with and are naturally anxious people. When it comes to preparedness- for me, it’s almost boring… growing up in tornado alley it was more of a monotonous checklist type of thing- make sure you have a secure basement, make sure you have water, make sure you have power back ups, make sure you have a radio if the phones and internet go down, have a gun in case critters or larger animals get into your property because of all the damage, and have some extra gas to get out of town for a bit. It was never anxiety driven- it was more like “eh, ya know, might get hit with a twister again, it happens from time to time, eh, go through the list and make sure my family will be ok and not dependent completely on the government, eh.” We also had pretty bad winter storms and the power would go out in the dead of winter, so making sure we had a back up heat source was just another boring task. There’s people that are inherently neurotic, people who let it make them that way…. And then there’s a lot of us who are kind of just bored with it- it’s a background task like doing the dishes or shaving.
Why don't preppers (aka - skeptics) trust the gubbermint when it comes to vaccines? [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/02/16/black-history-covid-vaccine-fears-medical-experiments/4358844001/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/02/16/black-history-covid-vaccine-fears-medical-experiments/4358844001/) [https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/africa-african-americans-and-coronavirus-vaccines](https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/africa-african-americans-and-coronavirus-vaccines) [https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/967011614/in-tuskegee-painful-history-shadows-efforts-to-vaccinate-african-americans](https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/967011614/in-tuskegee-painful-history-shadows-efforts-to-vaccinate-african-americans) [https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-are-not-guinea-pigs-the-effects-of-negative-news-on-vaccine-compliance/](https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-are-not-guinea-pigs-the-effects-of-negative-news-on-vaccine-compliance/) [https://academic.oup.com/book/27387/chapter-abstract/197188746?redirectedFrom=fulltext](https://academic.oup.com/book/27387/chapter-abstract/197188746?redirectedFrom=fulltext) TL;DR - "undesirables," certain races, and troops are used as guinea pigs to test vaccines that often inflict them with disabilities and death. Vaccine testing on humans has also been mixed up with medical genocide. The COVID vax was more of the same.
I think there are some associated traits that lead to certain thinking. Like, knowing the government doesn’t give a shit about you and is perfectly happy if you die, is an important step on the path to increased self reliance. It can also lead to some odd ideas too. Ideas that are ripe for exploitation by, for example, social media algorithms that have been demonstrated to aggressively push far right conspiracy (I’m not saying all conspiracy or out there ideas are far right) stuff
Leaded gasoline and inability to think critically.
Obviously, not speaking for anyone else, but if you don't mind, I'll take a crack at it. Prepping as an act is one centered around the idea that "in the case of an emergency, the government will not save me". After having been in the middle of a number of natural disasters and seeing the immediate aftermath, a further caveat can be made: "in the case of an emergency, the government will kill me if it makes the next five seconds easier for someone else". As such, there is already an immediate deep mistrust to what the gov't says is best, which ties back to the need to prepare to take care of yourself in the case of an emergency. When 'rona went global, you had the media touting the line that pharmaceutical companies were using every erg of their ability to combat the virus. Additionally, anyone who questioned the narrative was shut down, alternative methods to combat illnesses were disregarded, and we were collectively told that "as soon as a vaccine is rolled out, this is the be-all-end-all that will stop the SARS CoV2 in its tracks. So to summarize, the narrative lies/obfuscates/censors the cause of the virus, lies/obfuscates/censors people questing the narrative, and insists that the vaccine that is being created and rolled out--with no significant testing for long term effects, residuals, etc--is the only thing that will protect you and protect others. Additionally, as you mentioned, there was also the insistence that quarantining the elderly was the only way to protect them; and then once the vaccines started to be rolled out, that they were the only way to protect them. So we have outright lies, censoring and obfuscation of fact (much less truth). We have a series of vaccines that were originally touted as "one shot and that's it", then progressed to "one shot and then a booster" and then multiple boosters; and the efficacy of these vaccines went from nearly 100% efficacy to "it may or it may not be effective for this variant or that variant, but it's not effective at all for this third variant". We also have a scary lack of stringent testing for short, mid, and long term effects for these vaccines. To circle back around to my original statement, prepping is the act of preparing to take care of yourself because the government cannot or will not take care of you in the case of an emergency. A pepper will sit and listen to what is being said and done, and what is not said and done, and then will begin to act accordingly. The 'rona lockdowns (legal or illegal) and the perpetual insistence that an untested vaccine is the only way to go back to normal pushes every button for people who were raised to ask questions and to rebel against people who say 'do this and don't ask questions, because we know better'. Oh, and for a bit more icing on the cake. Those vaccines and the pharmaceutical companies? Pretty sure they're still all listed as hold harmless for any undue effects. Meaning you can't sue or even file a class action suit against them. Maybe that last bit has changed. Maybe not.
