Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. This is Abby Martin.

And Mike Prysner.

So today we felt like kind of diving into the whole COVID discussion two years into this.

For a reason, though, Mike, it all kind of came to a head when our whole household got sick from COVID.

And I had a pretty bad case of it, actually.

I had severe cramping all throughout my body, and it was really, really,

really intense. Mike and I are both vaccinated. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't know if that helped

to stave off the worst effects from continuing for several days longer. But I posted about it on

Twitter, which I immediately regretted, just trying to garner information from my audience about who had had similar side effects from COVID.

And a lot of the responses were very helpful.

Unfortunately, quite a few responses were basically declaring that I had a vaccine injury because I guess stating openly that, you know, preempting

my COVID symptoms by saying I'm vaccinated was basically my political statement. It was kind of

disturbing, actually, to see the reaction to me declaring that I was vaccinated and had these horrible

COVID symptoms was basically you have a vaccine injury. You have a vaccine injury.

And it was just kind of strange. Like the disconnect was kind of strange because I was like, look,

I got vaccinated like six months ago. Wouldn't you just immediately assume that the effects that

I'm experiencing now are a direct result of getting COVID three days prior to having these symptoms.

So I guess that's what made me want to like explore this topic further and really coming from a place of understanding and empathy.

I come from a place of like great empathy and understanding for just conspiracy thinking.

I kind of started off more into conspiracies and not. So I totally understand like the framework of looking at COVID in terms of like how is the government seizing this crisis, exploiting it, profiting off it. I totally get that. There's a lot of media

disinformation with the mainstream media, and there's a inherent distrust of government institutions

as well as there should be. But I think that, you know, giving a lot of space and understanding

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