BENSON, Minn. (AP) — The newspaper hit the front porches of the wind-scarred prairie town on a Thursday afternoon: Coronavirus numbers were spiking in the farming communities of western Minnesota.
“Covid-19 cases straining rural clinics, hospitals, staff,” read the front-page headline. Vaccinate to protect yourselves, health officials urged.
But ask around Benson, stroll its three-block business district, and some would tell a different story: The Swift County Monitor-News, the tiny newspaper that’s reported the news here since 1886, is not telling the truth. The vaccine is untested, they say, dangerous. And some will go further: People, they’ll tell you, are being killed by COVID-19 vaccinations.It’s another measure of how, in an America increasingly split by warring visions of itself, division doesn’t just play out on cable television, or in mayhem at the U.S. Capitol.
It has seeped into the American fabric, all the way to Benson’s 12th Street, where two neighbors -- each in his own well-kept, century-old home -- can live in different worlds.Jason Wolter, is a thoughtful, broad-shouldered Lutheran pastor who reads widely and measures his words carefully. He also suspects Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic as a political tool, doubts President Joe Biden was legitimately elected and is certain that COVID-19 vaccines kill people.
He hasn’t seen the death certificates and hasn’t contacted health authorities, but he’s sure the vaccine deaths occurred: “I just know that I’m doing their funerals.”
He’s also certain that information “will never make it into the newspaper.”“There are no alternative facts,” Reed Anfinson [publisher, editor, photographer and reporter for the Monitor-News] says. “There is just the truth.”
Wolter’s frustration boils over during a late breakfast in a town cafe. Seated with a reporter, he starts talking as if Anfinson is there.
“You’re lying to people,” Wolter says. “You flat-out lie about things.”
So, there you have it. Anfinson reports facts as best he can, but is nonetheless considered a liar by Wolter for whom the facts must be too inconvenient and psychologically threatening to be accepted. Disbelieving people like this base beliefs on faith, not hard evidence. In the case of alleged COVID vaccine deaths, death certificates would prove that the COVID vaccine kills people. Such evidence does not exist because, with very few exceptions, the vaccines do not kill people. That wonderful Lutheran pastor calls newspaper publisher Anfinson a liar without one shred of evidence. Instead Wolter relies on blind raging faith in his false alt-reality. Unfortunately, reality does not care whether Wolter or anyone else believes something that is true or false. It just doesn't care. Only people can care.
Over 339 million vaccine doses were given to 187.2 million people in the US as of July 19, 2021. The vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective. .... Between December 2020 and July 19th, 2021, VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) received 6,207 reports of death (0.0018% of doses) among people who got a vaccine, but this does not mean the vaccine caused these deaths. Doctors and safety monitors carefully review the details of each case to see if it might be linked to the vaccine. There are three deaths that appear to be linked to blood clots that occurred after people got the J&J vaccine. (emphasis added)
This raises some issues. One is how much actual evidence and data is needed to convince a disbeliever that actual facts and true truths are real. Another is how damaging such reality disconnects are to democracy and empowering they are to authoritarianism. If intentional polarization and alt-reality propaganda victimizes people and causes this kind of fantasy about public health, why wouldn't it cause the about same reality disconnects for all other issues that have been propagandized?
Actually, some don't do any research and
just rely on propaganda for their blind faith
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