All of it is driven by the for profit healthcare industry, in the end.
Why do MAGA chucklefucks not trust the healthcare industry and think vaccines are poison? Because they're aware of the reality of the healthcare industry mostly existing to turn a profit, and not existing to help patients. Honestly, most MAGA chucklefucks are upset about the same shit we are but they lack the education to know and understand the sources of their troubles, and instead resort to idiocy like racism. They're smart enough to pinpoint the medical/pharmaceutical industry as a problem, but they're not smart enough to figure out that it is specifically the US's way of doing it that makes it so hard on them and that the pharmaceutical companies may be selfish and greedy, but they tend to not be completely outright evil and looking to kill people (dead people can't pay recurring medical bills). Worse, they're also not smart enough to understand (or not compassionate enough to care, maybe?) how their rejection of vaccines hurts other people in the process.
On top of that is the very real issue that COVID vaccines are no longer paid for by the US government, have inconsistent coverage on where you can get it (my partner was turned away at CVS because her insurance wasn't accepted there, mine was. She had to wait two more weeks to get a jab elsewhere), and for the uninsured, it's completely cost-prohibitive. It's over $200 which is not an amount of money most US citizens have laying around every six months for a current COVID booster on a disease that isn't going away.
The corporate and political class are literally bleeding the workers of the US dry and making them unhealthy, long-term, and they don't care as long as their profits in the short-term are "good enough."
EDIT: Describing behavior is not excusing behavior. There's a reason I included the "or not compassionate enough to care" because god damn, that's a lot of them.
Another issue is we have got to stop accepting so many reasons to not vaccinate your kids.
What's the point of having a policy for vaccinations when half the country just keeps going "It's against my religion" when no religion (except maybe Scientology) is new enough to have addressed things like vaccines. It seems clear a majority of them are just people who don't like the idea of vaccinations and are using religion as an easy cudgel to get out of it.
I mean, you know, how religious people always use their religion. As a cudgel. To not have to follow the same rules as everyone else.
Sorry. You somehow got "Oh, the MAGAts are actually protesting the health care system" out of this?
Also: Yes, the for profit health care system is massively fucked. The covid vaccination program actually was an example of doing things right. Government subsidized with a lot of resources put toward solving the problem.
And this went on long before the current shitshow where CVS will actively refuse to use any of the government assistance programs because it results in a lower bottom line.
Your heart is (probably) in the right place. But could we not defend selfish dumbfuck science deniers in our quest to talk about the problems with the health care system? They are fucking morons and it is killing not just them but others. End of story.
Understanding and explaining how people may develop a perspective is not a defense of those people or their perspective. Simply saying "They're morons, end of story" is unproductive. Denouncing a nuanced examination of the problem of distrust in healthcare is counterproductive. You can humanize without condoning. And clearly the intention was to address the problem in a meaningful way.
Or maybe I'm mistaken and the solution is "Stop being morons. End of story." /s
Thank you very much for the best diagnosis of this country I’ve yet to read on here! I could agree more, and it’s frankly rather heartbreaking to see people exploited by right wing psychopaths simply because they’re too uneducated to know any better.
The US may be heading to a "dangerous vaccination tipping point," with immunization rates falling so low that population-level immunity is now at risk, and we will likely see thousands of needless deaths this respiratory virus season, two top officials for the Food and Drug Administration warned in a recent JAMA commentary. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and top FDA vaccine regulator Peter Marks noted the profound benefits of vaccines—which save millions of lives in the US each year—and their established safety, which is monitored both passively and actively through multiple overlapping federal safety monitoring systems. And yet, "an increasing number of people in the US are now declining vaccination for a variety of reasons, ranging from safety concerns to religious beliefs," thanks to the rise of anti-vaccine misinformation spread on social media and elsewhere on the Internet. - TV-MA, 58 mins
Problem is that it puts people at risk that cannot get vaccines for legit medical reasons or don't have access to a place where they can get vaccinated
It can also put kids of anti-vaxxers at risk that know their parents are stupid
Herd immunity is vulnerable to the free rider problem. Individuals who lack immunity, including those who choose not to vaccinate, free ride off the herd immunity created by those who are immune. As the number of free riders in a population increases, outbreaks of preventable diseases become more common and more severe due to loss of herd immunity.
The freaking science teacher at my old school didn't understand what herd immunity is. This was before COVID when vaccine retardedness was just a growing chorus of idiocy from right wing radio. Which the science teacher listened to constantly.