The race to the bottom

Just how low can anti-vaxxers go?

How low can anti-vaxxers* go? It’s a race to the bottom. (Skip this one if you’re done reading about anti-vaxxers, I absolutely understand being over it. I find myself still writing about it all because clearly I’m not over it but I wish I was!)

Auckland is reopening in days.

We can’t wait to see whānau while also facing it all with a lot of trepidation. We’d all feel so much better if the kids could be vaccinated. I have heard some desperate parents of kids with disabilities saying they’d “sign a waiver” to be able to vaccinate their kids now. There’s a lot of fear around opening up for a lot of people - especially those with immune compromised loved ones.

I can’t imagine what it feels like to be up North and rural and Māori facing an onslaught of people who can simply pay $1000 to get through unvaccinated and untested (because let’s face it - fines are only fines if you’re poor, otherwise they’re just the cost of entry).

And in this swirling vortex of uncertainty and stress, the nonsense whinging around the mandate continues. Despite the fact that very few teachers and medical professionals decided to leave their jobs rather than be vaccinated - the focus in mainstream media was on them and not the 99% who are working their asses off as they always have. And now on top of that we have to hear about every white yoga teacher from Parnell to Pahiatua bitching about how they shouldn’t have to care about disabled people if they don’t want to because it’s a “health decision”.

How galling.

And yet still - the focus is on the anti-vaxxers. Though God forbid you call them that - they’re not anti-vaxxers! They just support anti-vaxxers, march with them, financially back them, and share their misinformation. Totally different!

They prefer to pretend they’re the main character in some epic fantasy. They’re Truth Seekers! Freedom Lovers! Critical Thinkers!

Except that they can’t handle any truths if they’re even mildly uncomfortable, they do not have any a base knowledge of what freedom is beyond adopted MAGA slogans.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A simple graphic, with a white background and black text. In the upper left hand corner, in a typewriter-esq font it reads, “Ableism Is…”. Under that on the right hand side, the black text continues “(a form of) discrimination. The false idea that disabled people are by default, inferior. When in truth, disability is just another way for a mind and/or body to be.” The text is broken up so it reads more like a poem. Lastly, to the left there are two large black circles and under that is the URL to the site : whatisableism.tumblr.com]

So far I have seen these people claim that being told they have to be vaccinated in order to protect the vulnerable people they care for (at school, in clinics and hospitals, and in their homes as midwives) is the same as:

• The Holocaust

• Apartheid

• A terror attack

• Police murder

• Executions

Anti-vaxxers have co-opted the reproductive rights movement with My body, My choice. Because having to look for another job is apparently the same plight of the at least 22,000 women and girls who die from unsafe abortion each year, making it one of the top five direct causes of maternal mortality. Or the estimated seven million women and girls who suffer long-term consequences from unsafe abortion, including serious side effects and lifelong disability.

Anti-vaxxers have co-opted the Black Lives Matter movement calling for justice and an end to the murder, racist attacks and brutality toward black people in America with Unvaccinated Lives Matter. Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. One in every 1,000 black men are killed by police - you know, it’s just like being asked if you’re vaccinated.

Anti-vaxxers have co-opted the Me Too movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment particularly for marginalised people in marginalised communities - because apparently being called on to get a safe vaccine that helps to protect against a virus that has killed five million is just like being raped.

Anti-Vaxxers have astonishingly claimed that vaccine mandates and proof of vaccination is just like A FIVE YEAR GENOCIDE THAT KILLED SIX MILLION PEOPLE, TWO-THIRDS OF EUROPE’S JEWISH POPULATION. A genocide so horrific, that slaughtered such an unfathomable amount of people in such horrific circumstances that it forever has its own name: The Holocaust.

I mean…Can they get lower? Yep. Every day. The latest is comparing losing a job they had a choice as to whether they kept or not to: *drum roll please* the murder of 51 Muslim New Zealanders killed in cold blood while they prayed in a terror attack. I wrote about this about that.

And yet - we’re meant to feel sorry for these people? Excuse me? Meant to believe they’re outcasts and it’s no fault of their own that people don’t want to be around them?

Image credit [IMAGE DESCRIPTION: An illustration of two hands reaching out - the hands are partly coloured in lavendar, marmalade orange, yellow, forest green and turquoise, deep red, and blue. In large block white text - all capitals - it says “BLACK DISABLED LIVES MATTER” on top the background is light blues in triangle shapes, on the bottom it is pink with an orange strip like a light shaft.]

Last month, the owner of a yoga place claimed the mandate was like apartheid and also used the terror attack response comic. Because having to check someone’s vaccination status before you do aerial yoga (I wish I was kidding) is just like institutionalised racial segregation, being unable to vote, slavery and widespread brutality politically, socially, and economically by minority white South Africans.

This will come as no shock to you but the woman who claims this is: White.

After publishing my piece on the anti-vaxxer use of the Crying Kiwi comic another (white) moaner said it is segregation and when a lot of right-thinking people said actually it isn’t. She lost it and said “WHAT NOW I CAN’T HAVE AN OPINION?”

“Are you vaxxed?” translates to “WOW OK HITLER ARE YOU GOING TO KILL ME”.

“I don’t agree with you at all and that’s super offensive” translates to “MY ARMS YOU HAVE CUT OFF MY ARMS I BLEED I BLEED UNABLE TO GIVE MY SHIT OPINION ON FACEBOOK MY LIFE IS OVER THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME!”

It’s just unbelievable.

Look, every smart person says “don’t make fun of them”. But honestly How Can You Not.

