Anti-Mitigation Groups Have Formed a Death Cult

Over the weekend anti-vax protestors showed up at Los Angeles's Dodger Stadium, the largest vaccination site in the country, and staged a protest. Police said the protest was peaceful.  But the fire department closed the entrance to prevent them from moving onto the grounds or getting killed by traffic.

In the end they didn't prevent anyone from getting a vaccination who had an appointment, but they did hold up the line for about an hour. In my option, these protestors are very lucky the people waiting in line didn't jump out of their cars and beat them senseless.  

You have to wonder what these crackpots thought they would accomplish with their protest. People who are there already accept the truth that vaccines are protective, and don't think COVID-19 is a hoax. Did they think they would win converts? It was a fool's errand, kind of like holding an atheism demonstration outside the entrance to St. Peter's.

Now it seems that the anti-vaxxers are increasingly joining forces with the anti-mitigation crowd. This summer there was an anti-vaxxer named Dr. Rashid Buttar who eagerly took up the anti-mask cause, saying he saw the pandemic as an opportunity. 

Since then, according to Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, the two movements have been merging due to efforts by the far right to radicalize people they see as kindred spirits. “What started as essentially wine moms and health-conscious yoga types has become in short order the militant wing of the COVID-19 insurrection,” he said. 

So, we have groups holding the idea that mask mandates are un-American violation of our God-given rights. Increasingly these same people regard vaccinations at least dangerous, and probably part of some larger conspiracy to control the "sheeple."

Let that sink in.  On one hand, these folks don't want the government telling them what to do with respect to the pandemic. One the other hand, they're resisting the one and only thing that could remove the need for the government to tell people what to do. Apparently in this belief system the only virtuous option is to do nothing and take your chances with the virus. In other words, it's a death cult.

It is tempting to regard these people as kooks. Maybe we can safely ignore them and look forward to a little schadenfreude when they suffer the evolutionary consequences of their ignorant beliefs.

But the death cultists are threatening and otherwise disrupting people's lives. Last spring, armed groups protesting pandemic restrictions entered the Michigan legislature. More recently, anti-vaxxers have engaged in sustained harassment of a nurse (and a hospital that employs her) who they wrongly believe died from a SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.

So, the death cult can't be safely ignored. Yet with social media growing its membership, it's not clear what can be done to limit its growth and influence. We have our work cut out for us.

Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay