A More Useful Savior

Posted on by

In an earlier blog-post, A Cure is Here, I wrote with much hope and gratitude about Dr. Jim Allison’s breakthrough discoveries and treatment for cancerous tumors by freeing our body’s T-cells to attack and kill cancer cells. For this accomplishment Dr. Allison was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Now those same T-cells and Helper T-cells are known to target the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Regrettably and remarkably there is a large portion of the American population who refuse to acknowledge the benefits and progressive advancements in medical science. In many cases, their disdain is over most all the sciences such as Earth science, geology, astronomy, oceanography, meteorology or climatology, geophysics, and the list goes on and on with their flawed reasons. They simply don’t trust (or understand?) humanity’s science advancements. That portion of the U.S. population would much rather delusionally exist in the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Ancient History of mythology, legends, fairy-tales, and ancient Abrahamic traditions of religion and prayer while trying to follow a highly erroneous Greek Septuagint, or Holy Bible. These faith-followers would and do discount or discard humanity’s accomplished sciences that save millions of lives. Why? What scares religious followers so much when it comes to proven, scientific truths and facts, the sciences and their equitable and endless examination of life’s fluid laws?

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

During the world pandemic of COVID-19 there surfaced a group of people (anti-vaxxers) who refused to get any vaccination or booster to combat the highly contagious COVID virus. They blindly believed the incomplete or completely bogus misinformation campaign over social media and then U.S. President Trump that one does not require the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to increase one’s odds of survival against COVID. In fact, the U.S. President even went so far as to claim that injecting Clorox bleach or disinfectant would eliminate the virus. Yes, I kid you not! 😧

Now for the actual scientific facts regarding the Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations and follow-up boosters from real medical scientists and epidemiologists.

Vaccine Safety:

  • No increased all-cause mortality risk: Multiple studies, including a massive four-year French study of 28 million adults, found that vaccinated individuals were no more likely to die from any cause than unvaccinated individuals. In fact, vaccinated people had a lower overall mortality rate.
  • Specific adverse events are very rare: Rare cases of serious adverse events like myocarditis (heart inflammation) and anaphylaxis (severe allergic reaction) have been observed, but most patients recover, and an increased risk of death from these conditions due to the vaccine has not been established in large studies.

Comparison to COVID-19 Risk:
The risk of death from the COVID-19 virus is vastly higher than any risk associated with the vaccine.

  • Studies show that people who received the COVID-19 vaccine were 74% less likely to die from severe COVID-19 compared to those who were unvaccinated.
  • One life was estimated to be averted for every 5,400 vaccine doses administered globally between December 2020 and October 2024.
  • In one Utah study, COVID-19 was the cause of death in 27.2% of unvaccinated deaths in 2021, compared to only 4.2% of deaths among the vaccinated population in the same year.

The mortality rate of deaths following the COVID-19 vaccinations was extremely minimal and rare, near non-existent among 8.2 million of the national population. The conclusion reached by the National Library of Medicine was “The benefits of COVID-19 vaccines far outweigh the potential risks in older frail populations, and our findings do not support actions to exclude older adults from being vaccinated.” And one must remember that there are far more other risks in daily life that claim lives, e.g. vehicular accidents, medical preconditions such as heart disease or cancer, combat in war zones, Alzheimer’s Disease, or diabetes or many other causes of death not related to COVID-19 infection. Fact. Truth. And yet…

Mandy Brown above was a Jesus-faith-based Children’s Hospital Dallas nurse who rapidly suffered and died from the COVID-19 virus after being diagnosed with it a 3-4 days earlier. She and her spouse and family did not believe in the very real effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations. This is also the case with many other viruses and diseases, all of which protect us from permanent impairment, disabilities, or death.

