The vaccine debate keeps denying the moral agency of people who refuse vaccinations

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.editorialboard.com/the-vaccine-debate-keeps-denying-the-moral-agency-of-people-who-refuse-vaccinations/


That some southerners are refusing to get vaccinated against the covid and are instead eating horse paste, or injecting sheep drench, has sparked yet another round of tedious debate over “messaging.” If federal officials could say the right thing at the right time for the benefit of the right people, then surely misinformed southerners would get vaccinated and this goddamn pandemic would be over. The time for persuasion is gone, though. It was gone before it began.

The debate certainly appears to be reasonable, so reasonable, as a matter of fact, that it demands a near-daily airing on cable news. After all, if southerners are willing to ingest ivermectin, a drug used to kill parasites in large domestic animals, then surely the problem is lack of public trust in public institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in political leaders or in the health care system itself.

All of these assumptions about why southerners are refusing to get vaccinated against the covid and thus prolonging the pandemic are wrong. They are wrong for a very simple reason: No one needs good information to know why medicine is good. No one needs “effective leadership” to know sheep drench is for sheep. Grown men and women gladly trust public institutions during emergencies. They know what they should do and why. They are choosing not to. Messaging, leadership and public trust — these are not the problem. The problem is suicidal authoritarian politics. Persuasion’s got nothing to do with it.

This long and boring debate over messaging, leadership and trust has a glaring, even blinding, omission few of its participants seem willing to acknowledge. That omission is this — paste eaters and sheep drenchers are moral agents. They are making choices, good or bad. They can be held accountable for those choices, good or bad. Yet so much of the debate over messaging, leadership and trust refuses to respect adults as moral agents. It treats them, instead, like children.

*snip*

[lagomorph777]

1. Neigh, say I. Baaaahh, humbug. They are acting like sheep.

Being led to slaughter.

[PSPS]

2. Trump made it part of the culture wars. It's as simple as that.

If you're MAGA, you will refuse masks, vaccines, etc. It's now part of their belief system and, thus, impossible to crack. The only thing to do at this point is quit trying "messaging" and all the other nonsense. They booed trump when he said to get the vaccine because, according to their belief system, which is reinforced on a daily basis by social media and their other propaganda media, they figured he didn't really mean it.

Just stop mollycoddling the MAGA and move on with mandates and, if necessary, forced confinement. They're a write-off at this point. The longer we try to accommodate the "thinking process" of the MAGA, the longer the sane world will suffer.

[Texaswitchy]

7. Yes.

What you said.

[brewens]

3. I decided to quit taunting the COVIDiots to make them dig in deeper. We really do

want them to get vaccinated. Talk about being owned though. It's working. Trashing them for being morons and not getting vaccinated is only making them more stubborn. They would rather die.

[lame54]

4. It's not a deserved lack of trust...

It's an invented one

[zipplewrath]

5. I'm struggling with origination

I'm struggling with the concept of the vaccine resistant to demand some sort of contact with the origin of the source of the information that demonstrates the effectivity of the vaccine. It's there, but they want it hand delivered to them by sources they trust. It's never coming since the sources they trust would rather see them die than tell them what they need to hear. For me, the problem is that I have a hard time caring that the GQP will have thousands fewer votes because of people that wouldn't listen to people that weren't on FOX.

[Scrivener7]

8. OMG, YES!!!! This SO much! They have made their choice. It's time for us to stop

wringing our hands and wondering what we could have done to make them "understand" better. They understand perfectly. And they make this choice anyway!

It's time for the rest of us to move on and do what we need to do to stop the pandemic. Exclude the nonvaccinated from as much of the public square as we are legally able. Make vax refusers last in line for ICU beds. Require masking wherever we can.

I don't like this fact, but it is a fact: they will all get Covid or ivermectin poisoning in the next few months. Many will die. THIS IS THEIR CHOICE. We have done everything possible to change that choice, and they still make that choice. All we can do now is keep our distance while the wave washes over them and either kills them or makes them immune.

All I care about right now is that we get a vaccine for children and we are able to distance ourselves from the great unvaxxed. I don't care what happens to them.

[alwaysinasnit]

9. Are they also making the argument for being pro-choice? Refusing to respect women as moral

agents... Treating them, instead, like children. In forcing women to carry to term, the net effect is treating potential life (embryo) as having superior rights than the woman carrying that embryo.