What to say when you meet vaccine protesters


It’s easy. A few lessons:

Follow their examples.

Comments

  1. anxionnat says

    Typical: using kids and unhoused people as props. Reminds me of how anti-abortionists use babies as props. Assholes do zero otherwise: no feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, giving medical care to already-born kids, because of course not.

  2. says

    The thread on that second tweet is wild. The OP there tracked down the homeless guy (his name is Ray) and set up a GoFundMe for him and it had raised $32K when I checked it last.

    There was also a $5000 donation from “James Kimmel”. Is that the late night comedy guy? Did this clip get aired on TV?

  3. kestrel says

    These are the things that more people need to say. Instead of saying nothing for the sake of “being polite”.

    My neighbor just died of Covid and left behind a wife and 6 children. He was a Mormon. He believed the propaganda.

  4. says

    We don’t see much of this nonsense here in Portland anymore. Multnomah county is at 77% fully vaccinated and another 10% half vaccinated now. You’d think we’d be dying in droves according to these people but we aren’t. In fact life is more or less back to normal here.

    Well normal for Portland.

  5. hemidactylus says

    I’d say vaccination helps your immune system to “do its own research”.

    Or isn’t getting vaccinated like studying for a test? Reminds me of test anxiety dreams. Instead of walking into an exam I didn’t study for and fail, I die of COVID.

  6. birgerjohansson says

    Sweden has finally reached a vaccination rate (slightly higher than the example of Portland) where we see the infection rates begin to go down. This is despite most anti-spreading rules having been eased.
    If vaccines were as horrible as the kooks claim, we would by now have peasants dragging around carts with dead bodies, shouting “bring out your dead!”.

  7. brightmoon says

    Guilty as charged. Didn’t say much to aantivaxxers because I was too tired to argue with an ignorant fool. Just pointed out Venus and Jupiter to them when they got into a conversation. First idiocy that came up was the nonsense about the speed of the technology and the second was the dead baby parts from abortions . That’s when, hey look those are planets, came up. I’m gonna have to think of short pithy countering statements to their nonsense.

  8. PaulBC says

    The response from the homeless person is great. It does reveal the implicit assumption that homeless people are entirely disconnected from society and incapable of agency as opposed to merely lacking a home (or in other words, they are viewed as subhuman). Am I guilty of this? Probably sometimes. I have to try harder. (I do not encounter many homeless these days because of where I live.)

    The homeless are also probably exposed to more community outreach and are not stupid enough to refuse life-saving help when it’s offered.

  9. unclefrogy says

    the thing that stands out the most with the anti-vaxers is they are utterly selfish and completely self centered.They think they are the only one and their experience is the only one that is legit.
    and no they do not “deserve” to die. They are resisting the freely offered help and a way to protect themselves and others from this virus, they are insisting that they have the right to do the experiment that will they contract this virus and it will not kill them. It is proving difficult to aid them or stop them, which is very sad.

  10. birgerjohansson says

    Brightmoon @ 7
    “dead baby parts from abortions”
    “hey, look, those are planets”
    -Am I going to regret it if I ask for context?

  11. birgerjohansson says

    OT
    -Oh thank Zod, as I was reading about incredibly stupid anti-vaxxers the latest episode of God Awful Movies came online.
    Incredibly stupid stuff reviewed in a fun way. This and Stephen Colbert is how I avoid depression in the midst of apocalypse. (Seriously, watch Colbert)

  12. PaulBC says

    birgerjohansson@12 Hey, it works for me. Maybe need to go bigger. Like, “I heard the Perseids are in October this year.”[I look down at phone] “Yeah, should be right about now. Better look up or you’ll miss it.” [I beat a hasty retreat.]

  13. birgerjohansson says

    PaulBC @ 14
    Great idea! And the sun sets much earlier here up north so I can use that line almost around the clock.

  14. kukulkan says

    Boeing just announced today that covid vaccinations are required by December 8, 2021. LOTS of hissy fits going on now. Of course there are the usual exemptions for documented medical reasons, and for “sincerely held religious beliefs”. If I could, I would add a requirement to provide data showing how your superstition protects you from viruses.

  15. wzrd1 says

    @birgerjohansson, another reason to look up is we’re due a G2 level geomagnetic storm, bringing the aurora moderately far south.

  16. numerobis says

    Quebec has set a deadline of Friday for health staff to be vaccinated or be suspended from government positions (which is most of them). Many of their professional orders have upped the ante and will be suspending licenses for unvaccinated members.

    It’s down to a couple thousand holdouts, and many might well throw in the towel in the next few days.

  17. whheydt says

    I was reading an article on CBS today about unemployment payments. In general, someone who gets fired for refusing to vaccinated won’t get payments. Turn the screws a little tighter…

  18. Saad says

    brightmoon, #8

    “As ignorant and stupid as antivaxxers are, they really don’t deserve to die .”

    No, but at one point adults are responsible for the negative consequences they suffer from their own deliberate actions. You’re right, I still wouldn’t use the word “deserve”. It’s not quite the right word for it.

  19. Samuel Vimes says

    @Saad

    There’s probably a German word for “I don’t think you deserve to die from this but if you do no one should care.”

  20. David Utidjian says

    A few days ago a friend of mine ‘checked in’ to facebook while travelling from Chicago O’hara airport. My friend said he was watching the security checkpoint from the nearby bar. From this he noted a fair number of ‘anti-maskers’ being held up for extra security checks. Apparently this was at random. One group in particular got fairly noisy. It was an entire family of anti-maskers. As he described it:
    “The anti-mask father looked at me and announced that he took Constitutional Law
    I replied that I took biology in high school…”

  21. brightmoon says

    Birgerjohnson basically me trying to avoid a subject I was too tired to argue over . Jupiter , Saturn and Venus are out right now and it was just after sunset when I bumped into the antivaxxers . Planets don’t twinkle ! Venus and Jupiter are bright and can be seen before it gets dark .