What do anti-Covid-protocol people think the "true" motive of maskers, vaxxers, distancers is?

Great Debates
1

More of a GD thread than Quarantine, so I’m putting it here, but mods can move if they want:

Throughout this pandemic, we’ve seen anti-restriction people (wish there were a simple term for them; I don’t want “Covidiots”) rail against the wearing of masks, the requirement of vaccines, or 6-feet distancing. The argument seems to be that there is some sort of wicked “real” motive underneath.

Now, with the vaccines, I’ve at least heard of some touted nefarious motives, such as the vaccine being the Mark of the Beast or containing microchips. But what evil motive could someone possibly have for requiring everyone to wear a mask?

Is it that they want to make Trumpers look like fools, having to wear a mask on their face? That would make zero sense considering that the maskers themselves are also masking. Do they want to cut off people’s oxygen? Again nonsensical, since maskers would be cutting off their own oxygen as well.

Same for physical distancing. What evil reasons could someone possibly have for wanting to make everyone stand 6 feet apart?

2

Control through fear. Keep ramping up the fear and you can keep ramping up the control. Right now, it’s masks but in the future…something undefined.

Both sides accuse the other of similar things. I happen to agree with one side more than the other, but you know.

3

In fairness to the antis (can’t believe I’m typing this), I don’t think it’s internally inconsistent to oppose needless restrictions without knowing precisely what the evil master plan behind them all is. Maybe it’s just about sowing fear and isolating people so they’re easier to control. Maybe things like masks are tests to see what people will go along with, like when a thief steals your credit card and starts by buying a candy bar to see it it’ll go through without drawing too much attention if it doesn’t. The real problem with this whole mindset is that COVID is actually real.

ETA: Ninja’d while typing!

4

They want to control people.
They want to reduce the world population.
They suppress any information contrary to their secret plans.

It’s not really clear who ‘they’ are, of course.

It’s not clear how getting people to behave in a safe manner is going to reduce the world population.

And the fact that so much of this ‘subversive’ mindset is being openly spread on Facebook, Twitter, and Fox somehow doesn’t dim the belief that ‘they’ have some sort of all-powerful information suppression system.

5

“Pedophiles wear masks” was an actual quote from some nut I saw in some TV interview.

6

What I have trouble figuring out is how they go from ‘this is a nefarious plan enacted by a conspiratorial group’, to then reasoning that refusing the vaccine makes sense.

If it IS a nefarious plan, wouldn’t it make the most sense that the nefarious plan boils down to: get those who obey to take the vaccine, then release a deadly virus that will kill the unvaccinated and leave the obedient ones alone? Seriously, if there was some villain with some sort of massive conspiratorial control of government(s) and the like, that would be a super reasonable plan for them to enact. Anyone who refuses the vaccine as ordered by the government(s) is the disobedient type that should clearly be eliminated. You don’t want to eliminate the obedient ones, of course, so clearly the vaccine isn’t harmful.

Even taking for a given that the whole thing is some nefarious plan…where does refusing the vaccine become a reasonable choice!?

7

Because the CT (one of them, at least) is that the same nefarious people are behind BOTH the disease and the vaccine. Bill Gates is the most common name–supposedly he bankrolled Fauci’s work in the Wuhan lab that created Covid. And surely you’ve heard the claims that he’s put microchips into the vaccine.

8

Most of the Anti-COVID Protocol types I’ve run into fall into a few categories -

  1. It’s my body, and I do what I want too - they think COVID is the flu, or just overblown, or not even real, and they don’t want to be told what to do. Plain contrariness.
  2. It was all political theater, and they won’t play a part - this is mostly a Trumper group, where they think similarly to the the above and all the distancing, masks, and the like were a ploy to make Trump look bad so he wouldn’t be elected. In many cases, this leads into …
  3. Deep Conspiracy - COVID is the Chinese/Socialist/Deep State/Atheist/Etc tool that was designed to weaken good (often see God Fearing) Americans so that the economy would collapse/Socialists would take over/Good Christians couldn’t go to Church. This one is most common for the evangelistic groups I hear. The social distancing and limited indoor seating is a direct attack on churches, masks prevent prayer, and/or let the ‘evil-doers’ hide their faces.
  4. Deep CT/Qanon Conspiracy - the same as the above largely, but taken to tinfoil hat extremes. It’s Aliens/Reptillians/5G zombies, at which point any excuse flies - the vaccines give you nanobots, masks make it harder to identify the reptillians along with distance, you know.
9

For clearness on my prior post, the people looking back at the people who are wearing masks and distancing is something along the line of

  1. Bunch of conformist pansies.
  2. You’re all in in to make Trump look bad, cheaters.
  3. You’re all part of the (whichever) group, but I won’t be fooled or supressed!
  4. Poor 5G zombie, I can tell the mask to to cover up the expression . . . no wait, those eyes! It’s a reptillian!