For Mandy Brown, out of her fear and religious “convictions,” died as a result of her “faith.” As a consequence by her ignorance the widowed husband and her family would not publicly admit their unfounded fears and why theologically Brown chose an anti-vaccination stance. But for the Browns the truth soon came out. She and her family attended an evangelical-fundamentalist church in east Texas that believed much more in prayer than medical science and survival. It begs the question, doesn’t God or Yahweh or Allah provide His dominion of medical advancement in epidemiology and medicine? After all, didn’t their Creator create their brains of intelligence to utilize medical sciences and vaccinations?

Measles rash shown on a young boy’s arm, 2025

After reaching a 30-year high in cases last year, measles is soaring again in 2026. In 2025, 2,267 measles cases were reported nationwide, the highest annual count in more than three decades. By February 19, 2026, already 982 confirmed measles cases were reported according to the CDC. Many of these confirmed cases this year stem from outbreaks in 2025. Why is a virus such as measles, that was once contained or near unheard of 20-25 years ago, returning with such high numbers and outbreaks?

Measles is a highly contagious virus, worse than COVID-19. UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA along with Dr. Sanchi Malhotra, M.D., medical director of pediatric infection prevention for UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital and a professor in the division of pediatric infectious diseases, all report:

Like COVID-19, measles spreads through airborne particles. But measles is six times more contagious, she says. One person infected with measles can infect up to 18 others in an unvaccinated population. With COVID-19, that rate was one to three. Furthermore, when someone with measles leaves a room, the room remains infectious for two hours as airborne particles continue to circulate.

The best way to prevent measles is through vaccination. Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, an estimated 3 to 4 million people in the U.S. were infected each year, 48,000 were hospitalized annually and 400 to 500 people died, according to the CDC. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine are 97% effective at preventing infection, it says.

“The measles vaccine is incredibly safe and effective,” Dr. Malhotra says.

And yet, medical science in virology and epidemiology had proven back in the late 1950’s and 1963 when the vaccine was widely available to infants and toddlers, that the measles vaccine was 97% effective at preventing infection—the 3% had further health and immunity complications making the infection worse and the measle vaccine less effective.

Knowing this proven virology and epidemiology research and the very effective, successful measles vaccine, why are their increasing spikes in measles cases and deaths of American children? Answer: anti-vaxxers, disinformation by anti-vaxx groups, most of them religious-based, i.e. Christian fundamentalists and energized evangelicals, and their unfounded distrust in proven science. For more factual information go to this PublicHealth.org website:

Vaccine Myths Debunked

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

A final summation. Everything on Earth and every day here is to some degree a legitimate unknown risk. Life is messy. Mistakes are made. Many, many things about this existence is imperfect, sometimes grossly imperfect. And we can’t know what we genuinely do not know. We rarely know what the near future holds for each of us, much less the distant future, right?

Neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman in the PBS documentary, The Brain

However, we can recognize and comprehend a day, a week or two in advance what will likely occur, or may not occur, in our immediate and extended social circles based on our learned accumulated experiences, our education levels (or lack thereof) both broad and specialized, and our environments or interactions with life on a macro level and micro level. This field is known as Agnotology. I wrote a 4-part blog-series on this field of study, “Games of Unknowledging,” or ignorance and excessive doubt. It is an enthralling field of science! If you have time I do recommend the series to better understand the depth, the intent of what I write here.

What is made clear from this scientific field is that our brains, perceptions, interpretations, extrapolations, interpolations, where we were born, where we were raised and by whom, and our belief system (religious or otherwise) are all quite biased. And they are biased like tunnel-vision or horse-blinders that we sometimes/often can’t realize it or acknowledge it. The good news is that we can reset this default mode so as not to be so ignorant and doubting, afraid of life that is in some/many ways paralyzes us mentally, emotionally, or physically.

Neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman did a remarkable PBS documentary on this subject called “The Brain with David Eagleman” that examines and explores our most newest discoveries on how our brains grow and function from infant, to adolescence, to adult, and finally into our geriatric years. This PBS documentary I highly recommend watching as well.

