[dham]

To be fair, a lot of doctors were sounding the alarm in 2021 that forcing the Covid shot was going to cause blow back. They said word for word, that we might see the rise of measles and other similar diseases. It's actually very well documented on zdoggmd youtube channel (podcast) during this time. But there were tons of doctors saying the same thing.

[jleyank]

Because the docs knew that far too many people would rather face risk to avoid doing what they’re told to do. And far too many people just don’t give a shit about other people. The npc’s aren’t real or pertinent.

[_m_p]

How did taking it benefit other people?

[expedition32]

Actually there has been an unholy alliance between Christ clowns and new age hippies against modern medicine looooong before COVID.

[cosmicgadget]

Yeah but they used to live on the fringes of social media. Now they run the executive.

[TheCoelacanth]

In what sense was anyone in the US forced to get a Covid shot? I know many acquaintances who never did.

[mindslight]

While it's understandable that intelligent people eventually come to the conclusion of figuring out how they can change themselves, we need to stop absolving the destructionists of responsibility. The political machine that made a public health emergency into a political issue did much more damage to our country than the vaccines being practically, but temporarily, mandatory.

[dham]

It's not temporary though. The Covid vaccine push has caused an entire generation to now doubt simple life-saving vaccines. They erased a century of goodwill.

[Ar-Curunir]

And the alternative was… what? Continue having people die because of Covid

[nolok]

It's my experience that a major part of the "anti covid vax and measures" point of view depends on refusing to understand that people who get grave form of covid but don't die from it still saturated hospital causing side deaths from other causes.

[derbOac]

Yeah I saw this blowback coming, but two wrongs (to the extent you see the first as a wrong) don't make a right.

There's no reason to be hindering availability of safe and effective vaccines because a previous administration made it mandatory for some people to get some vaccines.

[constantius]

Can people stop flagging dham's comment when they simply disagree?

FWIW, I think what you're saying here and in another comment, about this burning a century of good will, is true.

People turn it into a liberal vs right partisan issue, but that's a convenient simplification.

The people protesting the lockdowns, mandatory vaccination, ID checks everywhere were not politically homogenous: if you looked at who was vocal about it, there were people on the right, but the other half were wokes, hippies, liberals, leftists, socialists, antifascists.

What burned goodwill is the authoritarian measures, the weak arguments, the demonisation of those against it for political gain and status (Trudeau and Biden would routinely accuse those opposed to mandatory vaccination and lockdowns of various -isms in public speeches).

The pandemic was indeed a major public health issue, but the way this was managed made it about a fight against the erosion of rights and societal polarisation.