At this point, there are more than enough vaccines out there and every single person should absolutely get one of the Covid vaccines on offer. I was lucky to get Pfizer’d and while I felt like ten kinds of hell after my second dose, I do not regret it one bit. I am also looking forward to getting any and all necessary booster shots, hopefully in conjunction with the autumn flu shot. Currently, nearly 160 million Americans are fully vaccinated, with millions more in the process of being vaccinated (as in, they’ve had at least one shot). Different states have different vaccination rates and I’m happy that Virginia is above the 50% threshold. The only people being hospitalized with Covid at this point are the people who are unvaccinated. And so many of the unvaccinated people are refusing vaccines because right-wing media in this country has decided to misinform the public about vaccines. Speaking of, at the annual CPAC conference a few days ago, people cheered when a speaker said America had not hit the Biden administration’s vaccination targets:
CPAC crowd applauds a comment about the U.S. failing to reach a 90% vaccination rate pic.twitter.com/iGX6FD4SaU
— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) July 10, 2021
Who thinks this is a good look? Who thinks “people are not being vaccinated” is a statement worth cheering? Dr. Fauci went on the Sunday shows and he called this video “horrifying.”
The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Sunday he was horrified to see attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference cheering that the U.S. hadn’t reached its vaccination goals.
“It’s horrifying. I mean, they are cheering about someone saying that it’s a good thing for people not to try and save their lives,” Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“I mean, if you just unpack that for a second, Jake, it’s almost frightening to say, ‘Hey, guess what, we don’t want you to do something to save your life. Yay!’ Everybody starts screaming and clapping. I just don’t get that,” he said. “And I don’t think that anybody who’s thinking clearly can get that.”
Fauci was responding to a clip of author Alex Berenson, who spoke at CPAC in Dallas on Saturday. “The government was hoping that they could sort of sucker 90% of the population into getting vaccinated,” said Berenson, who routinely spreads misinformation about COVID-19 and was dubbed “The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man” by The Atlantic. “And it isn’t happening,” he added, prompting cheers from the crowd.
Emerging strains of COVID-19 are causing the number of new cases to begin to inch upward again in some parts of the country. States with low vaccination rates have been reporting more deaths from the virus. Almost all the COVID-19 deaths last month were among unvaccinated people. Polling has shown increasingly high levels of vaccine hesitancy among Republicans. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week showed 93% of Democrats say they’d either received a vaccine or planned to, while just 49% of Republicans said the same.
Amid declining vaccination rates, the Biden administration has called for a door-to-door campaign to spread information about the safety and life-saving efficacy of vaccines.
Fauci urged viewers to set aside ideological differences and any thinking that the “government is knocking your door trying to force you to vaccinate. That is not the case at all. We’re getting trusted messengers to try and get people to understand and appreciate why it’s important for their own safety, for that of their families and for the community in general. There’s no reason not to get vaccinated.”
What Fauci didn’t say – but I will – is that a door-to-door vaccine-education program would be completely unnecessary if right-wing media and Republican politicians would all come to an agreement that vaccines are great and everyone should get them. It’s really that f–king simple. This ignorant dumbf–kery is causing the Republican base of ignorant dumbf–ks to decrease because they’re dying of Covid. You would think that all of these conservatives would game it out and end up at that conclusion too: “wait, we’re killing our base through lies about vaccines.”
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
This is something I’ve been stunned by for like a year now. Ginning up your voting base to reject all medical advice, when they more than likely fall into some of the big risk categories…. It’s insane and it seems insane they can’t see the possible back firing.
I’d be happy to let them Darwin themselves (more than happy) if it weren’t for the immunocompromised, children who cannot get vaccinated yet, children who have no choice because their parents are morons, and the possibility of ever more dangerous variants forming in these human petri dishes.
My teenaged son has a friend whose step-dad is a conspiracy theory wingnut. So her mom is refusing to allow her to be vaccinated. Fortunately, her dad is pro-vaccine, but will have to take her mom to court to get her vaccinated. Her friends were helping her look up states where parental permission is not required for minors to be vaccinated. (Oregon and Louisiana, in case anyone needs to know.)
My daughter has a friend whose dad is also into the conspiracy theories. In our province (Sask), you can give informed consent and get vaccinated if you’re 13 or older, so as soon as my daughter’s friend was advised that she could make the decision for herself and get vaccinated without her dad’s permission, her mom took her into the vaccine clinic and she got her dose.
Killing yourself to spite the libs. It’s horrifying to watch.
When everything your enemy is for you are against backfires spectacularly.
IMO the only horrifying part is that they’re going to take innocents with them.
as far as them killing themselves off?…we’re better off for it.
Yes, the worst part is that they will infect the truly innocent and vulnerable people in their communities. If only their selfishness only harmed themselves.
That being said…it is disturbing to see people run off the cliffs like lemmings. I truly meant it when I said it is horrifying to watch. I don’t enjoy watching people fatally commit to a cult of personality.
in general, I’d agree with you, but these idiots are doing it in order to “own the libs”…and if THAT’S your motivating factor, you deserve whatever you get.
What in the fuckity fuck are these people smoking? They need to be whacked upside the head with Darwinism. Good way to kill off your base.
I think the Venn diagram of people who don’t believe in Darwinism and the ones who cheered this news is probably a circle.
We’re assuming that critical thinking is a thing that they are capable of, and unfortunately with a lot of these folks it…really isn’t.
