Dying in the Name of Vaccine Freedom

Here’s the con­text to a sober­ing new­ly-released video from The New York Times:

In the video above, Alexan­der Stock­ton, a pro­duc­er on the Opin­ion Video team, explores two of the main rea­sons the num­ber of Covid cas­es is soar­ing once again in the Unit­ed States: vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy and refusal.

“It’s hard to watch the pan­dem­ic drag on as Amer­i­cans refuse the vac­cine in the name of free­dom,” he says.

Seek­ing under­stand­ing, Mr. Stock­ton trav­els to Moun­tain Home, Ark., in the Ozarks, a region with gal­lop­ing con­ta­gion and — not unre­lat­ed — abysmal vac­ci­na­tion rates.

He finds that a range of feel­ings and beliefs under­pins the low rates — includ­ing fear, skep­ti­cism and a lib­er­tar­i­an strain of defi­ance.

This doubt even extends to the staff at a region­al hos­pi­tal, where about half of the med­ical per­son­nel are not vac­ci­nat­ed — even while the inten­sive care unit is crowd­ed with unvac­ci­nat­ed Covid patients fight­ing for their lives.

Moun­tain Home — like the Unit­ed States as a whole — is caught in a tug of war between pri­vate lib­er­ty and pub­lic health. But Mr. Stock­ton sug­gests that unless gov­ern­ment upholds its duty to pro­tect Amer­i­cans, keep­ing the com­mon good in mind, this may be a bat­tle with no end.

Sober­ing indeed…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How the COVID-19 Vac­cines Could Be Cre­at­ed So Quick­ly: Two Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the How mRNA Vac­cines Were Devel­oped, and How They Work

MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic, Fea­tur­ing Antho­ny Fau­ci & Oth­er Experts

Mattel’s Bar­bie Turns Women of Med­i­cine, Includ­ing COVID Vac­cine Devel­op­er, Into Dolls

A Bio­sta­tis­ti­cian Uses Cro­chet to Visu­al­ize the Fright­en­ing Infec­tion Rates of the Coro­n­avirus


by | Permalink | Comments (8) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (8)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Harmon says:

    “And what coun­try can pre­serve its lib­er­ties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their peo­ple pre­serve the spir­it of resis­tance? Let them take arms. The rem­e­dy is to set them right as to facts, par­don and paci­fy them. What sig­ni­fy a few lives lost in a cen­tu­ry or two? The tree of lib­er­ty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patri­ots and tyrants.”

    - Thomas Jef­fer­son

    “We hold these truths to be self-evi­dent, that all men are cre­at­ed equal, that they are endowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able Rights, that among these are Life, Lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Gov­ern­ments are insti­tut­ed among Men, deriv­ing their just pow­ers from the con­sent of the gov­erned”.

    - Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence

    Lib­er­ty is not a ”pri­vate right”. It is our fun­da­men­tal right. The pri­ma­ry duty of gov­ern­ment is to pre­serve lib­er­ty, not to pre­serve “pub­lic health.” As dan­ger­ous as Covid 19 is to many peo­ple, it does not threat­en the sur­vival of the coun­try. But the ele­va­tion of “pub­lic health” above lib­er­ty does.

  • Daniel says:

    With “sober­ing” you mean that lib­er­ty is put into ques­tion — in “the land of the free” — don’t you? With over­ly emo­tion­al (trag­ic) cas­es of only unvac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple shown sick or dying. After all, show­ing vac­ci­nat­ed suf­fer­ing as well would not fit the mes­sage. BTW, did the oth­er peo­ple who were shown sur­vive? And what about all those who had Covid and sur­vived — with­out the vac­cine?

    I don’t see much “seek­ing under­stand­ing” in the video but lots of emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion and a dis­re­gard for indi­vid­ual rights for a vague­ly-defined over­all “pub­lic health” goal (which does­n’t fly when it’s the unvac­ci­nat­ed who are shown suf­fer­ing).

