Vaccines Save Lives. Anti-Vax Hysteria Kills.

The GOP’s paranoid reaction to Joe Biden’s statement promoting vaccination.

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On a recent flight from Texas to North Carolina, a woman came so unglued that she tried to open the plane’s door. The flight crew had to bind and gag her with duct tape. This was an extreme example of a disturbing trend in air travel: People are becoming unruly or even hysterical. 

I think this phenomenon is attributable to the mental health toll of the pandemic. And it’s not just affecting air travel. I think it’s contributing to spikes in road rage, crime, and crazy politics. 

Which brings me to the reaction to President Joe Biden’s comments last week. He explained that we’ve moved out of the wholesale approach to vaccination—mass vaccination centers—and must try retail.

“Now we need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes, door to door—literally knocking on doors—to get help to the remaining people,” Biden said. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Lipo Davis

    This article hasn't aged well. Poorly considered. As it happens, Mr. Berenson was right about everything.

    You owe Alex Berenson an apology.

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  2. TragicMishap

    "Of course, there’s plenty of other paranoia and hysteria on the left these days, including about the alleged resurgence of Jim Crow. But at least that paranoia isn’t getting people killed."

    Uh...are you sure about that? I seem to remember some riots over imaginary racial crimes not that long ago where quite a few people were killed.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Will Bates

    If idiots want to jump off a cliff, the small-l-liberal in me wants to say “have at, just miss my car.”

    But when idiots want to jump off a cliff tied to a rope, with the other end tied around my ankle, that small-l-liberal in me gives way to my basic instinct to want to continue living.

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    Rajeev

    Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris was ever anti-vaccine. Trump had been prematurely boasting about a vaccine purely as a political ploy in the early stages. The vaccine was never likely to be ready by election day but he was talking about it as so to provide himself cover. Even Conservative commentators like Erik Erikson (I believe on a Dispatch Podcast) expressed concern about Trump promoting a vaccine that wasn't ready for the public. Given Donald Trump's reckless rhetoric and obsession with Hydroxychloroquine, which provided more danger and no tangible therapeutic value to fighting Covid-19, this is completely reasonable regardless of political affiliation.

    “If public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely,” said Vice-President Harris in her VP debate. That is not at all anti-vaccine and is much more responsible than if a vaccine was unsafe and unapproved and Trump wanted it distributed anyway, which we all know he would do given his pattern of action. Trying to equate Democratic public officials as anti-vaccine is beyond ridiculous. If Trump had been re-elected and Dr Fauci had said it was safe they all would've rushed to help get people vaccinated.

    The need to somehow equate parties without analyzing the facts (both sides-ism) is really the only complaint I have regarding the general tenor of Dispatch articles. It's trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Just because both happen to be wooden has no relevance to the question at hand. This article could've easily cited Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a prominent anti-vaccine individual with historic ties to the Democratic Party. Instead, it takes a quote completely out of context.

    The actual Biden quote was, "And by the way, in terms of the whole notion of a vaccine, we’re for a vaccine, but I don’t trust him at all. Nor do you. I know you don’t. What we trust is a scientist." This was objectively correct as Donald Trump only spoke about the vaccine in terms of an arbitrary date the election date which showed you exactly where his thoughts were.

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    David Chen

    Sometimes I wonder what the view from a 3rd world country must look like:

    3rd World Country: We have no food!
    America: We have eating contests!

    3rd World Country: We have no vaccines!
    America: We created kickass vaccines and are making billions of doses, but we won't take them because freedom, Jesus, and Fox News - or something.

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  6. David A L

    The outrage on the right stems from the tribal instinct "whatever my enemy proposes I must oppose". That, coupled with stupidity and sheer incompetence, accounts for 90% of it.

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    Erroll Treslan

    “ I’m not arguing for the feds to knock on doors to promote getting vaccinated.” Perhaps you should be.

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    BW

    Great job Jonah. File this under people are strange.

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    1. Avatar photo
      SusanC

      You made The Doors start singing in my head… (-:

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    rlritt

    People are stupid, especially Trump supporters.

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  10. CatoTheElder

    And in today’s dose of irony, the replies to the replies to the troll, telling the respondent to said troll not to reply, ‘cuz it just encourages trollism, served to add to the ranking of the troll’s comment, as the replies to replies, and replies to the replies of the replies, and the troll’s further replies to the replies, all come together to give us a troll atop the comment section.

    Lots of good intention, though, and I gotta say, I am continually working on my own anti-troll tactics. Too bad Substack can’t provide a trollbar for our protection. But that would of course be problematic, as the criteria for when the trollbar is deployed would necessarily be subjective.

    So I guess we’re stuck with trolls. I guess we can dye their hair wild colors, comb it straight up, and set ‘em on the counter where the cat can knock ‘em into the garbage disposal.

    Question: If the troll is especially fond of Asian food, are the troll’s comments powered by a troll’s rice engine? Thank you, thank you. Don’t forget to tip the wait staff. And be sure to hang around for the late show, featuring ventriloquist Monte Cristo and his dummy, Al Laxative.

    Now, where were we? Oh, that’s right, trolls, vaccine paranoia manufacturing as a Pavlovian anti-Biden response, and the seriously unglued far right. It’s like an old rancid jar of Planter’s Mixed Nuts. You know what’s in there, and ain’t none of it good.

    There’s the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and the weeping masses, yearning to be free of the nonsense all around.

    How about we tell everyone at CPAC that Biden secretly doesn’t want GOP voters vaccinated, ‘cuz he’s hoping they’ll all get COVID and die.

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    1. GregS

      Yeah giving users the ability to kick out trolls inevitably results in the creation of an echo chamber where any dissenting view is banned.
      And not kicking out trolls results in a devolution of the space.
      Charging for the ability to comment puts the onus on the site's owners to appropriately police the board and remove trolls - this is hard to get right (e.g. NR commenters would just kick out anyone who disagreed back when they used Disqus, and now the boards are only a step better than Breitbart even though only paying users can comment).

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      PeteC

      Since I agree with much of what you say here, I'll just troll you to increase your comment's ranking.

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      rlritt

      "There’s the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and the weeping masses, yearning to be free of the nonsense all around. "

      You are so right! Heaven help us.

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