A Louisiana man hospitalized with COVID-19 told CBS he still wouldn't get vaccinated.
Scott Roe said he didn't regret not getting the vaccine and would rather be hospitalized than get it.
The GOP opened up a Pandora's box of insanity, craziness and stupidity. How can this problem even be mitigated?
there is no mitigating it. this is forever until we die. brain poisoned boomers will die and be replaced by equally propagandised dipshit middle class gen x-ers. this is the cream of great columbian empire’s crop, ad extinctium.
equally propagandised dipshit middle class gen x-ers
Yup these people are getting real frustrating as they get older
the cream of great columbian empire’s crop
I don't get that. [Edit: Got it.]
ad extincium
ToExtinction would be a great name for a metal band.
My dad speaks seven languages and has a PhD. He has taught university-level classes on formal logic and theory of science. And his brain is so worm-infected that he has let some quack grifter convince him that vaccines are bad. After all when he was a kid they got measles and we're fine and vaccines are not "natural".
He is 70 and has heart conditions and at the advice of this quack he has refused the vivid vaccine. The quack convinced him that if he got covid anyways he could fix it with prayer and his own homemade snakeoil medicine.
Moral of the story: Smart people can believe some incredibly dumb shit and boomers have lead poisoning
Yup. Mine also has a PH.D., worked in agricultural science for decades, won several awards for work related accomplishments, but thinks that Obama was a commie and Biden is too (and still believes some race science bullshit).
Just because you are brilliant in one field does not make you brilliant (or even proficient) in all
Just because you are brilliant in one field does not make you brilliant (or even proficient) in all
Perfect example of this is Ben Carson. The guy was a successful neurosurgeon before becoming a GOP ghoul.
they don’t even believe in it either way
I don't agree. I think he's gone around the bend. In these comments somebody mentioned that even though he said he didn't want something shoved down his throat - he did have something literally shoved down his throat: a breathing tube.
Before Trump the right-winger might have been very angry about his situation in life. Maybe he had trouble paying his mortgage or whatever. But now he's angry and scared. Even worse - I'm 100% certain he'd deny being scared about anything. Denial makes things far worse. When you're angry and scared - you can convince yourself to believe anything.
He surely wants healthcare but he can't stop thinking that science and medicine is bad because it wants to "control" him.
He's probably pretty powerless in his life. He probably doesn't really feel in control. So by refusing the vaccine he is getting a sense of power and control. He's able to refuse something people are telling him to do and that's not something he can do at his work or any other part of life
I feel this but know a few "successful" business owners, one doing extremely well in the cannabis industry, that are anti vax. Maybe even the facade of financial control (i.e. ability to do pretty much whatever) is not an adequate substitution for self-autonomy divorced from a capitalist system. Like yeah you got the new truck but homie you're miserable.
I’ve been wondering if it would be any better if the vaccine were being pitched to them by healthcare workers, in person…
A lot of people on the news (many of whom deal with patients directly) have said patients can be reachable if somebody they trust speaks to them one-on-one.
We are living through a scary time where many people's actual POV is - I believe in this nonsense so it's true. But I don't like these facts so they are not true and maybe they're lies as well.
This.
I run super-small vax clinics every couple of weeks. My ppl trust me amd my judgement and are slowly coming around (not a quick process). All of the messaging and outreach from fed/state has been geared at early adopters and there's v little actual effort at bringing late adopters on board (aside from guilting ppl, which clearly is v effective). Once I get one person, they usually end up bring a few of their contacts along later. I don't get everyone, but we are building a network.
We've forgotten the vast amount of work prev vax campaigns have required and it fucking shows.
So much of what I've seen of the hesitancy isn't denial, it's fear. This is something you can address with relationship-building not by slamming people for misunderstanding things, esp given the absolutely criminal messaging both admins have taken on COVID since last March.
I gave a shot to someone last week after talking through their fears and understandings with them. It took TIME. Between myself and my colleagues, I spent a good month or so talking it over with this person. They finally got the shot and suddenly they're the biggest proponent of the vaccine and have been getting more ppl for the clinics.
Meanwhile friends and fam are like 'what is wrong with them? How are they believing these lies?' Well, it couldn't possibly be because the only ones trying to reach these folx are those that benefit from their fear, cuz you sure as shit aren't doing anything.
You won't get everyone, but so much of public health in a crisis is shoeleather, not done from the safety of an ivory tower and it is teeth-grindingly aggravating seeing it so poorly managed.
