The coronavirus has been politicized in the United States from the very start, making it difficult to get far too many anti-government, anti-science Americans to help keep themselves and their communities safe by wearing masks and getting vaccinated. While roughly half the country is fully vaccinated at this point, the number is lower in certain areas — Florida, Texas, and Missouri currently account for 40% of COVID cases in the country thanks to their low vaccination rates.
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And there doesn’t seem to be much that can convince these anti-vaxxers to get the shot, even as some Republicans finally come forward to encourage it. It’s too late. The damage has already been done.
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A recent interview with one COVID patient in Louisiana really drove that horrid reality home when he admitted — from his hospital bed — that even if he could go back in time and get the vaccine rather than getting COVID, he wouldn’t do it.
“Here I am, recovering, getting out of here finally tomorrow,” said Scott Roe, a Republican. “Am I going to get a vaccine? No… There’s too many issues with these vaccines.”
Roe’s case of COVID was bad enough that he developed pneumonia, and his breathing was labored as he answered the reporter’s questions and explained that he didn’t want the government telling him what to do.
“Don’t shove it down my throat. That’s what local, state, federal administration is trying to do — shove it down your throat,” he said. When asked to clarify what, exactly, is being shoved down his throat, he replied “the fact that that’s their agenda…to get you vaccinated.”
That there are people in this country so stubbornly intent on going against the grain that they see the government trying to save people from a pandemic as a genuine threat isn’t surprising, given the past year and a half, but it does offer a dismal insight into what we’re facing as we still try to bring this pandemic to an end.
The frustration with Roe and how selfishness like his is impacting all of us is palpable, perhaps even moreso than it was with anti-maskers during the whole of 2020.
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Exactly. Heart patients, cancer patients, …on and on… deferred, delayed, dismissed entirely, because doofus here has some perverse sense of liberty. This guy Roe need a cult deprogrammer
— Jack Hutton
(@jackhutton) July 22, 2021
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My own mother was perplexed as to “why the government cared so much.” They truly don’t think the gov should care -or is even capable of caring. FML
— moral-and-intellectual-vacuum (@moralintvacuum) July 22, 2021
Later in the same segment, Dr. Catherine O’Neal of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center spoke bluntly about what the future is facing communities with a high percentage of people like Roe who refuse to get vaccinated.
“We are either going to get vaccinated and end the pandemic,” she said. “Or we are going to accept death.”
In other words, we’re all counting on anti-science, anti-community, anti-common sense anti-vaxxers to make the right choice so the rest of us don’t pay the price. Stock up on toilet paper, because with folks like this around, it doesn’t seem likely the pandemic is ending any time soon.
*First Published: July 23, 2021, 7:23 am
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