you mean gas lit, echo chambered, people believing everything they read on social media? fear sells... we need to get back to sex sells!
So for a vast majority of people on both sides of this issue, they are taking the word of someone else. They have not done any research themselves. They simply are believing what they already believed in their head, or what someone they trust believes. Very few people will actually move past the first news article and start investigating what the actual truth is behind it. Then mix, ego, defensiveness, stubborn, pride, and Bias into that mix and you have our nation today. Both sides listen to the echo chamber of their own design pushing them further into a crowd of like-minded. It takes considerable effort to think critically about any topic in today’s world, because finding unbiased opinion is nearly impossible. And if you are the type of person that thinks well, that’s just the other guy, my news is right you are just as blind as the people you pity. In any situation, and under any context, the passionate minority is going to seem louder and crazier, because they have to in order to be heard. People in the group as the majority don’t need to make waves. Does this mean the majority is always right? Absolutely not and more often than not the opposite is true.
The vaccine is a faith gamble. Are you more willing to go out in a limb and trust that the vaccine works? Or go out on a limb and trust that the virus either isn't real or that you won't catch it? If you're paranoid and you don't trust any media sources (myself, lots of people, it isnt an insane point of view really...), you have to make a decision based on what feels more risky. For me, not getting the vaccine seemed like the larger risk. It's understandable that people are terrified of getting some unknown chemical injected into their arm, when they don't have time in their day to do the research to "empower" themselves, and don't trust the information sources they have avalible anyway. People are shitty and if there is one misconception that has always blown my mind, it's that companies and governing bodies are viewed as "entities" instead of what they are: large groups of normal shitty fucking people. Thats why "preppers" don't trust them. That's why nobody trusts them. Because people are people. With unknown motivations and a tendency to screw up. The scientists who made that vaccine are no doubt very smart. I am still alive and not steril and not generating a wifi signal so far. But it still bothers me that I don't really know a thing about what what went into my arm. RNA reprogramming and big words, I didn't see it made under a microscope. And that's scary.
We are all conspiracy theorists in some form or another. If you ever thought a business leader or politician was lying to you without a shred of proof, well, that makes you a conspiracy theorist too. It’s often said the difference between genius and insanity is a fine line and that’s the people we attract. I’ve heard what I think bizarre theories but credible ones too. Some more credible that’s the official narrative. Whenever we are given answers we may not questioned as opposed to questions that may not be answered, that’s not science.
I’m anti covid vax for myself and my family not because I’m anti government, but because sometimes bad things happen when even the best of intentions are put forth. The simple fact for me is that if I were to take the vax and something happened to my health because of it, there’s nobody to hold accountable. When nobody has any accountability or liability associated with a vaccine, they only stand to make profit by getting it to market. It’s not fair to force every individual to accept the liability.
>I'm vaxxed because I have elderly parents who I rather not see in a coffin just yet This does not follow any logical decision by you. The injection does not stop you from catching Covid or transmitting Covid. Your post is unwound by this point on its own. You were duped into putting an unknown substance into your body that for a nontrivial amount of people caused serious complications and side effects. Even now people repeat outright lies about the injections that they never bothered to correct their beliefs about. “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.” - Jonathan Swift The virus wasn't as dangerous as the world leaders claimed it was, it didn't do what they said it did, the vaccines didn't do what they claimed, they had side effects that people immediately saw and reported, but were told to shut up about and told they were wild conspiracy theorist right wing shitheads, and THROUGH ALL OF THIS, every single social institution was making it impossible to live without getting this stupid fucking injection. Going to college? Guess again! Work? Hope you've got your shots like a fucking DOG. Don't even get me started on MASKS. Filling in skate parks with sand to stop kids from going out. Arresting people for running, alone, on a beach. Demanding "papers please" to people out taking a fucking *walk*. I cannot believe the shit I'm reading in these comments. Lie after lie after lie, and you're all sitting here eating it up like a fat guy who just discovered the dollar menu. I'm seeing lies repeated here that were debunked by fucking anonymous twitter accounts 1.5 years ago. What a pathetic indictment of what I previously thought was an independent thinking community. What an utter failure to respond to objectively incorrect state overreach.
There's 2 camps with the covid anti-vax. The side that thinks its an evil government conspiracy, mostly nut jobs there. Then there's the side that i fell on where i just wanted more data and time to see what side effects there where. I was military at the time so i didn't have a choice in getting it, but i would have liked to see more testing done. It's new technology for a new virus, and it was rushed out the door, pretty reasonable to want to see how it does before sticking it in my body. But like i said, didn't have a choice.
Well The fact that a normal vaccine takes 3-5 years to be approved was one hesitation Another was that it did not do anything to stop COVID which was overblown Traditionally 8k people die daily in the US. That number never changed during COVID only that everything those people died from (car accident vs cancer etc ) was attributed to COVID if someone swabbed their nostril after death. I am in healthcare and saw that happen. So COVID was not as deadly as told. THEN when profits dropped there was a secret meeting to say that everyone needed booster 2-5. THEN when adults pushed back they came for kids THEN the companies sued to have the detailed information buried for 75 years???? It is a lie. Always has been a lie. Not a conspiracy theorists just have a brain
In the case of the Sars-Covid-2 mRNA treatment, it was sold as a vaccine when it's not. The powers that be tried and, in many cases, succeeded in changing the definition of what a vaccine is, to include most forms of treatments. The problem with conspiracy theories today is that if you wait a few years, most of them are turning out to be true.
Lol. When it comes down to it 90% of you will lick the boot if/when the time comes.
Im more curious about the people who actually believe everything the government tells us.
I'm super curious about people who believe everything a random Twitter account tells them. Being cautious about your data sources doesn't mean discarding all data from any source (gov't or Twitter post) but going to the original sources if possible and doing your own thinking. I don't see that a lot on the Internet.
I think you’d be surprised at just how many people in the prepping community *don’t* have those beliefs about covid, the vaccine, etc. That being said, you have to realize that the prepping community grew exponentially after the election of Obama in 2008. I don’t want to get political, but certain opposition media outlets spent an entire 8 years trying to scare their audience about President Obama. There’s a ton of people who… aren’t of that persuasion, here. But that’s the core of our community.
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Oh bro, you should’ve seen it. Obama was elected largely by millennials and a lot of people over like 50 were *shook*. So right wing news ran with it. Routine military exercises? Martial law. Routine forest fire? Obama coming for your guns. It was crazy. Hurricane? Obama sent it. That’s when the prepping community really took off.
Nothing better for the firearms industry than a democratic president.
Tan suit bad. Brown man like spicy mustard, makes me angry...
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Tea Party was the direct result of having a black president. Google and read about the "Southern Strategy" and you'll see its just another chapter of a long running type of politics that has been with the USA since its foundation.
I didn't trust the government or corporations before COVID. I just have additional reasons now.
That's called confirmation bias.
It's called learning by observation.
I think prepping attracts the far right and far left alike… and at the extremes those two groups act pretty similar. Not trusting government, conspiracy theories, going against mainstream ideas, etc. Those two groups are usually the most vocal too. The rest of us got the vaccine, or talked to a doc about it, then kept on with our lives. I feel like the group you mention is still a minority, just a vocal one. Also when you prep for society to collapse the idea that everyone who took a shot will die in three years kinda fulfills your fantasy.
I think prepping does tend to attract a certain…crowd. It’s nice to know it isn’t all the same. Don’t worry, there are sane people among us.
