General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFux Noise Is Moving From 'Just Asking Questions' to Full-On Anti-Vax Crapola
Last week, we suggested that well-meaning liberal concern about the Delta Variant, fueled by obsessive media coverage, was beginning to verge on hysteria. The vaccines still work against the Delta Variant, so the way forward at this point is to keep calm, carry on, and get as many people as possible vaccinated as quickly as possible. It is not realistic to expect Americans to go back into lockdown unless a variant emerges that can evade the vaccines, and that emergence becomes more likely the more unvaccinated people there are around to spread the thing. All of this is to say that what appears to be a new kind of anti-vax push on the American right is, even by the standards of the American right, particularly grotesque. The swimming pool is finally reopening amid a head wave and they're taking a big dump in the shallow end.
Matt Gertz of MediaMatters spends a lot of time monitoring right-wing media, and on Thursday he reported that the babbling over there has moved towards more straightforward anti-vaccine rhetoric. (Up until now, the primary mode outside the true fever-swamp precincts has been Just Asking Questionsor, in Tucker Carlson's case, Just Asking Questions about why no one is allowed to ask questions, which in turn leaves the viewer believing there are not just questions to be asked but answers that are bad, even though we're still actually dealing in questions about questions.) Gertz provided four examples of this new shift from the last day of conservative infotainment programming.
Candace Owens, a star of the Trump era thanks to her overnight conversion to "conservatism" after running a blog of a very different persuasion, offered this to her 2.7 million followers Wednesday afternoon:
Link to tweet
Unabashed! Freedumb! Family! Infringed! Government bad! Meanwhile, there is no actual reason supplied for her choice. The fact that Owens is free to make this choice, which is true, somehow becomes the justification for making the choice. The subtext, as it always is in reactionary thought, is that The Enemies want you to make the other choice, thus this is the choice to make.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/fox-news-moving-just-asking-154100937.html
This response to Owens was great.
Link to tweet
underpants
(182,279 posts)Wow
East-A-Squared
(14,505 posts)Escurumbele
(3,340 posts)She talks about "Medical Freedom"? How hypocritical is that?
underpants
(182,279 posts)Its a big hit on talk radio.
Javaman
(62,442 posts)underpants
(182,279 posts)to keep their share of the right wing market. You hear legacy media a lot on talk radio but that not just CNN, the networks and the Times/Post thats new start ups trying to ween viewers away from Fox. Newsmax and OANN are the two TV operations but they have nowhere near the resources needed to really battle Fox. They are all setting their hair on fire daily to make noise and get attention. Fox oddly is following THEM down rabbit holes.
Trump was huge for everyones ratings.
Mopar151
(9,965 posts)Literally....
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)medical exemptions.
Runningdawg
(4,496 posts)oldsoftie
(12,410 posts)PortTack
(32,606 posts)Someone disabled or dead from covid.
I have no pity!!
mnhtnbb
(31,319 posts)All they have to do is put out an announcement that as of January 1, 2022 if you haven't been vaccinated, your premiums are going up. And if you end up with COVID and have to be hospitalized? Well, guess what? The cost of treatment is added to your deductible.
But they won't do it. Instead, they'll be raising premiums on everyone because they are going to have to cover the cost of hospitalizations of these anti-vax idiots.
But first, the FDA needs to give full approval. There's more than enough data out there about the vaccines for them to do so. I don't think that any other medicine that they have approved in the past has more data.
Once the FDA does that, insurance companies can bring the hammer down on the unvaccinated.
oldsoftie
(12,410 posts)If they know everything they need to know, whats the holdup?
I know there's no way to measure long term effects without actual time going by, but isnt there a way to skip that?
People are always saying the FDA takes far too long to approve drugs. I'm not up to speed on how it could safely be sped up but the vax seems like a good start
Yavin4
(35,357 posts)they going to find religion all of the sudden?
Also, for all of the anti-vaxxers that eat gross shit every day from places like Taco Bell and Subway, shit that cannot even be classified as food, they're going to be pure when it comes to the vaccine?
oldsoftie
(12,410 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)roamer65
(36,739 posts)Hey Candace,
Come out and play with me.
I dont bite...
🦠
Delta.
Scottie Mom
(5,812 posts)roamer65
(36,739 posts)Seriously. Let natural selection run its course.
Dont let people like her in the hospitals. Send them home with some aspirin.