Biden will never do it because he's old and he's well... Biden - but it seems to me that absolutely soon as possible he to needs to have an out-of-the-box plan to reach people. Off the top of my head the only thing I can think of is crazy and stupid. The federal government offers $10 for every person you can prove you helped vaccinate.
Biden has to do something insanely bold that's probably also incredibly politically risky. Fall is coming and it from that point on the US will probably be a total horror show. "Following the science" is like using a bucket to try to put out a house fire.
The only thing I can think of is making it by law now. Sure anti-vaxxers will probably go feral but what are you going to do? Finance capital has already made it clear there's never going to be a lockdown, not even a half-assed one like we had last year.
Like the dude issue is vaccines shoved down his throat by big gbmint. Somehow the pressure should come from his friends, pastors whatever, not government. Don’t know honestly, I try to shame people around me as well about this :sadness-abysmal:
Yeah but shaming only goes so far. I mean, these people seem to be locked into their beliefs. Outside of just kicking them out of the country, which is wildly unethical, I have no clue what else to do. Drive around with a blowgun and dart them in the neck?
If we go by law route, just make not wearing a mask ticketable, and if you’re not vaccinated 10x rate, but that’s also giving police more power to harass :sadness: everything plays into their persecution martyr complex in any case
- this is bad for the obvious reasons
- most cops are brain-diseased chuds as well and would never enforce it
more supportive, but for every person they can successfully dissuade away, there's another who heads further down the path, and the American police state is nothing if not unwilling to prevent right-wing terror attacks
Reminds of this CushVlogs clip where he says that Trump fans dying to Covid feel like Vikings dying in battle.
The hammer of the gods cough / Will drive our ships to new lands cough cough / To fight the horde, sing and cry cough cough cough / Valhalla, I am coming [dies]
Yeah, this is a huge insult to anyone who treated him. The chud also took away time and resources from others in need of care. I get that people are heavily propagandized, but I lose a lot of empathy when it becomes something this selfish and harmful to others.
I think if the political process was used to directly address the problems in most people's lives there wouldn't be a desire for this kind of nonsense discourse.
He doesn't want it shoved down his throat, unlike the breathing tube he will need when he's suffocating from his own clogged, irritated alveoli getting eaten by his own immune system.
I wish the reporter had been quick-witted: "But you had a breathing tube shov— I mean, you had a breathing tube in your throat..."
Does anyone remember an account of a nurse that was attending an intubated guy with covid that even in his very death bed, he still didn't believe he was dying of covid. In fact he very much believed the tubes that were keeping him alive was the reason he was as dying. He spent his last minutes alive feeling a deep hatred for his nurse. I think about this a lot, actually.
When it comes to bad news (if not horrible news) some people truly hate the messenger more than the message. Even as a kid I thought that was strange but I think it's very true.
i think i just fundamentally am at odds with them all. if it's just the flu... i still get a flu shot? having the flu is not very enjoyable in my experience. especially when they say ah well i don't want to get sick after the second shot. but the second shot is not at all as bad as the flu? they have a very strange relationship with sickness
So what's up with antivaxxers? I used to chalk it up to quaint endemic American insanity but this and other sorts of conspiracy shit has spread like wildfire around the globe in recent years. Fuck, in the recent municipal elections here in Finland we had an entire antivaxx party
The greatest comment I've heard yet about this situation is that when you mix politics and science - you get politics. And the situation in the US continues to get worse and worse. The crazy guy in the hospital has poisoned his own brain with his toxic politics. He's decided to die before he allows himself to use his critical thinking skills.
In the United States, medicine is a racket. If you get sick, you go to a hospital, and they take all your money. Better to just wish the sickness away.
Yeah, but now you have people in Europe and other places with more socialised medicine going whole hog on anti vaccine nonsense. It's absolutely baffling. Is it just social media eroding people's brains at amazing speed?
Is it just social media eroding people’s brains at amazing speed?
Probaby. I don't want to come off as "grr! social media bad!" because that's not what I mean but it is incredibly easy to switch your main source of news to social media, which then is also incredibly customizable. And since social media companies want you to continue using their site as much as possible to serve you ads, they recommend content similar to what you're already consuming and then it becomes very easy to slide down a rabbit hole into a completely different reality.
I don't even know where to begin on how this could possibly be solved though.
My sister in law is a total hippy and hasn't gotten vaccinated. My brother didn't at first either, but he finally got the shot a couple weeks ago. I really hope she changes her mind, but I'm relieved that her nonsense probably won't get my brother killed, and at least it's a bit less likely that he'll get sick and give it to her. I guess you take what you can get.
