Heads up, it's gotten a bit long and I didn't know where it would fit best, so if it fits better somewhere else, feel free to move it.
Now it has also arrived in my microcosm. I live in a community and we had once taken it upon ourselves to be solidary and open-minded. Everyone knows everyone and everyone helps everyone. Since I moved in in 2015, we've had a lot of fun together and everything has always been a bit "different" than in an anonymous apartment block.
At the beginning of the Corona period everyone was looking for ways out and there were concerts in our garden during the lockdown and singing from the balconies. My naive little mind had thought that even with the vaccination it would be different from somewhere else. Since yesterday I know that I seem to have been completely wrong.
About 100 people including children live here. We are a colourful average of humanity, there are all here families, couples, pensioners, disabled, gay, people from all over the world etc. As far as I know there are currently 6 unvaccinated people here in the house. Some time ago one of them started a group to network (at that time there were still 10 people not vaccinated) we met in our common room to exchange ideas. There were also a few like-minded people from "outside" (that's what they always call it when someone comes to visit).
A few "vaccinated" people noticed this and got terribly upset about the people we were bringing into the house... Words such as "lateral thinkers", "conspiracy theorists", "Nazis", etc. .... were used... At the next meeting, a flatmate who wanted to check things out "happened" to be in the common room right at the beginning of the meeting to look something up in the calendar.
This story alone shocked me, but I thought well, it's a few individuals....
Far from it... The day before yesterday, one of the unvaccinated shared an article on our in-house sharing forum, which I link here:
30 reasons why I don't vaccinate at the moment (nachdenkseiten.de).
And then came the comments:
(...)
When I read these comments I was really shocked, but it gets even better. We also have a solidarity working group in our house, it was held last night and my husband (vaccinated with AZ himself) went and faced the issue, which of course came up. He was there for 2.5 hours. When he came back, he drove in in his wheelchair with his hand raised and said: "I defended you to the death and really went out of my way.
He then told me about the talks... Everyone just parrots the mainstream without thinking, or even having any accurate information. Since he studies the subject a lot and also reads on sites other than MSM, he was able to refute all their arguments and they were, according to him, irritated that he knew so much. I looked at him and listened to him and was just happy that he is my husband and stands by me like that. And while telling them, it struck me HOW MUCH he actually knows. So we already talk a lot about what we think and I knew he knew a lot. But the fact that he can bring it across and completely invalidate their arguments, I didn't expect to the same extent. He said that with every argument he refuted, they were just silent. I am a bit proud of my brave hero.
What disappoints me though is that it is now hitting me in my closest environment, here was somehow still such a "free zone". I am very curious to see how this will continue. For me, I will continue to handle it the same way as before, I haven't changed my way of dealing with people and I will continue to be friendly, respectful and helpful and if direct attacks should actually happen (which I haven't experienced so far, fortunately), then I will hopefully also keep the calmness that my husband has displayed.
Please excuse the long post and I congratulate everyone who made it to the end here.