When I read Kos community and staff ridiculing Republicans I hear enraged screamers at Gay Pride marches in the ‘80s and 90’s. Read on.
Kos has a blind spot on vaccine hesitancy: we read here often that “being Republican” is the problem from both staff writes who are ordinarily quite brilliant — Mark Sumner, and from community writers.
The reality is that being poor, and being poorly educated often lead to bad decisions. These include voting against your own economic interests — voting Republican — but also making bad decisions about your health.
No political party is immune to bad health decisions.
Smoking is a common bad health decision. Interestingly, more Democrats than Republicans smoke. It’s arguably the greatest preventable burden on our healthcare system there is. Obama smoked.
Vaccine hesitancy is another. More Republicans lack vaccinations than Democrats. It’s also an arguably huge preventable burden on our healthcare system.
Ridiculing people not taking vaccines, calling them names and shaming them doesn’t work.
Let’s tie this to Gay Pride.
Like some enraged bigot calling me a disease-carrying faggot at the height of the AIDS epidemic and telling me to die, it’s a bad look. It certainly didn’t make me stop being gay, or having sex.
Remarkably for them perhaps, 40 years into the AIDS pandemic I’m neither positive nor dead. It simply made them look intolerant and crazy then. Raging rabidly at people (Republicans), or people in states (Alabama, Mississippi) or regions (The South) not getting vaccinated now is not a much better look. It’s still intolerant raging bigots.
When I read Kos community and staff ridiculing Republicans I hear screamers at Gay Pride marches in the ‘80s and 90’s
What is a good progressive position?
Today in the New York Times is an excellent opinion article from Saad P. Omer from the Yale Global Health Initiative. Doctors and Nurses Are The Key to the Final Vaccine Push
As I’ve been sharing in comments on articles, people who make bad choices in vaccination need to listen to facts from people they trust in language they understand to make better decisions.
The most trusted people, according to 20 years of research from Yale, are people’s healthcare providers, their own doctors and nurses.
Next time someone you meet who is deluded and repeating healthcare advice from crazyland TV about Covid, be empathetic. Listen to them in their own language. We all meet these people. I have, more often than I anticipated. Then ask them if they’ve talked with their doctor, a nurse-practitioner, perhaps someone from a local clinic.
Don’t tell them what’s right or wrong, (Godzilla knows I do all the time.) But tell them that your own doctor helped you make decisions you’re comfortable with. You’re more comfortable with your doctor than someone yelling on TV. Your doctor or nurse knows you, and they know whats important for you to know. That you don’t get medical advice from anyone who doesn’t know you personally.
As the article concludes:
The most effective vaccine message is one that comes from a trusted source and not only leads the listeners to get vaccinated but also motivates them to encourage others around them to do so as well. This is what we need, as people become complacent with the benefits of others getting vaccinated. Health care providers hold this sway, and all health workers need to push toward higher vaccination rates together.
Be a motivator. Not an enraged bigot.
Don’t be the enraged intolerant person who screamed diseased faggot at me in the 1980’s. The person who said everyone in San Francisco needed to die. Who screamed at gay pride that all faggots needed to die.
Because there really isn’t much difference between rabid crazies screaming diseased Republican I hope you die did and diseased faggot I hope you die, is there?
Read the article and motivate yourself.