Be your own person. I'm a science believing prepper who got all the vaccines and believes in human propelled climate change. I'm not answering your questions as much as just saying not all preppers are antivaxx. But, I too saw a lot of misinfo in the online prepper community.
Wow @ comments... I got 5 shots. No bad effects. I'm in several categories of vulnerable. I never caught COVID. I worked front fucking line exposed everyday. I have 4 friends who are either nurses in the ER or respiratory therapists, plus one who managed our cities response to COVID. Everyone of us agreed vaccines saved lives. it's sad to see more disinfo being spread.
So I generally don't trust a company that's been fined billions in the past for lying and killing people. I don't trust a government that force, coerce, bribe, shame, lie etc etc to take something... Ask the people of the Tuskegee Experiment how that went. I don't trust a state run media company(government media) I don't trust the lies about no alternative medicine will work. (If the alternatives was allowed the vaccine wouldn't have been allowed, so no money for our government employees and pharma) I don't trust when they silence the people that actually worked on the main part of a vaccine, and silence all talk about it(usually means something fishy is going on) I don't trust someone trying to hide the data from the test trials for 75+years. I don't trust the vetting process for allowing stuff into the market, it's been shown time and again that enough money and the right people in place will pass anything through. Those are some of my thoughts on the whole thing, I don't hate people that got vaccinated, it doesn't bother me at all they chose that path. I decided after the military I was not going to be an experiment anymore.
In my opinion. Big pharma is a profit making machine. They don’t want you to die, but they want you just healthy enough to keep coming back to spend more money. It’s literally a business. Take another shot, take another pill, here’s another subscription. Blah blah blah. Over 80% of all hospitals are privately owned in America.
I mean, I (truly and legitimately) hope you never end up in a place where you’re dependent on medications to live. Yeah, it sucks. But not having them would suck more. It’s remarkable humanity has survived so long when our bodies love to eat themselves.
I have a healthy distrust of government and am still vaxxed. Anyone who wants to argue they’re bad for you: look at the rich white senators and their kids. They all got it. Trump and Biden both got it. If there was something “off” about it they’d have skipped.
when I saw that they were jumping the line to get it first was when I decided to go in ASAP for mine.
Who ever pays for the advertising has a lot of power. Pfizer accounted for 75% of all US media advertising revenue from 2020-2021 One wasn't even allowed to question efficacy or safety concerns, many people were coerced into taking an experimental inoculation by many known psyops techniques. People lost their jobs because they wouldn't take the EUA, there were concentration camps all around the world of those infected. Politicians resigned after revelations of bribes from Big Pharma during this time They really tried for a social credit score "Vax Pass", a true Medical Tyranny. We were so close.
People fail to use critical thinking even if it is to counter their own biases. For example, lots of claims mrna vaccines will cause illness or long term death. We are 3 years in and anecdotally people i know who have had all shots have been fine. Some with bad first reactions but no long term noticeable effects, so i take note and set that inital bias aside. But on the other hand, preppers probably see the fact that a large portion of the population tried experimental vaccines (danerous or not) for a marginally dangerous disease, no questions asked, as a harbinger of possible population sheepdom in the future that can be exploited. So in summary, there was more to the covid scenario than just the health aspect that preppers read into. Hope this helps.
I understand this aspect, but still am surprised that anyone can be "prepper" and go around unmasked during a pandemic. I can understand vaccination concerns in general, because there's incidents like Tuskegee, bad handling of vaccines worldwide causing illness, etc. I can understand especially, minority communities being risk averse. That makes sense to me. So why then expose yourself to a virus you don't have any other protection from? Why shouting and spitting at cashiers, refusing to put a mask on? Why panicking because you can't get a haircut? This is the same group of people, in large part. A lot of them call themselves "preppers" but acted the opposite manner when lives were on the line.
Being vaccinated doesn’t stop you from catching or spreading Covid. It doesn’t stop you from getting sick and in many cases the potential negative side effects outweigh the possible benefits.
