Coronavirus vaccine denial & the wellness industry
| Published date | 07 October 2021 |
| Author | BRIAN BLUM |
| Publication title | Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel) |
Hay's 1984 book You Can Heal Your Life is a crock – unsubstantiated pseudoscience at its worst, dangerous in its implications and insidious victim blaming.
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Hay proposes that our thoughts create our physical reality and, while clearly there is a connection between mind and body, Hay goes too far.
The author has created an exhaustive (and exhausting) list of diseases correlated with what mental attitudes supposedly cause them:
Heart attack: Squeezing all the joy out of the heart in favor of money or position.
Rheumatoid arthritis: Feeling victimized, lack of love, chronic bitterness, resentment and a deep criticism of authority.
Bladder problems: Anxiety, fear of letting go and – wait for it – being "pissed off."
Cancer: A deep secret or grief eating away at the self, longstanding resentments, carrying hatreds.
AS SOMEONE suffering from cancer, I find Hay's attempts to shift the cause for my illness to my alleged negative thoughts and behaviors outrageous, but it was mainly an annoyance when wellness-oriented individuals would exhort me to have a more positive attitude in order to "cure" my cancer.
Now the wellness movement Hay begat has come back to bite us and the result is devastating and deadly.
Hay's books have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, but you don't hear so much about the author herself these days (she died in 2017). Still, "trace elements of her philosophy survive when it comes to the wellness industry and COVID," writes Brigid Delaney in The Guardian.
"The randomness of illness – and the ultimate certainty of death – is far too frightening for some to contemplate," Delaney explains. "So, they rely on a fiction that makes them feel safe, superior and unconsciously immortal. Hay's fiction is this: Stop acting like a child and you'll cure your kidney problems. Her wellness counterparts today say, 'Eat organic food, do yoga, don't consume the mainstream media, and you won't get sick from COVID.'"
Put another way: If we can control our bodies and our thoughts, then our natural immune system should be the best defense against COVID-19, not some newfangled vaccine. If your immune system is working properly, that's all you need.
"When this corner of the wellness industry refuses to be vaccinated," continues Delaney, "it is not primarily out of fear of the vaccine's side effects or...
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