It's time to start shunning the 'vaccine hesitant.' They're blocking COVID herd immunity.

[UpInArms]

Michael J. Stern, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, was a federal prosecutor for 25 years in Detroit and Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelJStern1

Has-been rock star Ted Nugent told the world last week that he has COVID-19. Nugent’s announcement was an oddity because he previously called the viral pandemic a “leftist scam to destroy” former president Donald Trump. As I watched Nugent’s Facebook Live post, in which he repeatedly hocked up wads of phlegm and spit them to the ground, I got emotional when he described being so sick he thought he “was dying.” But when he trashed the COVID-19 vaccine and warned people against taking it, I realized that the emotion I was feeling was not empathy, it was anger.

For the better part of a year, as the coronavirus racked up hundreds of thousands of American deaths, the flickering light at the end of the tunnel was herd immunity — the antibody force-shield that comes when enough people have survived the illness or have been vaccinated against it. "Go get vaccinated, America," President Biden said in his speech to Congress this week, referring to the shot as "a dose of hope.”

... snip ...

It’s not just wacky former rockers who have put herd immunity out of reach. It is white evangelicals (45% say they won't get vaccinated). And it is Republicans (almost 50% are refusing the vaccine). In Texas, 59% of white Republicans have said “no” to the vaccine. You can slap the euphemism “vaccine hesitancy” on the problem, but in the end the G.O.P., and the children of G.O.D., are perpetuating a virus that is sickening and killing people in droves.

A big part of the problem stems from the cultish relationship many evangelicals and Republicans have with former President Donald Trump. They absorbed his endless efforts to downplay the danger of the virus and turn public health precautions into a political freedom movement. But the time for analyzing why these human petri dishes have chosen to ignore the medical science that could save them, and us, is over. We need a different strategy. I propose shunning.

Much more worth reading at:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/04/30/require-covid-vaccine-resume-normal-life-herd-immunity-column/4886673001/

[jimfields33]

1. Most people we will have no idea one way or the other

The ones saying they aren’t taking the shot are people we don’t hang with like cruz. I used Cruz as an example. I don’t remember if he said he did or didn’t take it. Everyday is a weird moment from him so who knows.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Frankly, I'm of a mind to let the vaccine-hesitant die. Give them palliative care, not hospital care

[RicROC]

4. you're not the only one.

Health Insurance companies need to raise the premiums on these people, just like they do for smokers. Or even better, if they refuse to become vax'd, limit the health care options the company will pay.

[pandr32]

6. +1

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. +2

[NNadir]

21. An excellent idea. n/t.

[BlueWavePsych]

23. +3

[greymattermom]

25. When the anti protease pills become available,

insurance companies will probably charge whatever they can get.

[AZ8theist]

3. "Vaccine hesitancy"????

More like FUCKING MORONS.

[dugog55]

5. The government needs to set a date, say the end of July, and if you have not received

a vaccine shot, you will be responsible for any and all health care costs associated with the Covid 19 virus. I do not want my taxpayer dollars going to help someone who is either so selfish, deluded or just plain stupid that they will not get the shot. Let Trump or Jesus take care of them, and to some of those folks, that would be the same person.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. We need vaccine passports and to exclude/shun assholes who refuse to be vaccinated

[Demobrat]

11. The sooner the better

Before things open up any further. People are going to be returning to open offices, eating at restaurants indoors, traveling, and going to theaters and sporting events.

Nobody should be forced into unknowing close contact with the unvaccinated. Even if the vaccine keeps me off of the ventilator, I don’t want Covid at all. Not even if it’s just a sniffle. Even if I’m an asymptomatic carrier.

We don’t know what the long term affects of that may be, and nobody should have to find out because of some selfish a-hole.

We can’t tell who they are by looking at them, so we have to identify them any way we can.

[llmart]

8. I already shun them...

and not because they're anti-vaccine. I shun them because they're ignoramuses and I haven't enough years left on this earth to waste on the likes of them.

I'm just hoping their so-called "vaccine hesitancy" helps to thin their herd.

[ShazzieB]

9. I would shun them if I knew which ones they are.

Seriously...I have literally never seen anyone in a Trump hat or shirt in my area, so I can't go by that. I know there are Trump Humpers around here, but they fly under the radar.

[llmart]

19. They were pretty brazen around here and I have a very, very good memory.

I can remember which houses had the signs and flags. They're pretty brazen about the fact that they're not getting the vaccine also. I actually saw two different signs in yards this week alone. One said "Impeach Biden" another one said something and I missed the small print, but the word Idiot was in large print. It was in the yard of a house that I remember was filled with that guy's signs, so even though I couldn't make out the smaller print I'm quite sure it had to do with Biden. However, the word "idiot" was in big black letters and I had the thought that someone should sneak up after dark and put "An" in front of the word idiot and "lives here" after it.

