In Do What Thou Wilt, Paul Kingsnorth, a highly prolific and (to me) inspiring substacker draws a compelling lineage from the cult of magic to the cult of science. I had never genuinely made such a connection before reading his stack. However, I can no longer not see further connections; symbology, eugenics, and transhumanism have been firstfruits of both disciplines, among other fruits as well. Though over time these three firstfruits have been known by other names, their nefarious purposes have been the same. And today, they feel particularly drawn together in a chilling syzygy. Rumors, media, and mandates now focus on the topic of COVID-19 boosters. And those of us with a mind left to think have to question what is the objective of this endeavor?
Consider the ouroboros, or briefly, the snake. From a symbolic perspective there are just two things to take away from the snake: it’s a scary predator and it sheds its skin leaving a hollow, dead likeness of itself. As such, it’s a clear symbol of death, but also of rebirth. In particular, it is a rebirth of self, which is unlike the Christian baptism a birth into new life without self. For Christians, the snake means death. It’s the shape Satan assumed in the garden, the bronze serpent Moses erected in the desert to free Jews from death, and following St. Paul’s shipwreck, the adder that bit him and was cast in the fire proving that the grace of God had granted St. Paul life beyond life. Some 500 miles away from Malta where St. Paul crashed, across the Ionian Sea, was a people who venerated a god, Asclepius, whose staff, as legends had it, was entwined by a snake carrying healing herbs to him. The Hippocratic Oath had for a millennium [fact check needed] invoked a litany of Greek gods, including Asclepius. Asclepius’ staff and snake continues to symbolize medicine in the West to this day. Medicine in the West is synonymous with preservation of the self. But now we come to the ouroboros, a particularly important symbol to alchemists, mages, and masons. The image depicts a continual death and rebirth through a snake, self-consuming. Chemist August Kekulé was revealed the structure of benzene through a dream involving the ouroboros.
The ouroboros conjures evil, negative feelings for me. In Buddhist philosophy it’s something called “Samsara” - the evil of reincarnation, the Buddha’s promise of enlightenment is to break the cycle of death and rebirth. For things to continue perpetually the way they are doesn’t make sense. We spend our lives obsessing over or trying to “beat” our suffering and, in doing so, inflict it upon others. If we end suffering, we forfeit our right to rebirth our “self” for the sake of being born into a higher order or purpose. This is largely the Christian belief as well. However, as Paul Kingsnorth has noted over his series on the Machine, the West has defenestrated Christianity and enthroned a “Machine” in its place. The Machine has decreed that the self is what matters most, and the society should be designed so that everyone working in the interest of their selves will make society churn. It’s all markets and fetishism, and though we’re not hawking actual snake oil anymore, people are seeking immortality in the marketplace. In other words, the famous Alphaville song which asks, “Do you really wanna live forever? Forever young?” is emphatically answered by “Yes” in the West and “No” in the East.
Where can you buy immortality? The West has an emerging market focused on their “Yes” to the Alphaville question. There is a market of “anti-aging” products, since age is an enemy; there are places to infuse blood of younger people into your own blood stream, botulism products to make your skin look taut, stem-cell therapies from aborted children, and genetic strips that predict your disease risk factors to avert them. Regarding vaccines, it’s almost impossible to broach the issue without immediately being labeled as an “anti-vaxxer”. But as with all technology, there is no upper bound, hence it is useful to think about natural or ordered limits to their use. I am not convinced that it suffices to declare a vaccine as necessarily ethical if it prevents death.
I am sad to say the COVID19 vaccination campaign is a complete failure, and it’s not the fault of the unvaccinated. Rates of COVID19 are now as high as they were when the last year’s wave reached its apex, when only a fraction of the population had received any vaccine [fact check needed]. Initially we believed the vaccination campaign would lead to herd immunity. Most vaccine apologists remained convinced this is the case, and struggle for vindication in slipshod science. The other, smaller fraction of vaccine apologists insist the goal is now self-preservation; vaccinate for you. Every man for himself. And the Machine smiles.
Indeed, protecting the self from COVID19 is the sole basis for the approval of the vaccines. None of the major developers even bothered to design a randomized trial to detect a change in transmissibility. If 3M will buy your widgets if they wick, why would you ever make them whack? That’s all the FDA wants anyway. Therefore it shouldn’t be surprising that the FDA has reneged on its initial position against boosters. Two surprising decisions followed: they will not require the manufacturers to reformulate their boosters based on the Delta variant, nor will they require any rigorous proof of vaccine efficacy, antibody presence suffices.
Antibody presence is what is referred to as a surrogate endpoint. In the words of Dr. Robert Temple, the (only valid) clinical endpoints of a trial are how a patient feels, functions, and survives, whether that drug is for cancer, headache, meningitis, or COVID19. Surrogate endpoints have nothing to do with the ‘f’ of function. For instance, common markers of Alzheimer’s disease are the beta plaques and tau tangles. However, we still have not managed to show that removing tangles and plaques actually prevent Alzheimer’s disease. The FDA’s hasty decision to approve Regeneron’s $50,000/year anti-Alzheimer’s drug on the basis of surrogate endpoints drew harsh criticism from scientist, researcher Dr. Scott Emerson:
This analysis seems to be subject to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, a name for the joke of someone first firing a shotgun at a barn and then painting a target around the bullet holes.
Approving vaccines on the basis of antibody presence is another demonstration of the Texas sharpshooter. All the presence of antibodies proves us is our body’s ability to respond powerfully to vaccines. And this knowledge does force us to take a step back and reconsider the value of a flu vaccine which is based entirely on predictions. The flu vaccine and the COVID19 vaccine have costs, harms, and risks, so we have to weigh the pros and cons to consider any treatment “good”. Rapidly mutating sickness will prevail against our immunity, with vaccines or without. Boosters effectively become a means to continue administering a drug indefinitely long after it confers any clinical benefit, because we have neglected due diligence to monitor and evaluate our accepted beliefs; we have become non-scientific.
Secondly, the mRNA vaccine platform is a puzzling step into a brave new world. Aside from polio, the COVID vaccine is the only (approved-ish) vaccine to date that requires a pathogen to actively replicate within the host’s body to induce a vaccine effect. The vaccine comes closer to “just giving a person the disease” than any vaccine has before. There is of course the failed Merck trial of a live DNA HIV vaccine that actually increased infection rates among subjects with prior adenovirus infection. And it’s a bit frightening, but not surprising, that the infusion-related reactions from the COVID19 vaccine closely mirror some of the manifestations of fulminant COVID19 infection. But the mRNA vaccine strides dangerously close to gene therapy; the immune system involvement is almost irrelevant. Genes code mRNA, and mRNA code protein, and proteins are the globs of paint that comprise the picture of the person, the entire phenotype. Introducing mRNA can subvert the genetic basis of our entire human existence. Having greenlit the mRNA/COVID19 vaccines as “safe” - ignoring of course, the context with the current COVID19 epidemic and fatality rate - opens the market to mRNA-based therapies for, well, sky’s the limit; increase telomere length, lung function, eyelash length, balding, penis size. The government and your insurance might not pay for these therapies, but there’s no guaranteeing that they won’t be on the top shelf. “Ask your Dr. today about…” will be the clarion call from YouTube advertisements around the world. I guess that’s already the case.
The ouroboros gives us a strange image of a society seeking to perfect the self with technology, creating a self that meets every desire and perpetuates only its own existence, a sinkhole rather than a conduit of living matter and existence. COVID19 has been bad, and I would rather not die if I need to be here longer, but I fear - and I think I’m not alone - the promises and demands made by the Machine. It has asked us to submit to its will.