Although, in a larger sense, it’s probably just a degree of Us vs Them. The ubiquitous ‘They’, the enemy of all they hold dear wear masks and distance. I have to prove I’m not one of Them, and thus won’t distance / mask / vaxx / etc.

Now, for someone I know, a person who is currently refusing to distance and mask, but for the opposite reasons. He’s a former socially liberal Republican of the pre-Trump era, but a deep believer in science and facts. He has absolutely lost it with Covidiots, especially since he relocated to Texas years back for his job and has to deal with them frequently.

His reason for not masking and distancing? To F— them (the COVID deniers). He’s vaccinated, and they refuse to bother to take the most basic steps. He figures his chance of getting substantially ill is minimal, and he does not care if he spreads it to the unvaxxed other than children. He’d rather they get it and end up in the hospital. Which I think is callous, and risky, but I can see why he feels that way.

10

In general? Power is dangerous, and it’s difficult to put back into pandora’s box.

Many of the anti-Covid measures are kneejerk and not called for when analyzing the data closely. They certainly sound good and make a lot of people feel good about it, but they aren’t necessary and aren’t likely to dramatically change the progress of this disease. What they are likely to do, though, is get used 5, 10, 15 years down the line to justify other abuses of power.

Charles Hoskinsin said it best in his video he released today: Covid is never going away. All of the science suggests it will become endemic to the human population, same as the flu. Eventually, it will mutate and defeat the current vaccines same as the flu virus mutates and spreads again and again. If these measures are to last as long as Covid is with us, then we will never end these protocols.

So we have excessive reactions unlikely to produce significant results, permanent expansions of power, and dangerous precedents to allow even further abuses of power.

Masks mandates were perhaps the only legitimate response. Dress codes already exist in law (try to prance down Broadway naked), and there’s a lot of data that suggests that masks dramatically reduced the spread of Covid.

The claims floated around regarding oxygen and the obvious permeability of a mask are, of course, obnoxiously stupid. I bet more of that is trolling and 4-chan kids than it is real concern, though the occassional cook might believe it.

Well for one, precedent. You realize that in Australia, citizens can be legally penalized for talking to their neighbors now. It didn’t start that way, though. You start with “others are dangerous! Stay away!” and once you get people satisfied with that precedent, you move on to “nope, even distancing isn’t working - don’t associate at all!” Keeping people isolated and afraid makes them very, very easy to control in any number of ways. It also spits in the face of the right to assembly, which may not be codified in non-US constitutions, but is a basic human right regardless.

Now, for clarity, I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I was the first one to volunteer, enthusiastically, when my company started issuing them on site. I believe people should get vaccinated. But, bodily autonomy is an important right not to trample on. Also, giving the government the right to confine you to your home without trail for “public health” reasons is foolish. “Public health” can mean anything a particularly determined politician wants.

At least in the US, the government’s power to limit your ability to interact in society is strictly limited (technically, it has no power at all to do so, except where explicitly outlined). Abrogating that basic concept by allowing the government to suddenly dictate where people can go, and what medical procedures they must have, is just a poorly thought out power grab that will backfire against the people just as soon as a bad actor in government decides it’s time.

…unless you think the Patriot act and the NSA has done us all a good service?

11

Yeah, and in far off lands, there be monsters.

There are Australians on this board, you know. Like me. Don’t talk shit. It’s possible that someone somewhere in Australia has got pinged for being in close personal contact with a neighbour when that was against social distancing rules. But there is no ban on talking to neighbours.

12

OMG it’s a slippery slooope!

If almost everyone who can be vaccinated is, COVID is probably going to go away largely if not entirely, at least in first world countries. Anti-vaxxers are going to change their mind when their monkey-sphere is affected, or die off (boo hoo).

And yes quite likely there will be new resistant strains, but there will be new vaccines, and as the anti-vaxxers come around or die, the remainder will get used to the idea they are going to need a new shot every six or 12 months and it will be controlled. The masks etc will come off.

There’s also no real motivation for the nefarious strategy you outline. The idea that all democratic governments around the world have suddenly gone on a wild power trip is ludicrous. Masks, social distancing etc are extremely unpopular. They aren’t going to stay once either COVID is defeated or becomes a stable problem.

At this point in the situation - where getting everyone vaccinated is still a work in progress, and the medical profession is still playing catchup, it’s ridiculous to be concerned that the current measures are in danger of becoming permanent. The efforts and success of modern medicine in coming up with a vaccine so quickly are astonishing - but we aren’t even close to “topping out” in our ability to fight this thing. People are just impatient.

Bear in mind that viral pandemics are not new - similar masking and distancing occurred at the time of the Spanish flu - and did not become permanent. Asians who have experienced more recent pandemics have got through them - and the measures taken did not become permanent.

Your take on this is highly limited in historical scope, parochial and shrill.