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance,
it is the illusion of knowledge.”
— Stephen Hawking

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

The Professor’s Convatorium © 2025 by Professor Taboo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

30 thoughts on “A More Useful Savior”

    • Oh my! YES Nan! The world would be a much better place with about what… 1-2 million of them?

      I’ve often stated, as you know, that over the last 2-3 decades the primary and secondary school American education system throughout many states have annually and regularly de-emphasized the sciences and now doing the same to history, even rewriting it. This is never more evident in the School Voucher system which financially weakens and closes public schools in favor of private (religious) schools that automatically teach more bible, Western religion, sacraments, creationism, etc., etc., while ignoring or sacrificing the Fine Arts, extensive sciences, and verifiable history as opposed to myths and legends.

      For me, this is a major factor in the growth of anti-vaxxer groups, disinformation, and the rise of Christian Nationalism. This nation has reared 2-4 generations of youth extremism and ignorance of many other “savior” methods for humanity.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

      • We’re not educating kids the way they should be: we learned the times tables in the second grade. We were taught to read and write from the first grade on. I could already read, so that was easy. Just give me some glasses, please. I don’t know what they’re learning these days, but it sure ain’t math, and it sure ain’t spelling.

        I get the feeling that all of this lack of education is going to come back to us like a rock in a sock–even when I was in school a zillion years ago we never got beyond the Civil War, my goodness, teachers LOVED it, and by the time we were done with it in one grade it was time for summer. I went to school with kids who had parents in WWII, and grandparents in WWI. Some of them might very well have had grandparents who suffered under Hitler. We never got close to any of that.

        I would wager serious money that the people who attended Trump’s first speeches had no idea who Hitler was, and what that funny salute at the end really meant. Too young to know, too poorly educated to understand.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply ↓

        • BINGO Judy! BULLSEYE! 🎯

          When I was a Special Needs (Spec Ed) teacher of 4th–8th grades Social Studies or Science here in the rural part of Texas (Leakey), I was astonished and dumb-founded to see just how badly the TEA (Texas Education Agency) and the SBOE (State Board of Education) had edited, removed, deemphasized, and white-washed Texas, American, and World history curriculums. 😧 And today it has only gotten worse, e.g.:

          Texas’ 1836 Project …and…

          Slavery, Not States’ Rights

          And do I really need to go into how horribly Texas has rewritten Science curriculums? Pfffft. It’s already been done and it’s bad.

          Like

          Reply ↓

  2. This issue came between me and my immediate family when the ‘Rona hit. A year or so earlier I got the flu, which I never had before. So I said to myself, “Self, ¡NO MAS! Imma getting vaxxed.” Uninsured, the jab cost me $40 at the pharmacy, but it’s a bargain at twice that price.

    The fam didn’t say much about the flu vax, but when it was announced a ‘Rona vax was in development — and it was gonna be free to the public — I said hell to the yeah! The fam drew the line. They didn’t want to be around me because I’d be “shedding” the ‘Rona and keys would be stuck all over me and that would be grody to the max. But, I made the requisite appointment and went to one of those mass drive-thru operations (twice, once the authorities found out the double jabs were moar effective), and I never got the ‘Rona. My sister’s family has been thru multiple bouts of COVID.

    I get the jab at the same time I get the flu jab every year

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply ↓

    • OUTSTANDING Kamchak! 👏👍 Sandy and I will soon get our flu vaxx and the newest COVID-19 booster.

      By the way, here in the states or at least in Texas, back when there were no available (yet) vaccinations against the COVID virus, and far, far too many Americans followed MAGA and Dumb-Rump directives, or rather NO intelligent directives, they refused to social distance (6-ft), refused to wear proper masks, did not refuse indoor get-togethers (church), and refused to get vaccinated (still to this day) so the virus kept having more ample time to build-up immunity to any vax/booster and consequently kept stranding into a newer, more potent virus! I mean, how asinine is that by Americans!? 🤬 Do they completely fail to comprehend what Public Safety is all about and WHY we must do it!? School zones, low beams vs high beams at night, speed limits, sanitation, emergency services, etc., etc., et al. One person’s individual rights does NOT include putting another’s life in danger! Period! DUH!

