Honestly, TIL.
Honestly, same.
yes, I know. these same people were ignoring the existence of this virus in the first place as either a hoax or it only effects old people, so they don’t care. they ignored social distancing and mask rules. they don’t particularly care about humanity.
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I am perhaps a little softer on those refusing to take the vaccine because of moral considerations. I am sure some are knee-jerk reactions to link to abortion. If they want to refuse, that’s OK. I would hope they consider if the rest of the actions they are taking are the same level of disconnect from an evil act, which I think would be difficult to do in the modern world. If they are consistent that’s probably better than a lot of folks.
In particular, they have to consider if their actions would likely transmit COVID to someone else. Refusing to take the vaccine for moral reasons and not masking and not maintaining social distancing or not having a high degree of self-isolation during the pandemic is wrong.
I would be interested to learn if any of the people who refuse to take a vaccine because its development used cells from an abortion performed many years ago also refuse to buy or rent property that was stolen from the indigenous peoples.
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…or would refuse, during a famine, to buy food from their brother (who’s sitting on stockpiles of food) whom they sold into slavery a number of years prior.
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I’d be interested in whether COVID politics pushes people to be more religiously anti-vaccine than they were previously.
I think most? all? vaccines are developed with the help of fetal cell lines. And probably most people didn’t know or care about that.
The only anti-vaxxer I deal with regularly is going the opposite way and getting the COVID vaccine.
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The pharmacy by my place is setting up to administer the Astra Zeneca shot. The pharmacist told me she ordered 500 doses and got… 2. 
Once she gets a respectable shipment, then they’ll open up the booking portal.
So I was at the lab getting my blood drawn yesterday and I was talking to the Lab Tech about the vaccine. I told him that I was getting the J&J vaccine. He said, as a joke “Johnson & Johnson? Why would you get baby powder injected?” At first I thought it was a reference to the fetus thing, but it was probably just a reference to their most popular product. However, now that I think about it, it’s kinda a nice double meaning.
Oooh, interesting example.
I’ve been afraid to call my antivaxxer friend for a while, now. I suppose I should contact her soon, but I think I’ll wait until I’ve had my second dose and I can just say “it’s done, I don’t want to talk about it.”
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does she generally push her anti-vax stance on you otherwise?
When the topic comes up, we tend to get into arguments about it. And it would be hard to avoid the topic coming up right now.
I have an anti-covid vaxxer friend. Says that its government overreach and doesn’t think covid is serious compared to other issues. They recognize vaccines in general work and have helped humanity. They are afraid of the covid vaccine becoming mandatory and want to take a stand. I’ve said just to get the vaccine but say you didn’t if you want to take a stand. But they still think covid is not a big deal. I can’t convince them otherwise.
seems like the only way to be friends with people like that is to avoid the topic entirely, goes for trump supporters too.
Yeah, we don’t tend to argue about it, but we made it pretty clear early on that when we get back to our barbeques/hosting people this summer (we’ll both be fully vaxxed by mid-May), we aren’t inviting non-vaxxed people this year and she kind of just accepted that. It might help that both her and her husband got COVID and while neither were hospitalized, both were pretty sick for a while.
The anti-vax post I saw was “we don’t know what this might do to us in 3 years”.
And that’s entirely fair I think. We are still in the emergency approval phase — all the normal long term testing got skipped. And there are some concerning things for sure (a small percentage of women are having the Moderna vaccine mess with their menstruation cycles, for example), but by and large, the risks seem small to the prospect of another 3-5 years of COVID running wild.
Honestly, I’ve had that thought myself, but I was thinking more like 20 years.
I know lots of antivaxxers and my sister is one and we just agree to disagree. Odd thing is she is only anti flu-vax and now anti Covid-vax. Her kids have all their vaccines that are required for school.
the mRNA vaccines are new, but the way they work seems like there should be little residual concerns. You get an injection of specific instructions, something your body already creates for other purposes. Once the mRNA has been delivered, it is destroyed. Then your body builds part of the spike protein, which are harmless themselves, but your immune system recognizes them and destroys them, so anything related to the vaccine and proteins should be gone pretty quickly.
mRNA vaccines have been tested for other viruses before COVID, so there should be some knowledge any longer term concerns.