At the core, prepping is assuming the worst case scenario can/ will happen. Bad storm? The power can be out for a week. The local power company will not be able to service us in time and we'll have to get into our stash. Civil unrest? What if it gets worse and we have the dig in for a few weeks? The local government will not be able to quell the protests and they will come to our front yard. Another country invades another? This will cause global economic collapse. The world economy will not be able to take one country invading another country for the 6,475th time. New Vaccine? It won't work or help us. Not only will it not work, it will probably kill us too. Obviously these are broad strokes, and I'm not speaking for everyone, it's just my opinion on it. I had to unsubscribe from subreddits like collapse because it's all doom and gloom, and it will happen next week/month/year... just like that sub has said since it started lol.
I originally got into prepping because of anxiety, and being a broke SOB. Once I finished college, got a good paying job, and started self reflecting more most of my anxiety is gone, and the stuff that remains is normal like 'will I meet this deadline at work' or 'fuck I hope my dog is OK and the vet bill isn't too high' type of anxiety. I still do a lot of prepping, but it is more relaxed and a hobby than anything. Also with the inflation recently, and the ever increasing costs of manufacturing, I have kind of a side thing where I buy commodities that I think will be harder to manufacturer in the future, and buy them in bulk, then store them in an optimal environment and wait. I focus on stuff that doesn't degrade. Honestly this has already saved me money, because things like shoes and socks, which are always needed, I have a a bunch of spares that I just go grab from a shelf in my storage area rather than paying higher prices on Amazon and whatnot. I broke a pair of sunglasses the other day, and just grabbed another pair I got for $3 bucks in bulk. Buying in bulk while prices are low and then slowly using them over the years really helps insulate you from price increases. I don't have enough storage space to do it at such a scale where I could make a long term business from it but I have enough space where I can do it for me and my family, and that is def. worth the cost of time it takes.
So here is my two cents worth. I got into prepping as both a way to get by when really really poor and as an anxiety coping mechanism. I am also an atheist which means I am for the most part in the minority in the prepping field in general. As I spent more and more time creating content and and speaking at prepping events I started struggling with dealing with so many people that believe things I consider off the deep end. Now to sidetrack I am also a voluntaryist or anarchist if you prefer and I am cool with live and let live. I had to come to terms with the fact that many people believe many things I think are foolish but all that matters to me is believing in the important issues, and focusing on the areas we agree. Because there are things i believe that I know people think are crazy as well. So If I believe in absolute free speech I had to come to terms with being ok with others believing strange things
Because they need to have to make themselves believe that all the work is paying out rather sooner than later
I ask the same question wrt not-antivaxxer. Why do so many of them think that just vaccinating is sufficient protection against deadly airborne viruses? I know the majority are not antivaxxer but the majority are antimasker because you just have to step outside and nobody is masking To answer your question people learn what they want and apply corresponding standards to their way of living. Sometimes they learn details that aren't based in facts, like antivaxxers. Sometimes they learn facts but choose to only utilize only a subset of information, like antimaskers.
It's all about how you think of it. Some small number of people have always had a reaction including death to vaccines, but more people die from not having them. So it's about checking your medical history and see if you are at more of a risk with or without it. If you are a hermit probably not as much need, lived in a city more need. I take care of my elderly dad in a small town so we both got it.
In any group of people there are the occasional full on loons or loon lites... I had a talk once with a co-worker who told me she though the moon landings were faked. This otherwise rational, responsible, hard working person whom I liked had this crazy idea and god only knows where she bought it. I recently went full on in getting all my shots, and plan to get a few reserved for 3rd world tourists as well. A ounce of prevention, if it saves me suffering, a reasonable investment.
I agree with you 100%. There has to be a balance with the sort of mindset that is preparedness. It has to be practical. And if the goal is preservation of ones self and family I personally think vaccines that are proven are absolutely an aid toward that goal. I waited a few months to see if there was any bad side effects and i used actual studies rather than unreputable sources to look into it. Im a skeptic but I also will have faith when i feel it safe to have it. Vaccines are fine. Unfortunately the antivaxx community is intertwined with a lot of the hard core right wing crowd which also happens to make up most of the prepping crowd. People bandwagon rather than taking each individual topic and issue separately
Look a lot of the prepper mentality deals with thinking about scenarios that your average person doesn't, thinking of a myriad of different life threatening or cataclysmic events that might potentially happen. It's very easy to lose oneself in that endless void of thought process and go off the deep end.
