If you need someone to push that over the line for you, keep me in mind. I’ll be around.
How could ‘anti-vax’ relative to the Covid vaccine be anything other than a political statement? As has been repeatedly pointed out, there are no logical, medically sound reasons NOT to be vaccinated, except for a select few. I’m not talking about activists, I’m talking about the everyday anti-vaxxers I know, and I know a lot of them. It’s patronizing to assume they are just ignorant (don’t known any better) or too dumb to understand (irrational risk calculation). No one sold them any misinformation they weren’t actively seeking and happy to buy. Their ignorance is wilful refusal to hear/see information that doesn’t support their beliefs. I’m not sure what the irrational risk calculation would be, maybe the belief that a 300 pound diabetic with high blood pressure needn’t worry about getting Covid? Personal responsibility is a major tenet of the Trump cult (“pull yourself up by your bootstraps”), and anti-vaxxers now get to live with the consequences of their personal choices.
If they don’t know any better, they have tried really hard not to know any better. This beyond willful ignorance. This barricaded and heavily armed ignorance.
Actually, it’s more of a slogan.
SImple distrust of the government and suspicion of what they see as “untested (or not fully tests) science.” It’s not only Trumpers. Hardly. I know anti-COVID vaxxers who are big Bernie bros. I know ones that are mainstream Democrats who live in my immigtrant neighborhood, which was one of the hardest hit in Chicago and whose community was very much disturbed, who are afraid of it and untrusting of it. Anti-vaxxers come in all flavors, and I totally can empathize with their worldview. I don’t agree with it, but I can understand the suspicions and the fear.
Again, would be very convenient and tidy if this were true, but I don’t know why you think it is, other than the convenience. I’m sure you don’t argue in favor of holding all low-information, low-intelligence groups in the same kind of contempt. If you feel schadenfreude about people dying because they don’t recognize the symptoms of a stroke or something, then OK, that’s a new one, but at least that would be consistent, and I take back that assumption. Some people just actually don’t know things, man… I don’t know why that’s so hard for everyone to acknowledge.
I mean, you’ve certainly heard about the misinformation warfare that’s been going on. You know that there are sophisticated assaults going on all the time specifically to convince people of these not true things. These are the victims of those campaigns. If there aren’t people being actually exploited by those campaigns, why do those campaigns exist, and why are they bad? It doesn’t make any sense to hold the victims accountable for knowing that the vaccine would save their lives, and not getting the vaccine anyway. Obviously if they believed the vaccine was good for them individually, they would get it, as a lot of the actual disinformation merchants have done. They don’t get it, because they don’t know that, and then they die. They’ve been tricked into dying.
If you experience satisfaction from that outcome, all you’ve done is added steps to the process of wanting people who aren’t smart to suffer.
I believe it’s referred to as “thinning the herd.”
I have friends that are Bernie Bros that are all Vaxxed and one Biden Bro who isn’t.
I mean, you can be crazy and a Bernie bro, but I don’t think a lot of his ideas are crazy. shrugs
There are some very intelligent Bernie bros out there.
I sure as hell can’t. Their world view is asinine, anti-science, illogical, and most importantly, harmful to others.
Only if they die before reproducing, sharing their anti-vax views, or infecting other people. Sadly, none of those is generally the case.
I disagree with calling these anti-vaxxers “not smart”. Most of them are not fools. They have made a choice to believe what they want to believe, and to consume media that tells them obvious lies. They’re not being fooled - they are choosing to justify their decisions to harm others by using the fig leaf of “freedoms” or “I don’t trust the government” or whatever the antivax flavor of the month is.
You can’t just handwave all of them away as poor ignorant stupid victims of misinformation. They gobble it up enthusiastically, and wave it about like a flag of pride.
Change that to “made a NOT SO SMART choice…” and I’ll agree with you. 
I never said there weren’t. Perhaps my point was made badly. What I’m saying is that anti-vaxxers run the political gamut (yes, they tend to collect on one side of the spectrum), and not having been vaxxed is not necessarily a politcal statement.
Okay. I figured that’s what you were saying. Sorry if I came off defensive.
That’s a caricature, and requires you to believe they aren’t human beings, motivated by the things human beings are motivated by.
If you prefer to believe they all are just deciding to die even though they know the science that says they’re going to die is accurate, or that I guess they’re choosing to somehow brainwash themselves into believing they won’t die even though they know they will (and so they both know and don’t know, I guess), even though no human being’s mind operates like that, I’m obviously not going to stop you.
I guess I have a better imagination than you. I can put myself into that worldview. Most people, myself included, are screwballs that do asinine, irrational, and illogical crap all the time. I don’t excuse it; I do understand it, though, or at least have a glimpse of understanding.
And you calling them all stupid is not a caricature?
Get a grip.
OK man
I was listening to NPR on my drive home from work (that’s a thing I do now, I love hearing world news if nothing else). They had on someone who works in an outreach group in South Los Angeles trying to get more people to be vaccinated through programs like having Black barber shops offer free haircuts to people who get vaccinated. He said some of the problems in that area revolve around people who just can’t make the time; they have 4 kids and work 3 jobs and the time it takes to get the shot is too hard. He also pointed out that there is a long-term animosity between that community and the health industry, and that there is a deep multi-generational mistrust that it is hard to get past. So there are definitely more factors at play than people not getting a shot because of right wing talk show hosts and social media trolls spreading misinformation.
Indeed – a Black acquaintance of mine, who very much believes in COVID and who very much got COVID last year during the first wave and described it as the sickest he ever remembers being in his life steadfastly refuses to get vaccinated. He does not trust the government, the science, or the vaccine. His refusal was not hesitancy – it was a direct and confident “hell no.” He otherwise seems to be a very intelligent, well-read, kind, creative, and spiritual individual. And who the fuck am I to challenge that? There was Tuskegee; we’ve seen how the poorer communities have been treated by the government and health industry. Who am I to question his suspicion and distrust? I, too, in that position can imagine myself thinking “ain’t no way I’m taking chances with putting foreign shit into my body. I’ve gotten COVID, I’d rather take my chances in getting it a second time than put who knows what into me.”
I mean, seriously, do people have such a difficult time empathizing with positions such as these?