BBC: A man who died with Covid after refusing to be vaccinated made a “terrible mistake” which put his family at risk, his partner has said. Leslie Lawrenson, 58, died at his home in Bournemouth, Dorset, on 2 July. His partner Amanda Mitchell, 56, who was seriously ill with Covid at the same time, said he thought the vaccines were too “experimental”. She told the Stephen Nolan programme on BBC Radio 5 live: “I feel incredibly foolish. Les died unnecessarily.” Ms Mitchell said her partner, a Cambridge University graduate, decided against having a coronavirus jab after reading material on social media. She said: “It was a daily thing that he said to us: ‘You don’t need to have it, you’ll be fine, just be careful.’ “He said to me: ‘It’s a gene thing, an experimental thing. You’re putting something in your body that hasn’t been thoroughly tested.’ “Les was highly educated… so if he told me something, I tended to believe it.”

AAAAANNNNNDDD, there it is.
“Les was highly educated… so if he told me something, I tended to believe it”.

Question For You Anti-Vaxxers: Are you seriously deferring life and death decisions to a stranger’s opinion based on their Twitter bio?

My main man, Stoic Philosopher Epictetus, said it best 2300 years ago:

“If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled—have you no shame in that?” —EPICTETUS.

I’ve spent the last 2 years wondering why so many people were ‘fucked’ or ‘stupid’ and it dawned on me this morning when I was reading Leslie’s shitty story: The minutiae of this pandemic are so fucking hard for certain people to comprehend, they defer their opinion to someone or something with credentials or an education that justifies their actions and perspective.

Dying alone in your own home of covid just to own the libs. Sad. @ItsDeanBlundell https://t.co/8dEG0IYeGI

— Jeremy McCall (@jmccall54) August 7, 2021

Effectively, people are dying because they are giving away their ability to think critically in favor of someone else’s opinion because it hurts their brains less and makes them feel like they’re part of a community.

Les gave away his health the same way his widow trusted hers to Lawrence because Les was ‘highly educated’.

What anti-vaxxers forget when they hand their minds over to a Twitter profile is that every one of those ‘educated people’ has an agenda.   Or maybe they like that agenda so they’re willing to place their mental safety in the hands of a complete fucking stranger.

In layman’s terms, these people are scared stiff and they give their minds away because they think it’s easier than the alternative and I think if Epictetus were here today he’d probably say the same thing.

If it’s freedom you want, start by freeing your mind.  Fuck other people who look like they may know more than you.  Fuck deferring your well-being to someone with a law degree.  Fuck siphoning self-worth and your education from a complete stranger.

It’s hard for anyone to take you seriously when your entire pandemic plan is derived from ‘that guy said’.  It’s not courageous or wise.  It’s mental servitude based on the lowest common denominator and a Twitter profile.

It’s also why no serious person, takes any of you seriously.

DB