I want to be clear about a couple things. Yes, I lie when it comes to the vaccine. I am not vaccinated and I do not wear a mask, even if I cross some magic boundary that suggests I am now at risk for killing people. So maybe you should get your third and fourth and tenth shot and quadruple mask. ‘Cuz I’m out there. Oooo.

This “little white lie” of mine isn’t going to hurt anybody, least of all kill them. And if I was to get vaccinated at this point, it would feed the bigger lie, being that my act of taking the vaccine saves the very lives of every person on planet earth. It doesn’t.

For context, I will add that my oldest friend got the vaccine because of social pressure at a university. He really believed his professors would somehow put a stop to his doctoral work if they found out he was unvaccinated. So rather than lie like I do, he chose to lie in a bigger way—that is, he chose to take a vaccine to please someone else. We fight ferociously about this choice of his whenever the topic comes up.

I will also add that when my job makes it mandatory to get the vaccine, I’ll get it. I make good money. It’s not a difficult decision.

And I’m sure that the mandatory-at-work thing is in the works, how could it not be?

That said, as I approach it, my focus has become clearer and clearer. And I love the feeling. I imagine that it’s like how gaining a superpower must feel.

Here’s why I won’t get the vaccine, put even more clearly: firstly, my doctor has never had a conversation with me and told me to get it (I haven’t spoken to any doctor about the vaccine ever). Secondly, the reason I am being told to get it by everyone but my doctor (who I don’t see because I’m not sick) is to save the entire population from dying. This is no joke. People are telling me that when I join them in getting vaccinated then life goes back to normal. People are telling me that my vaccine is so I don’t get other people sick.

No one is telling me, none of these people are suggesting that I get the vaccine so that I don’t die. Not one person has ever said that, my doctor or otherwise. No one. Not ever. Why? Because it’s a lie. And the chance of me getting Covid again and dying is meaningfully zero. This means I’ll be able to promptly call out their bullshit—and don’t miss this—and they know it!!

So they package their—get this—“attempt to avoid the reality of death” in a more palatable and completely unprovable, unmeasurable, and unbelievable manner by saying that the vaccine that goes into my body is about other people.

Nobody ever got a vaccine to save someone else. Unheard of. I won’t be a part of that nonsense. (I will, however, get a vaccine for my salary. Again, that’s an easy choice. Of course I can be bought. I’m not on some crusade to prove it’s possible to be poor.)

But as far as “do it for others”? That’s a lie. One big fat lie. And it’s told by cowards, as all lies are.

Want me to get the vaccine? Call my doctor and tell him/her (not really sure who my doctor would be) to recommend to me that I need the vaccine to save myself. Or you can keep lying and my work will cave to the zeitgeist for business reasons, as it’s forced to do by virtue of being a business.