Everyone knows Darwin was a quack. God created the earth in seven days. They KNOW God will inoculate them through prayer. It was probably God who gave them the heads up about the microchips that have been planted in the vaccines by Bill Gates. /s 🙄
“Good way to kill off your base.”
sssshhhhhhh. let them do it.
what is the right’s endgame on this tho? is this Putin (or others) at war w us and spreading disinformation? is it just a cult requiring fealty beyond all reason? crazy…
I don’t understand the endgame. They are literally killing off their base. How does that benefit them in the end?
It doesn’t benefit them but it does us. Just pray for all of their poor children that they aren’t vaccinating or sending to school with masks.
Because their current fervor allows the GOP to cement laws that allow minority rule. Their base won’t matter when democracy is no longer a thing. They don’t need that many votes after they gerrymander and disenfranchise, so they don’t care how many die. Their power will stay in place.
Probably profit through instability. It’s a two-party system and the democrats are in power so the more chaos they create the better – the pendulum will swing back to them eventually and every time it does they’ll rig the system to make it harder to oust them. It doesn’t matter if their base takes a hit if they’re not playing fair.
I cannot believe this is the 21st freaking century.
You and me both Merricat, you and me both. What’s next, will polio make a comeback along with smallpox?
I listened to a chunk of that interview
It was so annoying that after Dr Fauci laid out all the good reasons people should choose to get vaccinated, and that there’s no excuse in the US for not getting vaccinated at this point because it’s so widely available, and his frustration that some people are refusing to get vaxxed – the host pivoted to “well, you can’t just say that, because then it sounds like you’re calling those people stupid and foolish, and people don’t like being called stupid”
You don’t like being told you’re being stupid and foolish, people? Then don’t do stupid and foolish things like unnecessarily putting your health and the health of everyone around you at risk !!!!
Dr Fauci was diplomatic and stayed in outreach mode, but you could tell he is so over having to coddle selfish morons, even as he genuinely wishes for them to avoid sickness, miserable hospitalization and possibly death.
Why can’t we just call them stupid? They are. It’s fine if they want to risk their lives but they’re risking other people’s lives who can’t be vaccinated. They’re also risking health workers lives because they have to treat them and we don’t know how long the vaccine is effective yet so their protection could be waning and we won’t know it until a lot of them end up getting sick. If they’re refusing to be vaccinated and celebrating that fact they are probably also refusing to wear masks and for their unvaccinated children to be masked.
Effing a$$holes. While other countries are struggling to get vaccines and suffering because of it, these morons get to reject them out of spite. I have a dear friend who started renting from and hanging around some evangelical fundamentalists some years ago and that person is now doubting the vaccine and spreading misinformation. Some friends in common and I have tried to reason with that person to no avail. It pains me, and it had certainly affected our friendship, but it has shown me how susceptible many otherwise smart people are to this con.
Astute as always, Kaiser. What needs to happen is that people, collectively, need to recognize and accept objective reality instead of further entrenching themselves in their fact-free echo chambers. Unfortunately for the sane, the media (and increasingly our elected officials) are financially incentivized to stoke the fires of outrage, however misguided or false and at whatever cost to society. They’ve created a Choose Your Own Reality game from hell, and until everyone chooses truth over spin we all lose.
These are people who are pretending the 1/6 insurrectionists were just “tourists” visiting DC.
… even though they brought a gallows, were stalking the 2nd and 3rd in line for the Presidency as well as other prominent members of Congress, seriously injured and caused the death of law enforcement officers defending one of the 3 branches of US government, and were likely in collusion with people at the White House and some military leaders.
They won’t see any reason to embrace objective reality until there are serious consequences for embracing their Big Lies.
It’s rage-inducing that all these right-wingnut speakers and pundits are vaccinated themselves. Tucker isn’t stupid. He’s 1000% vaccinated himself.
I know. I believe that these TV personalities are just doing a job, and if it pays handsomely, gets them attention, then who the f**k cares what they’re selling. For chrissakes, Trump is VACCINATED! These anti-vaxx promoters are happily protected and therefore have no skin in the game in pushing no vaccines. They don’t care about their viewers as individuals, all they care is that they are tuning in. And the idiots will fall for their falsehoods all the way to the emergency room…
At this point, I have to say, fuck ’em. If they’re going to be like this and disregard their own safety and the safety of others, let them live (or not live) with the consequences. Let them form their own little unvaccinated colonies and see how it works out for them. They don’t want to be a part of larger society anyway, so let them live in their own, safe little isolated pockets and govern themselves. They know best, after all.
At some point, we/they will reach herd immunity, even in low vacc areas, and the only people who will be at great risk will be the ones who are afraid of having spoons stick to them. If they get hit with it, so be it. I don’t think they will be much of a threat to those who have been vaccinated or can’t be for other reasons.
Not only are they not getting vaccinated, they are also not wearing masks or social distancing. Only 53% of the people in my ‘red’ state are vaccinated but not a single person around here wears a mask.
WHAT IS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY IS THAT THEIR SUPREME LEADER IS VAXXED!! All the Trumps, McConnell, Hawley, and the others from neo-american-nazi revival party ,AKA the GOP, all have their shots. This is the end of the world… This pandemic, global warming, and SUPER STUPID PEOPLE BELIEVING STUPID CONSPIRACIES!! IT IS BANANAS!!
Once they are FDA approved my family and I will get vaccinated. Just thankful for all of you who are willing to take on the risk to make sure the vaccine is safe for the rest of us!