13

The End of Days is a good thing! Apocalypse → Second Coming/Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

14

I think it’s best to split the question of the OP into two parts:

  1. Why most people who promote vaccination and masks etc do so
  2. Where the idea to wear masks, get vaccinated etc came from originally

For (1) most of the anti-vax crowd will say that people are simply being sheep. That we’re going along with this stuff because we believe whatever CNN says and don’t engage in critical thinking (yes, the irony of this is strong). I see at least a dozen messages like this on social media every day.

For (2) there are various theories, and Esprise_Me is right to say that many may not even have an idea for this. Generally the anti-vaxxers that have thought about this enough to have a theory for (2), are the hardcore crowd, who believe in microchips in the jab, that people like Fauci actually wanted people to die so maybe it’s an experiment etc etc.

15

So what? Do you not… think at all about how this disease started? It’s likely a single zoonosis event in Asia spread like wildfire throughout the world population within months. Vaccinating everyone in the first world does nothing to reduce the vast and expansive reservoir populations in third world countries, or even developing nations that haven’t embraced vaccination. Where do you think the Delta Variant even came from?

And keep that time scale in mind, because we were lucky that much of the vaccination work was done in response to the original SARS - the proteins needed for all of the current vaccines to work are thankfully similar enough that research into the original SARS could be rapidly used for creating a vaccine in short order. All of that goes out the window if there is a strain that develops even once that changes those proteins sufficiently - then the world is effectively completely unvaccinated again, our previous research amounts to squat, and once again the pandemic spreads through the human population like wildfire.

Respiratory diseases are nasty like that.

That’s wishful thinking. Again, we were lucky to be able to rapidly develop a vaccine. Who’d have thought the original SARS outbreak would be such a boon? The idea that we’ll always just magically be able to develop a response in a few months is not at all guaranteed or even likely. Immunology and vaccines are a complex science, and it usually takes a lot of time and research to develop an effective vaccine. If we’re lucky again, the vaccine resistance wont arise from some radical change in the proteins we can make vaccines to target. If we’re not lucky… square one. And like I said, it only takes a few months to infect the planet.

Do you… read current events… like at all?? Patriot Act ring a bell? I’m not even right wing and I can see that classically liberal institutions and values are under constant siege. Anything that can be construed as potentially terrorism (like taking a photo of “essential infastructure” - ie, using your phone to photograph your nearest train station) can land you in prison with indefinite detention and without trial (expedient trial? Nope!) Canada has for the first time in the history of the Common Law instituted mandatory speech - I might not have a problem complying out of decency, but I do understand the legal concept of precedent (free speech? Nope!). The UK has gone full surveillance state - in some locations they have more cameras, recordings and data collected than the freakin’ STASI had the technical capacity to amass (privacy? nope!). We’re used to it and think nothing of it now, but historically speaking that was squarely reserved for totalitarian states. It’s a slow march not a sprint.

Yes, and nothing about our political atmosphere or ideological foundation has changed in 100 years. Nor has the technology to enforce abuses of power dramatically expanded, nor has the federal government itself gone from essentially a non-issue to the overwhelmingly dominant force in all aspects of political life… oh… wait… your exact example is actually right in the middle of the largest expansion of government in US history… an expansion that, to this day, has never stopped…

That’s funny, because I was going to point out that this kneejerk fear over a pandemic is hilarious when, considering history, we are floating on an paradisiacal island of rainbows and unicorns. Infectious disease has almost always been a leading cause of death in human history, at least until modern medicines like penicillin, and society didn’t freak out about every respiratory disease ever to exist… but here we are.

You’re projecting hard here, because I’m saying we should approach this with a keen eye on consequences and outcomes rather than fly into a blind panic whereas you seem to think this disease is the end of the world. If the black plague didn’t end the world, COVID certainly wont either.

16

Most of what you say is pretty dubious but I’d sum up by saying this - you’re going with the theory that unlike every other virus in history, this one will remain as a substantial killer from now on, for the foreseeable future, despite medical science going ahead in leaps and bounds. That seems implausible at the least.

I share your concerns about insidious government over-reach - but the problems you raise have got through precisely because they fly under the radar because they do not affect the average person much. Which is why there has been no strong backlash. They are totally different to broad ranging and hated measures that affect everyone everyday. I don’t think that in a year or two people will have become so inured to lockdowns and masks they will fail to complain at the ballot box if they can see that they aren’t still a good idea.

The rest of your post is strawman nonsense.

17

Cannot answer for him, but IMO the problem is not that it will remain a substantial killer forever, but for a significant period of time. Years or even decades.

18

Quite possibly. I’ve heard analyses suggesting three years. I don’t think that is long enough for people to become satisfied with lockdowns or masks and not want their old freedoms back.

19

Well, personally, I plan on robbing every right winger I can find, and being mandated to wear a mask gives me the excuse I need to disguise myself.

20

There are a few anti-maskers, anti vaxxers at my work and for the one I used to talk to it was about control. First masks, then . . . . then the end of all person freedoms as we know them. But he couldn’t articulate how the progression went.

The anti vaxxers are avoiding those of us that are vaccinated because apparently we can shed something terrible.