      And yet, those very same ignoramuses are more than happy to pay a hospital ICU bill of $45,000–$80,000… assuming they survive. Back in 2020–2023 I just couldn’t wrap my head around their idiot logic and behavior. Baffling to no end. 🤦‍♂️

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply ↓

      • My sister and mother were public school teachers and were required to get the flu shot, but their objections were grumbling, at best. I was raised azza Southron Baptist, which is about as evangelical as you can get without going down the snake-handling/speaking-in-tongues path. I left the church in the mid 70s, when it became too-obvious-to-ignore the SBC wasn’t walking the talk.

        IMO, conservative politics really really infected the church after I left — most notably during the Great Schism of 1984 when Charles Stanley was “elected” prezzy of the SBC. They stuffed the ballot boxes. There were more votes cast for Stanley than there were “messengers” in attendance at the convention. The moderate Southron Baptists had been so vilified they left the church in disgust. I attribute the brainwashing to the right-wing media which had insinuated itself into the pulpits.

        I can’t object against free speech coming from religious institutions, but I do object they can do it tax free. We shoulda been taxing them for 40 years. We should do it now — making it retroactive — until they’re bleeding from their eyes.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply ↓

      • Yes, it is sad … this world had so much potential, but we’re blowing it.

        On another note, Prof, I want to thank you for your input and conversation with Jonathan Caswell on my Plutocracy post. I just couldn’t cope with his attitude and so remained silent, but I did read the comments between you two and you did a great job of responding to him, and even making him stop and think, back off on some of his views. Thank you, my friend … I appreciate it.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply ↓

        • 👍😉 Regarding J. Caswell… of course. I was a little surprised that he shut things down so fast. Hmmm, there’s likely several reasons he did it, 2-3 big reasons I can think of off the top of my Free-thinking Humanist head and Xian college, seminary, missionary backgrounds. 🙂

          He’ll come back around soon enough.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply ↓

            • Yes, perhaps. Many many bold (in private) Xians in those circumstances use the internet and social-media to “proselytize” or “evangelize,” or as you mention… start arguments.

              I’m fine with all three. I can handle them just fine, perhaps even de-convert them. 😈😉

              Liked by 1 person

            • Yes, I follow Ark, though I don’t always read his posts. But then heck, these days I don’t have either the time or the energy to read most of the posts by bloggers I follow! Sometimes Ark makes sense, other times, I just roll my eyes and close it down.

              Liked by 1 person

  4. Perhaps, given enough time, the antivaxxers will win enough Darwin Awards, that the “reasonables” will outnumber them. A guy can hope…

    It’s funny, most of us have enough of an instinctual desire to live, we will jump out of the way of the oncoming bus without thinking about it. But the minute some people are required to reason, their biases, their programming, or the just plain stupid, impairs their ability to reach a logical conclusion. That level of willful ignorance is impenetrable to reason.

    …and when the idiots are in charge, we’re fucked. See current administration.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  5. Professor T, great post and thanks for Carl Sagan’s quote using “bamboozle” rather than cognitive dissonance which puts the argument over the head of the intended. I reposted last night an old post on Michael Lewis’ book “The Premonition” about experts on handling COVID who came together on their own and finally got heeded. These folks tried hard to get heard as they started tracking COVID in China two months before the US even knew it was a big problem. We need to listen to experts not demonize them. Keith

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • Couldn’t agree more Keith.

      Speaking of “experts” in their fields, I’ve read “The Death of Expertise” by Tom Nichols, and in his conclusion he wrote:

      “At a Wisconsin rally in early 2016, Republican candidate Donald Trump unleashed an attack on experts. In earlier debates, Trump had often been caught at a loss for words over basic issues of public policy, and now he was striking back. “They say, ‘Oh, Trump doesn’t have experts,’ ” he told the crowd. “You know, I’ve always wanted to say this… . The experts are terrible. They say, ‘Donald Trump needs a foreign policy adviser.’… But supposing I didn’t have one. Would it be worse than what we’re doing now?”

