COMMENTARY: The longer a lie lives, the harder it is to kill

The transmission of the pox is contagious. It often moves by community spread. Even if you observe the protocols, lies have legs and wings, often in your face, but more often slick and near invisible. The man or woman that doesn’t know that they have been infected or deny the evidence of infection is very sick.

And so, we know that if the people around us share a false belief, the odds are exponentially greater that we will adopt that belief, even if it is absurd.

Sharpshooter Steph Curry can defy logic in launching a sphere toward and consistently through a cylindrical hoop from 40 feet away, yet deny the moon landing.

Flat earthers think that the Earth is not a globe that is curved, despite the views from the Apollo craft. Galileo, in possession of the telescope was sentenced to life imprisonment because his views contradicted the ignorant church leaders. Some rappers think that because we can’t see over the horizon in Galveston Bay that the Earth is flat. Astro physicist Neil de Grasse Tyson clarion calls from his scientific podium do not dissuade the flat earthers from their fixed beliefs.

There are sworn advocates of the theory that the Earth is 5,000 years old, and that planet Earth is the center of the universe.  Fairytales must be acknowledged as fairytales.

There are flat earthers that believe that the COVID-19 vaccines are sent from hell below and instruments of white supremacy in 2021. Believe it or not, black epidemiologists and other scientists researched and helped in the creation and design of the leading vaccines. Some military members have taken hundreds of vaccines and never had any serious side effects. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was genocidal in effect but an anomaly in the history of vaccine development.

If your friends and associates are predominantly anti-vaxxers, you will be more prone to being a conspiracy zealot.

If you believe that the presidential election was stolen, if you believe that the murder of Officer Brian Sicknick by the Neo-Confederates on January 6 was not sedition, you are in a select club of true believers.

If your close friends and associates are drinking the Kool-Aid, it is likely that you are getting thirsty for a sip or XL cup.

My nephew wanted to come by and talk to the Ole Man. I asked him if he had been vaccinated. He told me that he was anti-vaxxer. I told him that he could visit but prepare for us to sit on the deck and observe the 6 ft.  social distancing protocol.  Mama and I have finished both shots.

I regret that the police are using pepper spray to disperse those who were pent-up and wanted to break loose during Spring Break. Some of us still refuse to follow the science. You better think for yourselves and do what you feel will protect your family.

May God bless all of us…