A bunch of fanatics are fucking up the vaccination program for everyone. Polls are showing that a significant percentage of people won't get the vaccine. In places where people don't get vaccinated, cases have been on the rise. There are YouTube videos, filled with conspiracy theories, exhorting people to avoid the vaccine. People spread the idea that the vaccine is a way to spy on them, and there has been violence directed against the distribution, with fear that not enough people will get it to eliminate the illness.
Yeah, that's what's going on in Afghanistan as health groups attempt to get people vaccinated for polio.
The rhetoric that's coming from the antivaccine right (and, to a lesser, weirder, but just as dangerous extent, the antivax left) is qualitatively not that different from what the Taliban has been pushing in Afghanistan. This is not to disparage the Afghan people or call them stupid. Far from it. It's to say that fear and ignorance is pretty goddamned universal, and it often is so on the same issues no matter where one is from.
Here in the United States, when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines, we're swimming in a shit pool of lies and fear. We've got the dumbass white evangelical Christians who believe garbage like "It would be God’s will if I am here or if I am not here." (So, like, if God gave people the ability to create vaccines...fuck it, not worth it.) We've got fucking idiotic conspiracy theories like "A massive death wave will be witnessed later this year among those who took the vaccine," ignoring that it's been a year since the first people were vaccinated, and, oddly, no reports of all of them dying have come out.
And then there's motherfucking Tucker fucking Carlson, who always has the expression of a Victorian gentleman learning that women like sex. Carlson has been coyly and not-so-coyly antivax for the better part of the last few years. With the coronavirus vaccines, Tuckfuck has been vigorously gargling the balls of conspiracy nuts. Wondering why you should still have to wear a mask after getting vaccinated, Carlson's just asking, "What is this about? If vaccines work, why are vaccinated people still banned from living normal lives?" Quite note: You're wearing your fucking mask because you still might be able to spread COVID, even if you can't get it, and you're trying not to be a selfish dickhead, something I'm sure Carlson can't even conceive of.
Carlson, who you know got his vaccine the second he could steal the spot from an elderly person, continued tuckerly, "If the vaccine is effective, there’s no reason for people who’ve received a vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact. So maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that. Well, you’d hate to think that especially if you’ve gotten two shots but what’s the other potential explanation? We can’t think of one." Yes, big science wants you to wear masks and not eat indoors at restaurants or go to concerts or movies because...he doesn't say, but I'm guessing socialism or critical race theory or AOC.
Of course, things weren't helped when the FDA and the CDC put a pause on the Johnson and Johnson single dose vaccine because of 6 reported cases of blood clots in the brains of women who had recently received it. And while I don't know the reasons behind such a drastic step, even if the J&J vaccine is only about 5% of the total vaccines out there, it sure as fuck seems like a big damn mistake to have taken that action, considering how fucking stupid and hesitant too many people are being about getting the shot. There may be something to it, but 6 out of nearly 7 million people who received the J&J vaccine makes it an adverse reaction so rare that it's pretty much negligible, and, yes, I'm recognizing that there may be more cases once there's an investigation. Yet the diabetes drug Jardiance can cause your taint (you know, your perineum? your grundle?) to rot (yes, rot), and there have been 12 cases in less than 2 million users, but that son of a bitch has full FDA approval.
Really, honestly, whenever someone tells me they don't want to get the vaccine because it hasn't been researched long enough or they don't know what's in it or whatever, all I'm left with saying is "Shut the fuck up and get your fucking vaccine." I know one person who shouldn't get it, someone who is severely immunocompromised, and even she wants to get it. Just stop this shit and get the fucking vaccine. Line the fuck up and let shit get back to normal.
But, no, no, no, not our selfish bourgie asses. Low turnout for vaccine distribution has become standard in many places. Health officials are worried that the country won't reach herd immunity, when at least 70% of people have been vaccinated, primarily because Republicans are being such dicks about it, acting as if there's something to be concerned about with the damn thing.
I mean, come the fuck on. Every single day, Americans suck down and engorge themselves on poisons masking themselves as food. Every single day, Americans are drinking and inhaling hundreds of pieces of microplastics that likely have a toxic effect on us. Every single day, most Americans are living with air so filled with chemicals that we're probably doing ourselves a goddamn favor by wearing a mask. Every single day, most Americans just allow the climate to degrade and diseases to mutate and spread. And barely anyone fucking blinks at this shit. But after shoving a wad of McDonald's french fries in your face, inhaling Dow Chemical's latest highball of poison, and avoiding wearing sunscreen while filling your lungs with enough plastic to make a small ball, all of a sudden, when it comes to the COVID vaccine, you're a fucking purist? Fuck you. Get the fucking vaccine.
By the way, to get back to Afghanistan and toss Pakistan into the mix, there are lots of idiotic, cruel, and backwards reasons that they have an issue with vaccination efforts, including refusing to take it from women (to the point of murdering women delivering it), but one big reason for the vaccine hesitancy is pretty interesting. In 2011, the CIA used a vaccine worker to get DNA samples from kids in an area of Pakistan to see if it matched Osama bin Laden's. Yeah, it was used for spying. Yeah, it completely fucking undermined the efforts of health NGOs.
In other words, in those countries, they actually have more justification for being paranoid about vaccines than we do, thanks to us. What's our fucking excuse? Bullshit arrogance? Bullshit ideas of freedom?
You know what freedom is? Freedom is celebrating that science can actually solve our fucking problems and taking advantage of that so that your superstition and anti-science fuckery doesn't kill the rest of us.
Shut the fuck up already. Get your fucking vaccine, you fucking assholes.