I read a statistic today that said 58% of Republicans said they're not getting the vaccine. I'm going to assume if I know you're a Republican then you are probably not getting the vaccine. They made a pandemic political, not us. So they own this.

[Grasswire2]

10. My adult son and his partner will not get the vaccine.

I just learned that yesterday. He messaged that they are "vaccine hesitant" because of the fact that only an Emergency Use Authorization exists. They are big into this "clean eating" trend. Only the purest of foods pass their lips. It's an obsession.

Does that sound narcissistic? I fear that it is, in a way.

[Claire Oh Nette]

13. Yes. Ignorant, selfish and narcissistic.

The J & J vaccine was halted after six women developed extremely rare blood clots. 6 out of over 7,000,000. Pattern emerged, CDC shut it down, and made new recommendations based on date. Hundreds of millions of vaccinations are in arms. There aren't people dropping dead from the vaccine, or we'd be hearing about it. He's talking out of his terrified ass.

Emergency Authorization REQUIRES OVERWHELMINING STATISTICAL EVIDENCE that the benefit outweighs the risk. Pfizer and Moderna are both filing for regular, plain old authorization. At that point, the government at all levels and private companies can MANDATE the vaccine. No more effing around.

I am a woman who helped the CDC discover birth control held a blot clot and heart attack risk for young women.
I also worked at Syntex then Roche Pharma on Clinical Trials.

Vaccines have much higher statistical significance standards and are more thoroughly tested because they have to go in billions of people. Hesitancy is either chickenshit, or ignorance, or arrogance.

Is your son a trained virologist, immunologist, or have a BS in any of the hard sciences? His partner?

Did you vaccinate your son? Did he have measles? Mumps? Whooping cough? Diphtheria? Tetanus? Rubella? RSV?

If you vaccinated him, and he didn't have those diseases, that's proof vaccines work.

[Grasswire2]

15. yes, I pointed all those illnesses that he has been vaccinated against out to him.

In addition, his father died last year of post-polio syndrome. He had contracted polio the year before the Salk Vaccine was available. Just a boy, he suffered in an iron lung, finally released, and lived with a limp all his life and increasingly disabled due to the post-polio syndrome.

If anyone should want to be vaccinated, it's someone who has witnessed polio in their own family.

[Claire Oh Nette]

18. Mom guilt him

That's unconscionable.

Ask him wha this dad would want him to do. All the stops.

Note: it's the Salk vaccine, not the Eisenhower vaccine. Huh.....

[marie999]

12. I am against charging them more for health insurance until there is FDA approval.

I am definitely against not giving them proper medical care ever. No one should ever be denied proper healthcare.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

14. My evangelical sister...

... and her husband were vaccinated with both doses, but they've got people like me to influence them too.

One of my sister's long-time evangelical friends, 70-years old, has refused to do it. Her daughter and son-in-law refused too.

Now her 37-year old daughter is hooked to an ECMO device to act as her lungs, oxygenating her blood and removing the carbon dioxide, because a ventilator with pure oxygen wasn't sufficient due to her badly Covid-damaged lungs. Her husband, about the same age, is also in the ICU.

Their three young children are now living with my sister's old friend, their grandmother, and one of them just tested positive for Covid too. Probably just a matter of time for the 70-year old to get infected as well.

My sister mentioned another one of her old church friends, who I've personally met in the past and who seemed very bright and educated, since she's the daughter of a wealthy family who is trying to help them. (I never heard about her deceased parents being rich business owners until today.) Anyway, that woman has refused to be vaccinated too!

[Grasswire2]

16. Maybe it's time for CDC to buy advertising time on sites that evangelicals frequent

Just to show in living color the trauma, the tragedy of this disease in real people.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

17. Maybe that would help.

I never watch those kinds of broadcasts, so maybe it's already being done and I just don't know?

So surprised by her other friend, who had struck me as very bright when I met her years ago! I would've predicted that she'd be among the first to get vaccinated! She was raised in Philadelphia PA, but married a fellow Ohio State student and then remained in Ohio.

[RussBLib]

22. I think it was Michael Smirconish who recently asked.....

something like, Maybe we need sweeter carrots or bigger sticks? Or both.

[BlueIdaho]

24. My thoughts exactly...

Perks for the vaccinated - the shitty end of the stick for those who hesitate.