Let’s get this clear: I have empathy for the vaccine hesitant. I have empathy for:

• Māori who have no reason to trust anything the Government says and have experienced first hand the inequalities of the medical system.

• those who have been sucked into misinformation by anti-vaxxers and are afraid.

• those who don’t trust the Government (because I don’t trust them).

• those who don’t trust Big Pharma (because I don’t trust them).

But the vaccine-hesitant are not the anti-vaxxers sticking a (Trump) flag in the ground and claiming they’re oppressed.

The anti-vaxxers who have a raging boner for opression have generally never been oppressed and that’s why what they imagine oppression is gives them a shiver of delight. They don’t know what the cruelty and brutality of real subjugation feels like.  They fetishise it and yearn for it.

They do know that in this space, where people are afraid, there is money to be made. They know how to sniff out a dollar. And there’s big bucks to be made here - look at the Instagram pages of “truth-seekers” they all have seminars for “FiNdiNg yOuR TrUe pOwEr” for just $49.95 and “donate please to keep the movement going”. There are doctors and lawyers who were facing a quiet shuffle out of their careers because they were basically becoming unemployable and now they’ve figured out an easy way to beef up their retirement fund.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: An illustration / cartoon by Emma Cook features a person in a wheelchair holding a child or doll, they’re a double-amputee. A person with purple Sits on a yellow armchair wearing pyjamas and slippers. They are reading a newspaper that says: “I can’t go to my favourite shops!” “It’s so unfair! I had to quit my job!” And “Disabled groups told to: ‘stay home, stop having a life in order for unvaxxed to enjoy freedoms’”. The person I’m the wheelchair has a speech bubble asking “what’s wrong, love?” The person with purple hair replies “why is our safety seen as taking freedoms from others?” Credit.

We are not divided. More than 94% of us (eligible) have had the first dose of the vaccination. It feels like we are because of social media. It’s easy not to realise that there are more doctors named Sarah who “overwhelmingly support vaccination against COVID-19 and other public health measures such as mask use in public areas, physical distancing and hand hygiene” than there are doctors in the anti-vaxx health professionals group.

It feels like we are divided because these “medical freedom” bandwagon jumpers keep saying we are divided. Because it suits them for us to believe that.

But we’re not divided.

Most people think it’s utterly obscene and repulsive to compare vaccination mandates to terror attacks or the Holocaust. Most people know we must fight hard against this virus to protect each other.

But this idea that there’s a divide, that there’s so many of them - it brings us all down and it makes us feel like it’s all hopeless.

It isn’t. Our world is their world but where we differ is that our world is full of hope for a better tomorrow where we have tried (and will continue to try) our best to beat this shitty, awful virus.

We are going to keep fighting for a future where we don’t lose our loved ones to this virus. And that includes the people who want to put us all at risk. It includes the people who don’t know real tragedy.

Because I truly think part of why this country has pulled together to protect each other is that we do understand tragedy. We know pain. We have seen the horror of this virus overseas and we want to protect each other.

A dear friend who lost her beloved husband to a catastrophic medical event said it really well last week…

“….whenever people start talking about Covid and saying they will take their chances (and) "it's only a flu virus", I can't help but think what it's like to helplessly watch someone you love die from a medical event.

“I can tell you, in that moment, you will wish, you will pray, you will make a deal with God, you will sell your soul - you will do absolutely anything to bring them back or change the course of what's happened.

“After, you will replay every single moment and decision that led up to their loss. You will absolutely analyse every moment and things you think you should have done differently.

I know what it's like to lose someone and wish for a different outcome, over and over and over again. I don't want anyone to have to experience that agony.”

This is what it comes down to I think - if you know, if you truly know, what it’s like to feel the deepest pain or if you’ve even come close to that moment of losing everything you hold dear - it changes you.

And I think a lot of us have been changed by the violence of this virus since March 2020. We know there’s no need to co-opt movements, to steal pain from others, to pretend at being vulnerable or to imagine we’re oppressed.

To understand what impact Covid 19 will have on our country is just to have enough heart and empathy to see the agony it has wrought on other countries. It’s simply about being able to know that each of the five million dead are loved and important.

Every day I read new things about the pandemic that on their own are enough to make me want to do everything I can to protect my fellow humans. I mean - Globally, from March 1, 2020, to April 30, 2021, it’s estimated that 1,134, 000 children lost their parents or primary caregivers. All of those children, orphaned. Isn’t that on its own enough of a reason to wear a mask? Wash your hands? Distance from others? How is that a big ask?

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: a photo of five people stand behind a sign that says “Disability rights are human rights” in block white letters on a black background. Only one of the people is staring at the camera - he also holds a sign that says “we know best”. They are at a “Non-March” For Disabled Women inside Grand Central Station, New York. (Photo by Barbara Alper/Getty Images)

It’s simply to see human beings as worthy of our care and protection, even if we don’t know them.

Reproductive rights, the right to live without rape and violence, the right of black people to have justice and peace and an end to police brutality, the need and importance of remembering The Holocaust and Apartheid and saying “never again” - these movements are all about a hope that we can be better humans to each other.

No wonder anti-vaxxers don’t understand them and feel able to disrespect them. They’ve lost their humanity.

In their race to the bottom they’ve crushed loved ones, colleagues, friends - every relationship they have has been smashed in an attempt to centre themselves. They can’t see a way to be better to each other because they’ve used every tool at their disposal to be the worst that they can be.

Soon, they won’t be able to get any lower and they’ll find just how empty life is at the bottom of a hole of their own making.

*They are anti-vaxxers. They can give themselves nicknames to help them sleep at night but they’re dull, boring anti-vaxxers.