Photo via Airman 1st Class Adam R. Shanks/US Air Force
March 1, 2021, 12:52 pm
It’s no surprise that the anti-vaxxer community is terrified of the COVID-19 vaccine and view it as evidence that the government is definitely trying to implant mind-control chips into people or something.
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So you can imagine how upset they were when they realized that vaccinated people can give blood, so those microchips might just end up in their brains even if they refused the new vaccine.
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They were very upset.
“There are people donating blood after being shot up with the covid crap,” said one commenter in a far-right Facebook group according to the Daily Beast. “This terrifies me.”
I wrote about anti-vaxxers melting down (again) this time thinking they will contract hiv if the vaccinated are allowed to donate bloodhttps://t.co/0M1AGxeYzj
— daniel modlin
(@dam0dlin) February 28, 2021
This latest freakout was apparently in response to news that people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 don’t have to wait out the typical deferral period before giving blood.
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Those who have just received vaccines for illnesses like rubella and measles are often asked to wait for some period of time before donating, but blood banks across the U.S. are reducing this to two weeks or waiving it alltogether when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Based on the anti-vaxxer comments, however, you would think that they had just now realized that the vast majority of blood donors have received many vaccinations.
“Well, I will never get a blood transfusion ever now,” said one, “Their blood has the death shot in it! No thank you!”
After interviewing some of these anti-vaxxers, Daniel Modlin explained that many of them fear that somehow, vaccinated blood mixing with non-vaccinated blood could be “a backdoor to genetic modification.”
What that means, exactly, is that these people don’t understand the science behind vaccines, as explained by assistant professor of public health at Syracuse University Dr. Brittany Kmush.
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“The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are not live vaccines,” she said. “The reason we have deferral periods for donating blood after receiving a live, attenuated vaccine is because … in immunocompromised people, even a weakened virus could potentially be dangerous. And since people who are receiving transfusions are typically immunocompromised, there’s a two-week window for added safety.”
Without a live version of the virus in the COVID-19 vaccine, the deferral period for blood donation is simply unnecessary. This is unlikely to provide comfort to anti-vaxxers, however.
Anyway, if you do give blood after getting the vaccine, some donation companies will tell you whether or not COVID-19 antibodies were detected in your blood.
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Doing good and freaking out anti-vaxxers at the same time? Who says you can’t have fun for free?
h/t The Daily Beast
*First Published: March 1, 2021, 12:52 pm
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