You’re scared. A million Americans could be dead by Christmas. You might be one of them. One of them might be your child. Your mother believed you when you said the vaccine was dangerous. It turned out you were the dangerous one because now she’s dead. Your grief made you dig in deeper. You still swore you’d not get vaccinated. It is humiliating to be wrong, even harder to admit it. You’ve lived your life as a good son, a great dad, a decent soul. You meant no harm — and yet, in your wake, there is a path of such misery, sickness, loss.

I love you. I won’t give up on you. I believe you meant well. But now you have to stop, surrender to the good that is still inside you. It’s not too late. Let me help. I have heard you. I have listened to your arguments. I ask now that you listen to my answers. Listen! You know me — I never do what I’m told. I know how much those in power lie to us. And I’ve lived my life rebelling against those lies.

My friends, I beseech you — let me answer your legitimate concerns about this vicious virus, this plague which has descended upon us, and these vaccines which have saved millions. I hear you. Hear me. Hear the truth. These 7 things I hear all the time:

1. “I don’t trust this vaccine. Its development was rushed and it didn’t go through the proper trials and testing. I’m not against medicine. I trust aspirin because it’s been around for over a hundred years. This vaccine hasn’t even existed for a year.”

THE TRUTH: Work on this vaccine began back in 2003 during the SARS virus outbreak. Scientists knew even before, in the 1980s, that coronaviruses were going to happen more often. So they got to work on inventing what would become a vaccine known as mRNA. This vaccine has been in development for at least 18 years! THIS IS NOT A NEW THING. When Covid-19 appeared in December of 2019, the scientists were ready and standing by with the vaccine elements. They knew something like this was coming. All they needed was the genetic structure of this particular virus. A brave Chinese doctor constructed its sequencing in his lab and, without the permission of his government, he then shared it with the world. It was all our coronavirus scientists needed to begin the trials of the vaccine they’d been working on for EIGHTEEN YEARS. Those trials began immediately and ran for nearly all of 2020. Because of the ways modern medicine and science have improved in this new century (did you know in the Covid vaccine you’re getting, there is NO speck of the Covid virus in it!) we were already equipped to bring Covid-19 to a halt. Except for one thing science couldn’t predict…

2. “I, and millions like me, do NOT trust the government.”

THE TRUTH: Ugh. On this one, you are right. You should NEVER trust this government, that government, any government. One of my favorite quotes from the legendary investigative reporter I. F. Stone is, “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” If you are Native American, you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you that. If you are African American — my God, again, the list of lies and deception and cruelty is endless. White people need to be taught in school about the Tuskegee experiments, about James Sims, the lauded “father of modern gynecology,” who performed brutal experimental surgeries without anesthesia on enslaved African women in the 1800s.

And on and on. White people, do not think less of any Black person (or any person of color) who is skeptical of this vaccine. They have a 400-year history of knowing that the last person they should automatically trust is Whitey. Dr. Whitey. Scientist Whitey. Whitey in a Lab Coat. Officer Whitey. CEO Whitey. Nightly News Anchor Whitey. President Whitey. In his Whitey House.

It is painful now to see how our racist legacy has manifested itself during this pandemic: Covid-19 has killed 102,000 Black Americans — 20% more than the rate at which white people die. The white supremacists must be loving this. I join with my fellow citizens who are Black in fighting this virus that seeks to kill them first.

3. “I don’t trust the pharmaceutical companies nor do I trust the entire for-profit health care industry. I’m not taking something they tell me to take.”

THE TRUTH: I trust them less than you do. I made a film about these bastards (“Sicko”). Greed runs in their veins. Because our political and corporate leaders have constructed a society that has enabled two-thirds of us to live an unhealthy life, their brethren, the devils in the health care industry, have made trillions from our illness, our disabilities, our infirmities. They need us sick so that we spend money on ways to stay alive. They DON’T want us cured because where’s the profit in that?

Yet in the case of Covid, they really don’t want so, so many of us so dead. Dead men and women don’t need a plethora of costly prescriptions. Dead men and women don’t shop at Walmart and they don’t order from Amazon. Other than the overpriced casket, there is not much profit that comes from death. In the case of the pandemic, they need the citizenry alive to do the backbreaking work for slave wages — and then spend every dime of those wages so all that loot makes it back into the pockets of the one-percent. There are now nearly 700,000 dead Americans who aren’t spending anything! Corporate America needs this disease to go away. Yes, the stock market has set records, and yes, the real estate market is bananas. But the rich have learned this is only good in the short term. They need Covid to stop killing us so they can be the ones to get back to killing us — but killing us their way — slowly — very, very, very slowly. Like 70 years slowly. Squeeze every last bit of work out of us before the arthritis sets in and our only contribution to making them wealthier is our weekly purchases of adult diapers and canned pineapple.

The way to beat the rich and stop their scam is not for us to refuse the shot and die before our time. We need to live long enough so that we can imagine their proverbial heads on the spikes that line the wall at the city’s limits. Take the shot. Both of them. Live to see the day.

4. “Trump’s inaction caused the spread of this disease — and then he tried to rush these vaccines through in order to help himself win the election. This is the ‘Trump Vaccine’ — I don’t want it in MY body!”

THE TRUTH: The top ten states with the highest rates of Covid death are all the ultra-red Trump states. That’s not how you win elections — by killing off your own voters. But he did it. Actually, the number of votes he barely lost Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin by - together, 44,000 - he helped kill more than that in those three states combined (52,000 deaths). No, the “Trump Vaccine“ was never his. Just like he didn’t “own the tallest building in NYC after 9/11,” nor was he ever “a billionaire.“ Get this vaccine, invented in part by a brilliant, persistent woman, Katalin Kariko, a scientist who was ignored for 20 years — she created this for us. Not Trump.

5. “So many people have died from the vaccine!”

TRUTH: No, they haven’t. To spread this lie is to be an accessory to murder. That’s not you. Right?

6. “My religion won’t let me take the vaccine.”

THE TRUTH: Yes it will. God — all gods — not only approve of the Covid vaccine, He is the one who made it! Remember your lessons: GOD CREATED EVERYTHING! That’s why it says “Creator” on his CV. Take God’s gift into your upper arm and praise Jesus. Because, if you walk around unvaccinated, you will kill people. And that carries with it an eternal sentence of hellfire and damnation. C’mon! Stop hiding behind “religion.” NOT A SINGLE RELIGION, NOT A SINGLE DENOMINATION IN THE WORLD SAYS THIS VACCINE IS A SIN! Get your shots so we can party in heaven on earth!

7. “I have a medical/health condition that my doctor says I shouldn’t get the vaccine.”

THE TRUTH: No, you don’t. We now know there is no medical condition that prevents you from getting the vaccine. Stop with the “I’ve got a note from my doctor” bullshit. Get the damn vaccine — or you risk the chance of REALLY needing a doctor. Calm down. Relax. We love you. I’ll take you to Walgreens myself and hold your hand for those three seconds. Let’s live. Let’s not kill. Let’s be part of a world we are now going to fix and save.

Together.

If everyone is vaccinated, this virus is toast. If we don’t get everyone vaccinated, this much I’ve learned:

We are only one or two variants away from the monster Covid variant. What is the “monster variant?” It’s the one that will have gotten so strong because the early variants were not stopped from everyone being vaccinated. Soon it will grow resistant to all vaccines until it is so strong it will simply exist everywhere, completely airborne, leaping from one human to the next unchecked, tens of millions of humans wiped off the face of the Earth. All because just enough of us, the righteous few, believed in their own anger and despair and were too afraid to protect themselves and each other.