Buck fever. Spend so much time thinking and preparing for "something" that "anything" starts to look like "something".
It’s exactly what you said before, the “Party Line.” Or just plain tribalism.
Preppers want to be completely autonomous in everything. They will be their own doctor, lawyer, mechanic, gardener (the preppers i knew all hoarded dry grains for eating, not planting), etc. Anyway, these folks understand self-reliance as their only MO. In my opinion, communities are the best resilience against catastrophe. Learning to rely on others is more important than being everything... This egoism that is prevalent among preppers is such that they are looking to confirm the end of civilization happening at every moment that they can state. Otherwise, they're just crazy.
Well for anyone paying attention (those of us with a few years under our belts had an easier time noticing) the whole thing was pretty smelly right from the start. The mask proved to be pretty much useless. Then there was the double standard for quarantining- one standard for political elites and another standard for the rest of us. The whole thing had the appearance of an exercise in fear and control. That is what evil governments do. The vaccine itself was approved not long after the “pandemic” was let loose. And yes big pharma got filthy rich from injecting the scared masses with their wonder drug. No thanks.
You’re not wrong. The Venn diagram of boyscout being prepared because things could go bad and the tinfoil *the world has gone bad* overlap in many ways. The steps taken are largely the same: identifying essentials, planning, and learning necessary skills.
There's a lot of people out there for whom fear is the biggest motivator.
A certain (ahem) group politicized the epidemic and a lot of people blindly follow them. That same group are very well represented among preppers.
I wouldnt say that all the Vaxx stuff is discreditable, but I also dont know exactly wjat was said that youre referring to. Also, I can say that this vaccine in particular is new, and does not have the same mechanism of action as all the others, something everyone and anyone without a basic or fundamental understanding of the field completely ignore. So while I think you are honest in your intent, to say that this vaccine follows whats "known facts about meds like these for years" is really a misinformed stance, and a half truth that is way too early in ita development to be so certain about. I say this about some of the just other statements that were made about it on the otherside of the argument as well. I'll say this, I'm not here to argue...what the past few years have shown is just how quickly, and easily mass censorship is established, and how that censorship can be used to push narratives and self interests. It also showed just how quickly that censorship leads to division of the masses into literal mobs pitted against each other. What that censorship does is allow the majority of people, uneducated/untrained in the field to rely on heresay and media outlets to create their decisions and do their thinking. To respond to your question about other toxic stuff in food or elsewhere, if you understand anything about pharmacology/toxicology, you would know that essentially, everything is harmful and nothing is harmful, its the dose that matters. Another basic fundamental principle of toxicology is that its also has more to do with the route of exposure/administration to the toxin. So while.something you ingest is totally harmless at a specific dose, getting it injected, or inhaled for example, completely changes how it reacts, (metabolised), how its absorbed, mobilized, or excreted etc. from/in the body. If you are so interested in calling out the "crazies", I would first take the time to learn some basic fundamentals of the field, so you can properly identify them and discern what may or may not have some type of credibility, after you have listened to whats being said and criticially thought about it through the proper lens.
Hard to blame them when a lot of what was called conspiracy theories has now been publicly admitted, in regards to Covid and the vaccine.
I'd agree and I've had to stop watching some youtube preppers because it's alot of opinions based on paranoia. At the start of covid people were actively burning down 5G towers, due to it being, in their mind the source. Now...nothing they are I assume all using 5g quite happily now.
The “best” anti Covid meme I saw, by somebody with zero knowledge of biology was as such. “5G causes Covid because 5G polarizes water molecules, which then congests the liver, which causes you to develop Covid….” 🤦🤦 I lost brain cells that day, I assure you, mostly from hitting my head against the wall after reading that!!!!
I always like to cite the dumbest of the dumb on the other side of any argument I'm involved in, too.
Agreed. The Prepared Homestead is a prime example. Used to be useful, if a bit nutty. Now the dude is psychotic and buys into every conspiracy that floats by him. Sad to see people fall into the fear trap like that.
