My kindly and oft-forgiving editor regularly thinks that I’m just too darn nice in these columns, and I don’t rile up enough people (Ed: I have literally never once said that to you). And so, I decided to focus today’s column on one of my favorite sections of Colorado Politics, the Out West Roundup, to try to pin down the answer to a key question about our basic freedoms in the United States and the role of individual rights: just how dangerously stupid can people be? There, that should vex some folks.

It seems there are four young folks who are students at Nebraska’s Creighton University who are suing the school over having to get vaccinated against COVID in order to attend classes. They assert that the Catholic school’s requirement makes them feel “coerced” into violating their religious beliefs. They assert this, because one of the vaccines available, the J&J version, made use, during the development of the medication, of a cell line that came from two abortions performed in the 1970s and 1980s. The Pfizer and Moderna did not use those cell lines, though a fetal cell line was used early in the testing, prior to production. 

So, those four (and, to be fair, likely others at Creighton) feel that they are violating some religious rule of their faith and they’d rather risk COVID and, presumably, passing COVID on to others, some of whom may well die. So, what’ a good Catholic to do? 

Well, as it turns out, the chairmen of the Committee on Doctrine and the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops had a few thoughts on that very question. The bishops wrote: 

“The world is currently facing a health crisis…Given the urgency of this crisis, the lack of available alternative vaccines, and the fact that the connection between an abortion that occurred decades ago and receiving a vaccine produced today is remote, inoculation with the new COVID-19 vaccines in these circumstances can be morally justified.”

So, the top Catholic leaders in the U.S. say the vaccine is OK. I hope the students are listening.

But that brings me to my main point (Ed: finally!). I am really fed up with “honoring” opinions of others that are formed from false and often dishonest “information” selectively gleaned from Facebook groups and videos on YouTube. While I consider the “religious” objections to getting vaccinated to be the least horrible of the bad excuses, we’ve seen crazy nonsense coming from far too many people who assert a thing they heard on social media has equal validity to the carefully peer-reviewed research performed over decades by highly qualified scientists. Simply put, is stupidity a legitimate point of view, especially when it endangers others?

One of the problems, frankly, comes from the media itself. Journalists are, seemingly correctly, taught that there are two equal and legitimate sides to every question. And for lots and lots of things, that’s true. But it isn’t true for all things. Climate change, for example, has over a 97% acceptance rate among atmospheric scientists. Less than 3% disagree, yet the media will always present a climate change story with one expert saying it’s bad and another “expert” saying it’s not real, or if it is real, it isn’t important. 

I’ve seen similar things with medical issues such as cancer. A recent Facebook post I came across claimed that “big pharma” has the cure to cancer, but they can make more money keeping people sick. That too is nonsense. First, there is not single thing called “cancer” in that it is a family of related diseases that manifest in many different ways that doctors continue to study and fight. Prostate cancer, for example, after years of research, has a 5-year survival rate of more than 99%. On the other hand, pancreatic cancer (which took my father) kills 95% during the same period. So, there can be no single “cure” for cancer, because there is no single “cancer.” Oh, and if one company did come up with a cure, they would quickly become the richest company in the world, so again, I highly doubt anyone is covering it up.

Does anyone think that, say, gravity denialism is a legitimate point of view, that should be respected equally with the “pro-gravity” experts? Should it be taught in science classes, as equally legitimate as the “pro-gravity” model?

If you don’t believe in gravity your foolishness is not likely to cause me much injury unless you conduct a test from atop a tall building and land on me. But the foolishness going on around the vaccines does, in fact, present a real and present danger to, well, all of us. Those fighting the aforementioned cancer illnesses likely can’t take the vaccine due to compromised immune systems. They rely on the kindness of strangers, with enough of us getting vaccinated to create herd immunity. And sadly, because of stupidity and scientific illiteracy, we are shockingly far from achieving national herd immunity. Sigh: there is gravity, the vaccines work, and oh, Trump lost, the election was not stolen, but I digress…

When you have a leak in a water pipe at home, you call an expert called a plumber. That person knows how to, say, solder a joint to fix the leak. You don’t go onto social media looking for memes on how pipes don’t actually leak, it’s only the liberal media telling you they leak because they are in the pocket of “big plumbing.” No, you have the pro fix the leak.

I admit it, I’m just fed up with reckless stupidity. In politics, it is damaging our nation and in medicine it is, quite literally, killing people. The virus just doesn’t care if you think a horse dewormer works or if you think the whole COVID thing is a conspiracy. And if it only impacted those who deny reality, I’d be a little less upset. But the insistence by so many to be so ignorant about so much is exhausting and literally dangerous. 

I’m sure the kids at Creighton have good intentions in their hearts, but they should start using their brains as well. And get the damn shot.