Four Horsemen of Herd Immunity
Final Tract: The Fifth Horseman Is You
“Certainty is the deadliest contagion.”
Measles is on the rise again. The kind of measles we used to just vaccinate away without fanfare, before the influencers made it edgy to host a pox party and call it parenting.
Research funding has been gutted. Science, we are told, is "just another opinion" — less credible than a meme, and far less popular than a podcast.
COVID mandates are struck down by the courts. Childhood immunization is under siege in statehouses. Even the artificial coloring in M&M’s is in the crosshairs of the crusaders. Red 40, we hardly knew ye.
The four riders — Influence, Paranoia, Grift, and Ignorance — have done their work. The soil has been tilled. But it is not they who will finish the harvest.
The fifth rider does not ride a horse. The fifth rider refreshes the feed. The fifth rider leaves a comment. The fifth rider “just wants to do their own research” — and rarely does.
The fifth rider is a neighbor, a cousin, a parent at the PTA meeting, a senator in committee, a billionaire with a biotech startup and a grudge against regulators.
The fifth rider is the algorithm. It’s you. It’s me. It’s everyone who let it happen, watched it happen, or benefited while it did.
You cannot unride the horse. But you can refuse the saddle.
The End — and just possibly, the beginning of the end.
🕮 For additional absurdities, misjudgments, and public health parodies, watch this space — only at The Panican Ledger.
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