Yujiro Taniyama, Japan Broadcasting.net 【JB】vaccinated correspondent
Dogs’ beatific smiles are contagious.
I personally don’t own woofs, but when the canine population of Japan outnumbers the population of Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka combined, it’s almost impossible in Nippon not to see ‘a dog a day’.
Nevertheless, it goes without saying that all German shepherds, Beagles and Pugs around the world go unvaccinated, despite the contagious virus. Carnivorous animals, like tigers and lions in zoos and safari parks aren’t offered AstraZeneca doses either. But I am yet to hear complaints and news that the ‘creatures’ have fallen a victim to the ongoing epidemic.
Meanwhile, I’ve been inoculated twice. Fortunately.
An insidious meat-eating animal myself, it had then suddenly occurred to me this morning, the question of why we humans are given the prerogative to get vaccinated while the dogs and pigs aren’t.
“Homo sapiens are superior to chimps and apes you dammit! That’s why!”, a common man in Shibuya or Alabama may probably argue. Are four legged animals immune to this deadly, torturous virus? I don’t know. But I do know that the self-important humans are indeed self-serving; as the ‘wealthy’ countries are now contemplating ‘third vaccination’ for their corpulent nationals – while the other ‘indigent’ states are yet to even begin with their first shot (Russian ‘Sputnik’ and Peking ‘Sinovac’ are scientifically unsubstantiated in Western standards, so unaccounted for. The Thai medical workers for example, that had the latter purportedly got infected in large numbers). That said, the unfortunate now face the propensity to be treated as equal as any other street dog in Taiwan or a panda in Yunnan.
This blatant inequality and rigged vaccination-opportunity today is indisputable. If the culprit is ostensibly not the cupidity of affordable nations, an insolvable dilemma it is in reality, when our human-oriented planet is overpopulated with over mind-boggling 7 billion people. But then, the animalian author ponders, “How many dogs and animals are there, worldwide?”. I haven’t the slightest idea. But one thing that is for certain, the cows in American continent, sheep in Euro-Asian continent as well chickens in African continent are naturally deprived of their ‘privilege’ to receive Moderna or whatever. Yes, just because they are ‘low class’ animals.
Are we then, let me ask the prudent reader, actually superior to them as mortal beings, just as most ordinary masses latently believe? But what makes us so special? So omnipotent? So deserving? An ingenious thinker turned Nobel laureate Bertrand Russel once wrote in his eminent essay – ‘The Existence and Nature of God’; “When I think that in my own country we devote more than a quarter of everybody’s income to the business of killing other people, when I think that in every country the main object seems to be mass murder, I cannot feel that man is really very fine. I like the animals better”. The mighty sage of Scotch Presbyterian bloodline then went on to say, “I think if evolution would have stopped with sheep and deer and cows, it would have done better”.
A formidable claim it is, indeed.
As you and I, both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated unthinkingly wolf down millions of fried chickens and beef steaks everyday, the subnormal Japanese thinker has impulsively come to realize the vanity and cunningness of those super-minority that’s been vaccinated; either once, twice of thrice. Affectation of love, christian philanthropy and altruism has been unmasked in the recent months at every corner of the planet, as not only the rich nations but also the rich individuals today in Southeast Asia that mistrust their own government fly to Seattle for ‘vaccine tourism’.
No unfailing, compelling answer is applicable to this ruthless pestilence. Nevertheless, as cold blooded IS terrorists in suicide vests unilaterally blow up innocent women in Kabul, as American Republic’s unmanned radio-controlled warplane ‘coincidentally’ murders infants in Afghanistan-quagmire, as the bald former KGB Rasputin of the 21st century intimidates the eastern border of Ukraine and as Peking enjoy flexing its military muscles in Taiwan strait – I cannot help but conclude that this world of Un-united Nations (UN) and power politics is indeed sickeningly fallacious. Death is fearful yet, of course, but that the earth may become a nicer, decent place if we inoculate ducks and animals first instead of the ‘civilized’ two legged scoundrels.
Thank you food, and thank you once again, dear unvaccinated domestic animals.