Lemme tell you the story of the first time I really talked to an antivaccer. Been on my mind lately even though this happened years ago.
For context, I'm super pro vacc to the point that I felt proud of having basically harangued half my family into getting it. And alll the news I was exposed to was basically painting people who opposed the vaccine as ignorant and stupid.
Then I decided to take a solo trip across the country. First thing I did after getting the jab. And one night, I was camping in rural Colorado. Not the mountanous part, the plains that seem almost like a continuation of Kansas. And I got to talking to this guy who worked construction in the area, who hadn't gotten the vacc and couldn't be convinced to. And I was getting frustrated with him.
But then he called me a "rich city bitch" or something along those lines, and started telling me about why. That when he was young, how the medical industry had brought this "great" new medicine to town, opioids, and really pushed it. A lot of people found relief using them at first, most jobs around were hard manual labor and the doctors pushed them hard for chronic pain, workplace injuries, pretty much everything. People started getting addicted, got demonized by the medical industry for being "drug seeking" and turned elsewhere to get opioids. Lots of people OD'd, he had family members lost to addiction. All because of shit that the doctors said was totally safe and reccomended, and pushed hard.
And now the doctors are coming around pushing something new? Fuck that, do they think we're fuckin stupid?
And I heard the same story again and again when I talked to people who rejected the vaccine. Talked to a Black guy who mentioned how human experimentation on Black people wasn't too far in the past, shit like the Tusgegee Experiments wasn't ancient history, that's people's grandparents, community elders, etc. And they think they're gonna convince him to let them inject some shit?
It was eye opening to me, and honestly the fact that it was so eye opening just showed how sheltered I was to even have that trust in the medical system.
I went on that trip thinking antivaccers were stupid. And left it thinking the medical industry has so systemically failed and actively harmed so many people that it's pretty reasonable people ain't trusting them anymore.
Now, I'm not an antivaccer at all myself. I know the science, I studied bio and chem and all that in college, but I think my anger's shifted. The media demonizing people who won't get the vaccine absolutely fails to mention the systemic issues that'd very reasonably lead people who didn't have the privelege to take years of college classes on this shit to doubt them. And the condescending tone? Ain't helping.
It also reminds me of the book "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky, which is all about media slant, and how it serves to protect corporate and government interests. And I truly believe that if you see all antivaccers as stupid, and not people responding pretty smartly to a medical industry that has abused their families and communities for profit for generations? You've been a victim of propaganda, that only serves to divide different marganized groups, and keep us like "crabs in a bucket" fighting each other.
