Are you going to take the vaccine?

[Asolsutsesvyl]

Guess I'm confounded by how people can equate successfully navigating a "spiritual test" to [...] the path of least resistance, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Sometimes interpreting context is more important than interpreting facts.

The opposite, "more difficult", does not always mean "more good". Sometimes people are simply given a choice of either going out of their way to go on a journey with no benefit and possibly damaging consequences, or not doing so. I think it can be compared to the scams that arrive in many email inboxes; for a great many, the path of least resistance and passing the test is to ignore and delete them, while a smaller portion choose to follow the instructions instead and plunge in.

Most people who share memes and links about things supposedly found in the vaccines, or other stories about dangers, are not the originators of the claims, don't plaster them all over the web, and are basically decent in their intent. However, the creators and top spreaders of most of it basically seem to be full-blown pathological liars. They not only simply don't care if one of their messages is false, and the next moment cook up another thing, and another thing, ignoring all criticism of flaws found, but glibly brush aside all concerns about possible harm resulting from misleading people with things they just made up out of thin air, and work to spread as much FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) in as short a time as possible. Volume and reach is key. It's really very similar to commercial spam, in a way, and the absurdity and tragedy is that people polarize in opposition to one another over that kind of stuff.

I don't think the top originators of these memes and stories are fear-driven, they are instead driven by what generally drives the most brazen and unscrupulous influencers. The fear-driven segment is the most loyal audience, fear bringing greater receptivity to the messages and greater eagerness to pass them on.

The problem with the typical believer who shares a few messages is basically the same as with someone who forwards spam they receive and so spread it a bit further. The main harm people do is when they reach others and make them the equivalent of the impoverished suckers as a result. But most who reach a person or two and win them over to the spammy cause do far less harm than the most productive brains up the chain of influence.

I also have in mind patterns in messages as the key to spotting the overall problem with the type of message and source (just as with spam), but I'll leave that to any further discussion if of interest.