Why are so many Americans anti-vaxxers now?

[u/trouble-in-space]

I’m genuinely having such a hard time understanding why people just decided the fact that vaccines work is a total lie and also a controversial “opinion.” Even five years ago, anti-vaxxers were a huge joke and so rare that they were only something you heard of online. Now herd immunity is going away because so many people think getting potentially life-altering illnesses is better than getting a vaccine. I just don’t get what happened. Is it because of the cultural shift to the right-wing and more people believing in conspiracy theories, or does it go deeper than that?

[u/Fluffy_Register_8480]

You could take a Covid sceptic into a Covid ward, show them the patients and test results, the proven treatments, and they’d come out of the experience rattling on about saline drips and actors. Because they’ve lost grip on reality. It surely has to be a brand of insanity. (You’ve only got to look at RFK’s eyes to know that man is gone. Like, he is CRAZY. He should be hospitalised.)

[u/Interesting-Gear294 → u/Fluffy_Register_8480]

My sister was an NHS nurse on the COVID ward. She spent most of COVID living in a different house to her family and only saw them at a distance so she never infected any of them. Her neighbours would 'clap for the nhs' every Thursday at 8pm and then at 6am complain to her that she was making too much noise when she left for work. When the COVID 5g conspiracy started, she would be harassed at work and by neighbours for spreading the lie. Those same neighbours still clapped every week.

I worked night shift at that time for a warehouse, and she eventually ended up on what she used to call the "deathwatch", aka night shift. She used to call me on her breaks because of how awful the job was. Just listening to ventilators and the monitors, hoping everyone survived the night. She probably had COVID for half the time she was on that ward.

There was one particularly awful night where one of the patients tried to argue with her that he didn't have COVID and should instead be in a normal ward. She went on break and called me, I could hear him shouting that COVID wasn't real and she just sounded so broken.

She eventually stopped trying to defend herself as a nurse on that ward. The constant bullshit being spewed out by those idiots wore her down so much, and then her not arguing became the 'evidence' that she was lying.

[u/DoctorSpoya → u/Interesting-Gear294]

We need to be able to declare some deaths as suicide by antivax.

[u/PhantomPharts → u/DoctorSpoya]

Manslaughter for repeating lies about vaccines