      Trump’s sneering at experts tapped into a long-standing American belief that experts and intellectuals are not only running the lives of ordinary people, but also doing a lousy job of it.

      — Nichols, Tom. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (p. 211). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

      In today’s American political landscape, if you and your party do not like the FACTS, then you simply ignore them and attack them for being “terrible” as tRump has made infamous to his quite naive, gullible MAGA base.

      I liken this MAGA Republican dumbing down and neo-narration to this: you want to fly on an Airbus A350, one of the most advanced, complicated airline jets today. Unfortunately, the pilot’s union is on strike. There is a construction-worker in wood-carpentry and trash disposal volunteering to fly the Airbus A350 you and 100 other passengers want to be on. Do you board the jet with this construction-worker wood-carpenter and trash disposal with zero hours flying anything!? That’s a rhetorical question of course.

      The end point is that highly professional expertise from people in these career fields for most all of their lives… are blown-off, considered irrelevant because to the obsessed political straight ticket American, those facts, years of experience, etc., are to them null-and-void. 😳 So in other words, get on that Airbus A350 with the construction-worker in wood-carpentry and trash disposal in the cockpit flying your jet for the very first time!

      Is that not just asinine ludicrous!!!!? 🤦‍♂️

      Like

      Reply ↓

    • Yes. And the Baby Orange Orangutan just says whatever he likes in the moment to make his base ‘love him’ more in his own delusional self-aggrandizing way. IOW, he’ll say anything at all (semi-true or audaciously false) to garnish that cult worship from his MAGA minions won’t he?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

  8. In many cases, their disdain is over most all the sciences such as Earth science, geology, astronomy, oceanography, meteorology or climatology, geophysics, and the list goes on and on with their flawed reasons. They simply don’t trust (or understand?) humanity’s science advancements.

    When I was a child, around 6/8 years old, in Portugal, so this is around 1980, the grandmother of one of my school colleagues did not believe that man had landed on the Moon. “The Americans filmed it all up in a cinema studio, don’t you know? But I’m not an idiot, I don’t fall for that crap.” This was an old illiterate woman, and by illiterate I really mean never learned to read or write because never went to school long enough. But she was convinced of what she was saying because she had heard it somewhere and that was enough.

    At the time, already able to read and comprehend and possessing a bit more intelligence than the wretched lady, I merely laughed. Little did I know, smart as I was, but childishly naïve at that young age, that it wasn’t just one benighted woman’s opinion. There was a bunch of them. Thousands, if not millions of them all over the world. This taught me a lesson.

    It saddens me to think that in 2026 people still believe in a flat Earth, but I remember the old lady. In her utmost, absolute, boundless ignorance, this belief that she was right made her feel smarter than the smart people who believed that man had really walked on the Moon. She was smarter than that, you see? Smarter than the people who thought they were smart because they had been to school and studied shit and could actually read and write and thought they knew it all. Bunch of idiots. Because she didn’t need no reading or writing to know it was fake. The entire world had been fooled but she was smarter than that, and it made her feel good to tell those smart people how much they had all been fooled, shame on them because they supposedly had had an education and should know better than to believe that crap. She felt really smart and superior when she told them that. No amount of scientific incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo would convince her that the Moon landing had not been filmed in a studio. She went to her grave knowing she was superior, smarter than the so-called-smartest despite being illiterate, and it felt good.

    Just a little food for thought.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • katrina,

      This is an excellent comment and perfect example of this post’s subject and the lunacy(?) of so many… religious or anti-vaxxing or anti-science. Great stuff! Thank you.

      Good to see you around, by the way. Don’t be a stranger, okay? 😉

      Like

      Reply ↓

Leave a reply to shelldigger Cancel reply