We are still here. We are still standing. The unvaccinated, the unclean, the hated. You tried to knock us down. We were told we were the problem. We were told that life would be made hell for us.

You fired some of us, attacked us, insulted us, and shunned us from family gatherings. You cheered on government wickedness and oppression, or, you silently accepted it when your voice was needed. 

You tried to break us, but we are still here, and some of you are waking up to that:

The battlefield is still warm, following Canada’s war on the unvaccinated. The mandates have let up, and both sides stumble back into something that looks like the old normal — except that there is a fresh and present injury done to the people we tried to break. And no one wants to talk about it.

Only weeks ago, it was the admitted goal of our own leaders to make life unlivable for the unvaccinated. And as a deputized collective, we force-multiplied that pain, taking the fight into our families, friendships, and workplaces. Today, we face the hard truth that none of it was justified — and, in doing that, uncover a precious lesson.

It was a quick slide from righteousness to cruelty, and however much we might blame our leaders for the push, we’re accountable for stepping into the trap despite better judgement.

We knew that waning immunity put vast numbers of the fully vaccinated on par with the shrinking minority of unvaccinated, yet we marked them for special persecution. We said they hadn’t “done the right thing” by turning their bodies over to state care — even though we knew that principled opposition to such a thing is priceless in any circumstance. And we truly let ourselves believe that going into another ineffectual lockdown would be their fault, not the fault of toxic policy.

And so it was by the wilful ignorance of science, civics, and politics that we squeezed the unvaccinated to the degree that we did.

This Canadian woman gets it. So does this Australian man, who adapted this article for Australian readers:

We took pleasure in scapegoating the unvaccinated because after months of engineered lockdowns by political leaders blinded by power, having someone to blame and to burn at the stake felt good. We believed we had logic, love, and truth on our side so it was easy to wish death upon the unvaccinated. Those of us who ridiculed and mocked the non-compliant did it because we were embarrassed by their courage and principles and didn’t think the unvaccinated would make it through unbroken and we turned the holdouts into punching bags. Lambie, Carr, Chant, Andrews, McGowan, Gunner, and the other cast of hundreds in prominent roles need to be held to account for vilifying the unvaccinated in public and fueling angry social media mobs.

The mobs, the mask Nazis, and the vaccine disciples have been embarrassed by “betting against” the unvaccinated because mandates only had the power we gave them. It was not compliance that ended domination by Big Pharma Companies, Bill Gates and his many organizations, and the World Economic Forum… It was THANKS to the people we tried to embarrass, ridicule, mock and tear down.

Read both of these pieces. If you supported these mandates in any way, apologise to those you hurt or helped hurt. We can move on from this, and many will easily. But some are still being shunned, some are still locked out of work, and some are still being crushed. 

If you recognize your wrong, then advocating for those still being crushed is a way to show penitence. Things went too far, and people cracked and made mistakes, but we should learn from what happened.

Those hurt will forgive those who seek to make restoration, but did you learn? That’s the most important thing.