“Several days ago I was in NYC walking down Madison Avenue when I passed a building where there were several armed police who looked they were part of a swat team standing with machine guns on the sidewalk in front of an office building and I along with others couldn’t help but wonder why. A woman in front of me asked what was going on and they answered, “nothing” and we all looked at each other. Three people in full police swat garb at 10:30 in the morning and nothing was going on! It made me wonder what our country has come to and I thought how some day if I refuse a vaccine for a flu epidemic that doesn’t exist, that very team could show up at my door and take me to some horrible place until I consented to take something that would only do me harm. The very thought was just horrifying and I realize that some of what haunts me lately is the chilling realization of what all of this is coming to. It is what makes me wake up in the middle of night afraid of something that I can’t seem to give voice to because it is so horrible, and yet you give it a voice and make it real through your work so that we may see and know and hopefully, care, before history repeats itself. Every time that I hear about some new killer cold virus outbreak or something, I wonder if it is a deliberate plant for something worse to come that will panic everyone and make them line up for some vaccine or other. If it weren’t for the work you do, no one would know about this information.”

– Julia Parsons