Eric Boehlert - Memo to media: Stop coddling vaccine dead-enders

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://pressrun.media/p/memo-to-media-stop-coddling-vaccine

As the United States careens towards its third Covid-19 surge, driven entirely by Americans who refuse to get vaccinated, the press continues to portray the selfish, partisan dead-enders as misguided and merely reluctant.

The coverage stems from a five-year media crusade to normalize Trump supporters and constantly extend “sympathy.” Today, that means coddling the offenders, especially white, Southern ones, who are infecting communities by refusing to take a miraculously safe and effective vaccine that’s been available for eight months.

The press needs to stop portraying those at the heart of anti-vaccine mania as regular folk who just need a friendly nudge. (80 percent say they’ll never get the shot.) Instead, they’re part of a selfish movement that threatens our national security.

And stop calling them “vaccine hesitant,” “vaccine-reluctant,” or “vaccine skeptics.” That implies logical thought processes, that these people can be convinced via soothing tones, and that there’s a lucid element at play. My hunch is 5-10 percent of Americans are “vaccine hesitant” in the traditional sense. The rest are conspiratorial Trump loyalists — the same ones who claim he beat Joe Biden in a landslide last year. They’re part of a deep-pocketed political and media crusade determined to keep the pandemic going and gladly risking infections.

*snip*

[The Magistrate]

1. Cold But Fair, Ma'am

[Goonch]

2. ZOMBIES

[D23MIURG23]

3. IMO a significant portion of this is actually young people who don't take covid that seriously.

I don't have a representative and statistically robust sample, but this is the kind of "vaccine hesitant" person I know in my own experience. I know at least one person who is older, and an outright Trump supporter who has gotten the vaccine, and several more who are younger, and express more liberal values who have not, and seem to view it as unnecessary or a sign of weakness.

Further, if you look at age demographics for who is getting the vaccine vs. who isn't you will notice a significant downward trend as the age bins go to younger people. (https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/) This partially has to do with availability: how it was administered to older people first, and isn't approved for children under a certain age, but that isn't the whole story.

The dead end Trump conspiracy theorist is certainly part of the "vaccine hesitant" group, but there are also people who are younger, believe that covid isn't that dangerous to them, and don't see any reason to get the vaccine, and/or distrust the medical establishment. No one should bother with the Q nuts at this point, but there is reason to believe that some headway could be made by trying to convince people under 40 that they aren't invincible w.r.t. covid.

[Paladin]

4. It's outrageous that the no-vaccine movement has gotten so out-of-hand.

There is absolutely no excuse for avoiding vaccination. None whatsoever. Tougher enforcement measures are called for, immediately. If the trump zombies whine about it, so much the better.

[Dustlawyer]

5. I am pissed! I have to work in Texas and Alabama and these state governments have

put me at risk because they are not protecting their citizens. They should be listening to experts but instead make decisions purely based on their own political fortunes. Instead of leading by educating their base the tail is wagging the dog. There need to be prosecutions for killing the citizenry so this never happens again. I know this will never happen which makes this even harder to stomach.

These people are killing us, what about our rights?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. Is Vaxed America Running Out of Patience?

Sane and intelligent Americans are getting tired of ignorant idiots who refuse to be vaccinated

Link to tweet

We need to stop being nice to these idiots and put into place vaccine mandates and passports