We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children?

Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom. pic.twitter.com/XrI2tjdAHW

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 8, 2021

I was getting ready to write about Sen. Rand Paul’s manifesto above ( he really is a libertarian, isn’t he?) when Humble Talent’s Comment of The Day, on the post “Theater Ethics Meets Pandemic Ethics: If I Were Still Running My Theater Company And We Had A Large Cast Show In Production…”

Perfect timing, and my favorite kind: it saved me the effort of writing a post. This should open up the pandemic and vaccine debate nicely, and get it out of the constricting limitation of live theater.

Heeeeeeere’s Humble…!

***

I find these Covid threads just… really tedious.

I have found common cause with the American left on precious few issues in my lifetime, and I often find that even when I agree with them, they put the issue forward in the most obnoxious and useless way possible: They mock, they demean, they use bad arguments, and even when they’ve come to the right conclusion they rarely understand the source material. It’s frustrating.

But on this one discrete topic…. I understand mocking anti-vaxxers.

Sorry guys, if you’re in the vaccine skeptic group… You are being dumb. Your body your right, yada yada yada. Sure. You have the right to be dumb. Just because it’s your right to be an idiot doesn’t shield you from the consequences of being an idiot. And while telling you that you’re an idiot, pressuring you not to be an idiot, and there being consequences to being an idiot might harm your tender egos, America isn’t going to end.

The reason why I feel on this one discrete topic, mocking anti-vaxxers, particularly American anti-vaxxers is appropriate is because there was no convincing you. On this topic, more than any other in recent history, you are completely information resistant.

“Well Jeff! Look at Israel, they’re having a spike right now, and most of their cases are breakthrough cases, how do you explain that?!?!”

Because everyone is experiencing a spike right now, international travel isn’t completely locked down, the vaccines were never sold as being 100% effective and as new variants come out the efficacy is only going to lower, and because more than 95% of Israeli adults are vaccinated. So when anyone in Israel gets Covid it is orders of magnitude more likely that the case will be a breakthrough than a non-vaccinated case.

More, Israel is currently experiencing an average of 250 new cases per 100,000 people per day. Which is significantly lower than Florida, at 950 new cases per 100,000 people per day, despite having a population density two and a half times that of Florida. Israel’s new case rate is lower, their hospitalization rate is lower, and their mortality rate is lower.

And this should surprise no one. These questions are not hard to answer. The information is out there.

But you have decided to exhibit the EXACT same behaviors that have been previously mocked here when describing Democrats: You are taking in surface level information that is reinforcing the position you want to have, placing your fingers in your ears and screaming “WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL” as loud as you can.

The worst part about this is that in America, this is largely a political snafu: Before being elected, Kamala Harris said that she wouldn’t take a Trump vaccine because she just couldn’t trust them, and then, basically the moment she won, she did a complete 180 on the topic. And, purely coincidentally, that was about the same time that the bobbleheads on the media stopped pumping the tires on vaccine hesitancy and Retards For Freedom started looking for a reason to pick up their dropped torch.

I’m kidding, in case you missed it: that’s not a coincidence. Oh, I’m sure that some of you might have been hesitant, but that just means you joined the RFF earlier than most. Vaccines have been a reality of life for decades: Most people who went to school before 1972 have one of the original vaccine passports: The smallpox vaccine scar. Most states have vaccination requirements to go to public school. Immigrants to America are required to prove certain immunizations before their application can be processed.

How many of you, your word to God’s ear, actually managed to go your entire life without a vaccine?

But unlike all those other vaccines that you took unquestioningly, this isn’t a vaccine for a rare disease that is mostly relegated to the dustbin of history, or random flareups in RFF communities. This isn’t a condition like tetanus which isn’t spread by people, and only has personal ramifications.

Part of the way that Freedom works is by having people come together like a community, to make good choices, both for themselves personally, and for the people around them. Freedom isn’t just the ability to mewl like a manbaby about how hard done you are when your friends and community exercise their right to have nothing to do with you, it also includes the responsibility not to be a retard.

And you are failing.