As I write this, I realise that my existence is impossible for a section of the world; I have taken all four shots of the vaccine, I am alive and healthy, and so far, no massive blood clots have been found anywhere inside me.
When Covid started, the Anti-Vax community found excuses to avoid taking any vaccine: they said that it was experimental, that it was part of the Chinese bio-weapon plan, that it would make you magnetic, that it would be used to track your whereabouts, and so on. Then everything became part of a mega conspiracy, as “evidently” showed in the antivaxx propaganda films Plandemic 1 and 2, which alleged that the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, created Covid and developed a vaccine in order to make money, or possibly to kill everybody and cleanse humanity as part of an Illuminati plot.
I don’t want to delve into all the vaccine conspiracies here – other folks have already done that. Snopes, for example, has a pretty good catalogue of debunking fake vaccine news. Instead, I want to deal with the aftermath of the vaccines, once they were out; people got their vaccine, pandemic restrictions were reducing, and the folks who were able to began moving on with their lives. This is perhaps not the appropriate course of action in a pandemic – just because you are immunised, it doesn’t mean that the whole crisis is immediately over – but it is what happened.
While the vaccinated went back to their lives, what of the antivaxxers? They needed a new way to distinguish themselves from the rest of society – something more positive than the inherently-negative term ‘antivax’. Thus, they embraced the term “Pureblood”.
Among antivax circles and conspiracy groups, reports circulated claiming that the ‘pure’ ones who refused the vaccine were all remaining healthy, while those who took the vaccine died. What proof did they have that vaccinated people were dying in great number? Viral videos, which showed people collapsing, or dying suddenly. How, asked the ‘Purebloods’, could such healthy young folk die like that? It must be because of vaccines.
Except, the videos, of course, don’t actually show what is claimed. The videos don’t explain whether the subject died because of the vaccine, or because of some other condition they had – or whether they even died at all. Many of the case studies of so-called “Vaccine Victims” include people who went on to make a full recovery, or who (as in the case of nurse Tiffany Dover, from one popular viral video) were never seriously ill in the first place.
Plus, the reality is that, sadly, death is a certainty in life: even if the chances of someone dying as a result of an intervention are extremely low, once you multiple that by eight billion humans, it’s always going to be possible to cherry pick the rare examples to build your antivax, Pureblood conspiracy. Without the context to tell us what actually happened to the people who are the subject of all the claims and videos, it’s impossible for to know whether they really were injured by the vaccine. And, with over 13 billion doses of the vaccine given so far, I doubt that it really is the cause of widespread injuries and deaths.
Still, the myth of Pureblood is fascinating, for a combination of extraordinary factors: the notion that the human body is a temple, and that a vaccine will not only enter but will pierce and penetrate the body. How very Freudian. Plus, according to various claims made by the Purebloods, as it enters and corrupts, it changes your DNA, or makes you become a giant magnet, or (as some extreme claims would have it) even makes you a transmitter for 4G or 5G… but, crucially, they say, it doesn’t actually stop Covid. So the only sensible solution is simply not to take it – and in doing so become, according to them, possessor of the most prized commodity on the planet.
According to some who believe in the Pureblood myth, unvaccinated blood will become incredibly valuable, because it would be full of oxygen and haemoglobin, while the vaccinated would be sick, clumpy, and full of clots.
The sad thing is, believing this conspiracy theory can have serious consequences, as in the case of a six month old baby in New Zealand whose parents initially refused to consent to life-saving heart surgery, unless the doctors could guarantee that any blood transfusions came from unvaccinated donors. Thankfully, eventually, the surgery went ahead, after intervention from the courts.
What happens when the predicted tsunami of deaths among vaccinated people fails to materialise? Believers in the Pureblood notion will simply double-down – in fact, we have already seen the narrative begin to switch, with claims that the ‘deep state and big pharma’ are hiding all news of the billions who have dead.
And how to explain that the excess deaths were more pronounced among unvaccinated people? The narrative became that vaccinated people were shedding proteins that made unvaccinated people sick. This story could then be used to explain why people were still dying of Covid, as well as reinforcing the persecution complex among antivaxxers.
What can we take from this pureblood narrative? That the persecution complex of the antivax community has only deepened, and they are now able to see themselves as special for refusing to accept a vaccine, yet they believe they are dying because of the careless decisions of others – pure projection. At the same time, we see the familiar old narratives of the body being corrupted by an outsider, a truly ancient fear.
