This story broke a few days ago as what might be seen as a minor illustrative account about how a few people try to hide the fact that they went against the beliefs of their peer group and got vaccinated. However, as media observers say, it has had legs. It is still being reported on today. See web news search here.
Above: Click to enlarge the title and illustration I initially used for the diary when I first posted it before I was inspired by Hucksters who commented “I wondered what all those people lined up at Walgreens with paper bags on their heads were doing” and change my own illustration
You can see the articles that caught my attention under the Groucho glasses in the Top Stories section in Google News this morning in the illustration above. Here they are:
Excerpt from Daily News article:
“I work closely with our pharmacists who are leading our vaccine efforts through our organization,” Dr. Priscilla Frase, hospitalist and chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare, said in a video the health care facility posted to Facebook. “One of them told me the other day that they have had several people who have come in to get vaccinated who have kind of tried to disguise their appearance. They even went so far as to say, ‘Please, please, please, don’t let anybody know that I got this vaccine. I don’t want my friends to know. I don’t want to get COVID. I want to get the vaccine.’ "
This is a small story, a vignette really, from a hospitalist who is chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Missouri. How many people nationwide are donning disguises in addition to their masks to keep their anti-vaxxer family and friends from finding out can only be guessed at. Some people who want to keep their vaccination secret could chose to go to a site very far from where they live rather than risk running into someone they know who flies a Trump flag on their front lawn who, I’d like to think, may be picking up morning after pills and also would rather not be recognized.
Of course people should understand that like physicians, pharmacists are bound by HIPPA laws and even if these didn’t exist they would have to keep information like a patient’s vaccination status confidential.
I’d like to believe that no matter their politics a pharmacist, or anyone else involved in the Covid vaccination effort, would not go home and tell their anti-vaxxer friends “you’ll never believe who I gave a Covid shot to this afternoon.”
I usually save my one-eyed screaming monster image (from InPixio) for news that is, well, eye popping and outrageous. This story doesn’t exactly surprise me and it isn’t all that outrageous, but it is illustrative of the way that a crucial public health measure proven to save lives has, I venture to postulate, for the first time in world history been undermined by people who think getting the same shot the president they zealously support got would somehow show disloyalty to him.
It’s no wonder that the fact that Trump himself was vaccinated makes no difference to them. Consider this from July 16th: “Donald Trump’s latest dangerous vaccine pronouncement.”
Excerpt:
"People are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth."
In that single line, the former president of the United States, who is, without any question the most influential person in the Republican Party today, affirms the totally misguided doubts people have about receiving the highly effective Covid-19 vaccine while painting the vaccine push in a partisan light with the comparison to the 2020 election.
In short: It's a remarkably dangerous thing for anyone to say -- much less a former president. That Trump said it in the midst of a surge in cases -- fueled almost exclusively by unvaccinated people
living in areas that he won in 2020 -- makes it even worse.
Maybe this story does deserve this monster:
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