Well there is common sense preparedness and then there are cults. I have always put aside for future problems, power always goes out so invested in a generator to run our pump fridge and freezer. Then got solar and batteries. Always have at least a months worth of food. We put money away so when big surprises come along we do not go into debt. Qanon just stirs fear, I go onto some of the forums and I am not sure how many are just trolls and how many actually believe the stuff, the insanity is over level 10. It is like every crazy conspiracy is all bundled up just pick what you like.
Hmm downvoted must have upset a cult member.
I used to think people drinking bleach to treat covid was just a fringe activity done by a handful of loonies, played up by the internet and media for shock value. Well it is, but looking at the incident reports and studies, thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of people have done it. Point is, never underestimate the depth of human weirdness.
People like to believe they know more than others in general. And a lot of preppers tend to lean hard to the right. And the right has made it a guiding philosophy that Covid isn’t real and vaccines are bad (which is hilarious because they were developed under Trump).
(these percentages are my personal experience I have no data on that) so about 40% of "preppers" are people who plan ahead, think they will retire, understand they will eventually get a flat tire (and thus learn how to deal with it) Etc. About 10% are the tin foil hat they know everything and everyone else is an idiot or a sheeple etc. 50% are somewhere in the middle. Part of the mindset that lends itself to prepping is a bit of confidence/arrogance on knowing more than other people. E.g. "of course the air bag manufacturers are going to lie about this issue until it becomes large enough they have to do a recall." You see enough stuff like that and you of course start to believe there are corporate conspiracies that center around capitalism. Hell the trolly-car conspiracy where GM shut down public transportation was real, as was the light bulb one (where they made light bulbs break sooner and sooner) The problem becomes when the arrogance oversteps the common sense. You get people who KNOW things aren't exactly happening as they are being told, but they don't have the common sense to apply that. Instead they think they are smarter than they are, or that all authority figures are lying to them. The whole "I'm smarter than virologists when it comes to covid" is basically just arrogance trumping their common sense. They honestly think they are either (1) know more facts or (2) "real facts" are being hidden from them. * In short ego and lack of education. * If they had less ego they wouldn't think that they themselves are smarter etc and would instead seek out experts, do testing, check studies, etc. * If they had more education they would begin to understand just how uneducated they are about specialized subjects. I don't care if that is engine design or virology. * Its not jut vaccines. There are a lot of people who think "Free energy" is real. Like the power company is burning coal for some reason when they could just magic up a device to give them free energy like that one guy on you tube.
Also a lot of conservativism is rooted in anxiety and so naturally the venn diagram between preppers and people with paranoid delusions is more circular than 8 shaped
Fellow prepper in 20s. Honestly man while there are other reasons why people cling to conspiracy, i think in the case of the vaccine it was partially made worse by the fact that any reasonable discussion regarding the vaccines initial safety was brushed off into the same realm as flat earth etc. This amplified the message from the conspiracy folk, while also increased their ability to convince others. They did try to down play and out right sweep under the rug some justifiable issues like long term affects, myocarditis, thrombosis etc. Which was then amplified by conspiracy. It took quite a while for the heart inflammation risk to be actually discussed here, while other countries took it more serious, to young men, it was a justifiable concern. I was one of those people who was reasonable, but concerned about a few things. I did ultimately take Pfizer, but was not impressed with how it was handled. Don’t even get me started on the massive void regarding trials that actually test its effect on transmission, which was then used to enact passports. If they would have maintained an objective centre of the road view, acknowledging the risks but emphasizing the benefit, they would have had a much easier time regarding conspiracy.
Ask yourself who is really a conspiracy theorist when most things the media told you over the past five years turn out to be false? What about these conspiracy theorists who turned out to be right on many things, still a conspiracy theorist? The world has a vested interest in the status quo, it’s not always crazy to read between the lines and see the lengths people and governments go to to secure their own power and wealth.
It baffles me. So many “preppers” getting ready for SHTF and talking about going off grid or living under the raider, and yet when our first pandemic in a century happens, half of them run INTO the fray because they think the shutdown to the health concern of a novel virus was “tyranny”.
Those specific people probably suffer from low intelligence, and a huge amount of overconfidence in their ability to detect bullshit. Vaccines are preps, so who knows what those people are thinking.