The unvaccinated are the new Jews
It is almost a year since the covid vaccine first became available. At the beginning of 2021, when it first came out, it was very hard to find. Most people were not eligible, and those who were had a hard time booking appointments. But by April, everyone was eligible, and appointments were pretty easy to come by.
At that time, there was no talk of mandates, though there was a lot of social pressure to vaccinate. By the spring, there were some places locally that were doing events for only vaccinated people, as a way of opening up to doing normal in-person events again. But the real mandates and pressure and vilification of the unvaccinated didn’t really start until the late summer, when we started seeing lots of breakthrough cases.
This makes sense - if a product works amazingly well and is in high demand, it wouldn’t be necessary to mandate it. But if it doesn’t work well and people don’t want it, then only force will compel people. So that’s when we started seeing mandates. First it was individual companies, certain industries in different states like healthcare and schools, and then the federal government mandated it, first for “government contractors” (anyone working for a company that does any business with any part of the federal government) and then the attempt at a mandate for all employers with over 100 employees.
And what we are seeing is many people feeling forced to get the vaccine, and many people deciding they are so opposed to getting it that they would rather lose their jobs than get it. People quitting over vaccine mandates is causing worker shortages in many industries, including hospitals which are supposedly overrun.
At this point, it is clear that someone who is willing to lose their job over this feels very strongly about it - they’re not just “on the fence.” Some people may be more upset about being forced to do anything than the thing itself, but still, people who have held out this long clearly have a “strongly held belief” that these vaccines are something they do not want in their body. And they are willing to sacrifice their freedom and their livelihood for their beliefs.
This brings me to the Jews. For most of the last two thousand years, Jews were a minority in places that made their lives difficult. This might have meant being barred from certain professions, or being considered a “dhimmi” with a lower social status. In more extreme cases, it meant a choice between conversion and either exile or death. Many Jews converted, and many held on to their beliefs. But it must have taken an incredible resolve to stay Jewish when there was an out - just convert and everything will be better.
I think this also helps us understand anti-Semitism. When everyone is doing something, and someone refuses, it is natural to get angry at them. We all accepted Jesus and this guy won’t budge, even after we closed his business, or put him in a ghetto. Who does he think he is?
We are seeing this hatred against the unvaccinated as well. It used to be that if you choose not to protect yourself, it’s your problem. But now people are seething against the holdouts. You can find people literally wishing death upon the unvaccinated.
You might think this is different. Being Jewish isn’t hurting anyone, but spreading a disease hurts people, so it makes sense to force people to comply. But I’ll make two arguments against this, one about religion and one about covid.
First, you might think that based on science, you are right and they are wrong, but that is how people thought about religion in pre-modern times. Rejecting Jesus back then is like rejecting science now. The scary part is that we’ve resorted to religious zeal to convince people of what is supposedly science.
The second point is about the vaccine itself. Remember when the trials were announced, and the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were 95% effective against symptomatic illness? Those trials were done when NO ONE ELSE was vaccinated. So, the vaccines were supposed to be protective to the person taking the vaccine, regardless of what everyone else did. Of course, those trials only ran two months, and we’ve seen that efficacy wanes over a longer period of time. But it’s not the fault of the unvaccinated that you were misled into thinking your vaccine was magic. So don’t take it out on them. Forcing everyone else to make the same mistake you did won’t make things any better.
At this point, 99.9% of people over 65 in the US have had at least one vaccine dose, as have 82% of those over 18 and 80% of those over 121. Focusing all the hate and virtiol at the ever-shrinking percentage of holdouts, who at this point are the true believers in not getting the vaccine, is going to have diminishing returns for overall immunity. But it will take us back to the bad old days of blaming a minority with different beliefs from the rest of us for everything bad in society. It’s not a good place to go.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total