    Per­son­al­ly, I agree with the per­son who did die. If that sounds insane and beyond con­sid­er­a­tion, you are not “seek­ing under­stand­ing”. Free­dom is worth a lot, and it nat­u­ral­ly comes at a high cost. When peo­ple decide for them­selves, they will have to shoul­der the con­se­quences, good and bad. That’s part of free­dom and that is part what gives it its val­ue. The alter­na­tive is turn­ing peo­ple into cat­tle.

    In the case of Covid this can mean get­ting it and like­ly sur­viv­ing it, or get­ting it and (depend­ing on comor­bid­i­ty) rarely or very rarely dying from it. And sure, the lat­er would suck and you might have sur­vived with a vac­ci­na­tion. You might have also still died from it. Or you might even have adverse side effects now, or in the future.

    Health deci­sions are com­plex and per­son­al — and it’s the free­dom of every indi­vid­ual to make that deci­sion.

    And yeah, I get that you (and the mak­ers of that video) have the best inten­tions, but you also know where that road leads.

  • William Mullaney says:

    Here is some Enlight­en­ment thoughts. Social con­tract polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy which is part and par­cel to the foun­da­tion of Amer­i­can free­dom, clear­ly states the need for humans to give up cer­tain per­son­al free­doms found in nat­ur­al law in order to cre­ate a soci­ety that ben­e­fits all who par­tic­i­pate in that soci­ety. This con­tract will by neces­si­ty evolve with the soci­ety. Nobody is being threat­ened with loss of lib­er­ty unless of course, you include those who must be iso­lat­ed in hos­pi­tals due to Covid. In times of nation­al emer­gency, Amer­i­cans have been called upon to make sac­ri­fices for the good of the nation. A pan­dem­ic that has already been respon­si­ble for more deaths than any war or oth­er dis­as­ter to ever strike Amer­i­ca cer­tain­ly qual­i­fies. The prob­lem here is the inabil­i­ty of too many Amer­i­cans to be will­ing to do what Amer­i­cans in the past have done in order to meet a nation­wide threat. They too often do this while label­ing them­selves patri­ots. This is mis­guid­ed and indi­cates a seri­ous mis­un­der­stand­ing of our his­to­ry and the philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings of Amer­i­ca.

  • Lynn says:

    With “rights” and “free­doms” come respon­si­bil­i­ty and account­abil­i­ty. Oth­er­wise, you are oper­at­ing from a child­ish stance of, “I want what I want when and how I want it.” There’s no matu­ri­ty or reci­procity or the oblig­a­tions of an adult cit­i­zen. In a ‑society‑, where we live togeth­er in ‑community‑, the gov­ern­ment is bur­dened with seek­ing the high­est good for ALL, which unfor­tu­nate­ly may inter­fere, from time to time, with our self­ish and self-cen­tered imme­di­ate wants and desires. But as grown-ups, we learn that some­times we have to sac­ri­fice our desires for the good of the many. When YOUR actions, (or lack there­of) name­ly, demand­ing not to be vac­ci­nat­ed, impinge on MY health, and MY free­doms and those around you/us, and your con­cern remains YOU and you alone, the gov­ern­ment may step in as one would with a recal­ci­trant, obsti­nate, and defi­ant child who seeks only his own best wel­fare (and not even that). Unvac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple are spread­ing this virus and cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment for more vir­u­lent strains. You and peo­ple like you are the ones keep­ing this econ­o­my from open­ing up more freely and cre­at­ing a feel­ing of safe­ty so that my fam­i­ly and friends and I feel safe to trav­el and go to restau­rants and live life more nor­mal­ly. How you think ANYONE ‑enjoys- wear­ing masks and not liv­ing life as we once did is DELUSIONAL! Real­ly? I just don’t want to die like my cousin did, my friend from child­hood or my husband’s part­ner in the police depart­ment just this last week. You are the one twist­ing real­i­ty to suit your nar­ra­tive. Try work­ing in an ICU unit or the ER for a month and come back to us spew­ing about your “rights” and lib­er­ty. How about the rights of nurs­es and doc­tors to not have to treat the 95% of patients sick with the vari­ant who refused the vac­cine that would have pre­vent­ed their care. The self­ish­ness of anti-vaxxers bog­gles the mind. We’re sup­posed to uni­fy on such crises—the UNITED States. You are only about YOU. Togeth­er we stand, divid­ed we fall, and all that. And we are falling.

