Are you willing to get the Covid vaccine when offered?
I tell ya I hear this a lot. I do feel sorry for her. I won't claim to know where it started, or who started it, but this covid thing being politicized is terrible. Left blames right, right blames left. People are sick and are dying. Minds are closed. I hate where we are as a country right now. She more than likely felt like she had to speak out against it because she needs the support of the right. If covid had not been politicized it wouldn't be a talking point and I bet more people would be vaccinated right now. I lost a friend over me getting a vaccine. He has said it to mutual friends that he knows people think he is going crazy by the constant badgering he does, but he can't stop himself. I just find it sad.
Fair and good comments.
While I think politics plays into a lot of it, there have long been antivaxxers around, Covid just gave them a huge opportunity to get their message mainstream, and they weaponized politics to suit their needs.
That said, I think you have people like the lady in this example, who I think played politics and bought into the antivax myths out there.
I think the reason I have little sympathy for her in particular is she should know better. She has access to the same data that most of us do and she deliberately ignored the data. If she didn't have that access, then I could maybe understand. But I'm skeptical.
The thing is, we're at a point where it's well-known that getting vaccinated will protect most from the worst effects of Covid and does reduce the overall rate of spread.
It just drive me nuts that people in positions of power and influence continue to spew nonsense about the vaccines and use that influence to prevent people from making educated decisions on their health.
This never should have been politicized to begin with, but I firmly believe the antivax movement, which was already gaining traction by infiltrating health and wellness culture and telling people that vaccines are unnatural and detrimental to health and they really started to make inroads in some political circles, which over time started to get traction in the mainstream media. Covid just accelerated all of that.
I used to think antivaxxers were a very small subgroup of people, but it turned out they're a much larger group than I previously realized. Really all political parties should have made an effort to debunk the myths out there, but that effort was weak at best.