Escurumbele
(3,340 posts)Vincent Bugliosi sent Charles Manson to jail even though Manson had not committed the murders himself, but he was found guilty because he was the master mind of the criminal acts and thus he was as guilty, or more, of those who did.
In Bugliosi's book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" he lays out a blueprint for prosecuting Bush and his cronies for the murders of Iraqi civilians and US soldiers because they knowingly sent them to their deaths, he is using the same rules that sent Manson to life in prison.
I wonder if the same rules Bugliosi used against Manson and those he proposed for Bush et al could be used against these republicans, and TV loud mouths at Fox, who some of them have been vaccinated, but are urging their followers to fight against the vaccine knowing they can and that many will die if they contract the COVID-19 virus, in other words, they are sending their believers to their deaths.
They should start with Tucker Carlson, he is the biggest spreader of lies about the vaccine and has a following who believe in the murderous rhetoric he spews night after night on TV.
Rocknation
(44,555 posts)"Not one person in my family will ever touch the Covid-19 vaccine because it would be tantamount to confessing that I've gambled 'all in' on conservatism in general and Trump in particular, and come up snake eyes. It would be impossible to survive the humiliation of such a gargantuan loss of credibility when I need to retain my place (AND my job) in their government."
Rocknation
oldsoftie
(12,410 posts)I know damn well some of these non-public people I see on FB yapping about it have damn well gotten that shot. They just wont admit it
soldierant
(6,648 posts)be aware of the Tuskegee syphilis project, and Henrietta Lacks, and a few other medical projects which can at best be called "exploitative," I can't consider that person paranoid. Nor can I as a white person, give her (or him) the assurance that the vaccine is a good idea.
I don't say they are not wrong, but I do say they are not stupid, paranoid, or irrational.
Another situation where people striving to be "color-blind" ends up putting people of color at greatest risk.
seta1950
(932 posts)Medical freedom to die, stupid people.
seta1950
(932 posts)Medical freedom to die, stupid people.
Initech
(99,915 posts)"You know, Fox News morphed into a hardcore death cult so fast that nobody really noticed!".
IronLionZion
(45,261 posts)all profiting from killing their customers. Good luck with that.
ScratchCat
(1,957 posts)Is to co-opt "liberal" slogans as their objection to anything positive supported by "the other side".
Their thought process goes like this: "Hey, the libs defend abortion by saying "my body" and "medical choice", so we'll oppose vaccines and masks for the same reason and make them the hypocrites!".
They think they are clever.
Seriously; this is the game they are playing.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)It's not really their choice to make, or shouldn't be. It is for public health as much or more than personal protection. When a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy, it is her body and only her body. She is not affecting the "body politic", not affecting anyone else's health.
In the racist Fifties that they adore, they would not have a choice. Children were either vaccinated or didn't attend school.
But of course logic is beyond people who were convinced emotionally, which is how propaganda works.
DallasNE
(7,392 posts)Anti-government speech has its limits. And that is all this is. There are two Supreme Court decisions that says that. With this disease it is not a case of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". It has no boundaries so whe you refuse the shots and get the virus and pass it on to others it is much like 3rd degree murder when the other person dies. Lock them up.
AncientOfDays
(158 posts)... except if you're a woman - then your reproductive medical should absolutely be controlled by the government --- that's what she and other anti-vaxxers are saying.
BlueWavePsych
(2,634 posts)BSdetect
(8,989 posts)Aussie105
(5,214 posts)'Around the world, XX millions died (*)'
(*) Mostly in poorer countries where vaccinations were too low. Exception was America, where a lot of deaths were the result of certain sections of the media pushing an anti-science anti-vaccination propaganda line.
I guess you can't fix stupid. Especially if certain media outlets breed it and feed it.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)Thrill
(19,178 posts)But want to discourage people from taking it. Cant have it both ways
GoCubsGo
(32,061 posts)A cult is a cult is a cult, I guess.
The Wizard
(12,482 posts)The Wizard
(12,482 posts)crack Pox News medical team to prescribe hemlock.
lonely bird
(1,642 posts)They dont get treated. Actions have consequences.
COL Mustard
(5,783 posts)Thats your right.
Im free to not give a flying fuck what you do or say, and to have no sympathy for you and your family when you contract one of the variants. Thats my right.
I hope that when you and your fellow losers get sick, youre denied treatment. Thats what you deserve.
Have a nice day.