  • Sylvia says:

    AMEN

  • Tulin Demirmen says:

    Well said..but how do you reach to those unvac­ci­nat­ed, self­ish peo­ple before anoth­er and even stronger vari­ant comes along? Their behav­ior is some­thing I can­not com­pre­hend. Maybe they should not be giv­en pri­or­i­ty at ICU’s instead of the heart attack, or acci­dent or can­cer patients. I don’t mean to be heart­less but some­thing has to be done. I don’t want to be a sta­tis­tic because of them.

  • Art S. says:

    Mani­acs. Does­n’t mat­ter that the “vaxxed” are more like­ly to be infect­ed as non, there are already 13,000+ deaths from them just in the U. S. (which actu­al­ly indi­cates 100,000+ to 1,000,000 deaths, accord­ing to Har­vard stud­ies on the VAERS report­ing sys­tem), the Pfiz­er CEO open­ly says he does­n’t want a “vaxx” since he’s “59 and in good health,” “vaxxes” wors­en ADE, those of us who’ve had “COVID-19” already have bet­ter nat­ur­al immu­ni­ty than those who’ve been “vaxxed,” the “vaxxed” have more break­through cas­es, the “vaxx” does­n’t stop the dis­ease or its trans­mis­sion, it’s linked to miscarriages/prostate problems/infertility/permanent heart dam­age, that these “vaxx” com­pa­nies are known vio­la­tors and killers who’ve paid out bil­lions in fines in the past, that Israel’s COVID cas­es surged after mass “vac­ci­na­tions,” that Big Phar­ma pays for 75 per­cent of the FDA’s bud­get, etc. etc. etc. Are you that gullible? It’s like liv­ing with peo­ple per­ma­nent­ly stuck in “I BELIEVE THE FAUCI GOD” men­tal­i­ty. All for what? A virus that 99.7+ per­cent survive–with the medi­an age of “COVID deaths” (open­ly known as WITH “COVID,” not FROM “COVID”) in the 80s. Such peo­ple are sim­ply des­per­ate­ly cling­ing to a crack­pot reli­gion and can­not be rea­soned with. When they believe that masks actu­al­ly stop virus­es, and that the elites aren’t affect­ed by “COVID” and there­fore can do with­out lock­ing down, masks, social dis­tanc­ing, etc.–their brains are hope­less­ly short-cir­cuit­ed. Total­ly bonkers.

  • Jeff W says:

    The Pfiz­er CEO has been vac­ci­nat­ed. You’re refer­ring to a social media post that is a flat out lie. The Pfiz­er CEO delayed a trip to Israel because he was wait­ing on his sec­ond shot. The rea­son he hadn’t already had the sec­ond shot was because he didn’t want to “jump to the front of the line”. Look it up. Do your research before you spout off. Any cor­re­la­tion between Har­vard and VAERS is a lie. Do your research. The VAERS web­site col­lects anec­do­tal reports. Any­one can post any­thing they want. The VAERS web­site does not pro­vide the results of a study. It’s a pub­lic bul­letin board. Do your research. Do your research. Just because some­thing is post­ed on social media it doesn’t mean it’s true. It means it was post­ed by some­one. Ask your­self who post­ed it and what are the sources for their asser­tions. I’m a pas­tor. I had 2 non-vac­ci­nat­ed parish­ioners die or Covid last week. Do your research. Do your research. Do your research. Who told you these things? Who are they? What are their cre­den­tials? Just because some­one posts some­thing in Face­book, Twit­ter, or some wack-a- do web­site it doesn’t mean it’s true. We pay too much for drugs. No doubt. But “Big Phar­ma” doesn’t need to start a pan­dem­ic to make mon­ey.

    Any­one can claim any­thing to be true. That doesn’t mean it’s true. The anti- vaxxers talk about sheeple. I do funer­als for the non- vac­ci­nat­ed.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.