I’m with Jen: anti-vaxxers are not my real Friends
As millions of Americans say no to Covid vaccines, putting their own lives and others’ at risk, Jennifer Aniston says she has cut off all contact with anyone in her ‘friendship circle’ who refuses the jab.
‘There’s still a large group of people who are anti-vaxxers or just don’t listen to the facts,’ says Jen. ‘it’s a real shame.’
A shame? no, honey — it’s a disgrace. The evidence that the vaccines work is now crystal clear: just look at how the numbers of deaths and hospital admissions have plummeted here in Britain during the third wave. Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of lives have now been saved thanks to the vaccines and millions surely will be before the end of the pandemic.
Yet far too many people still think they’re invincible — and all too often because they’ve been taken in by the deluded propaganda of the antivaxxers. Take David Parker. This fit, 56-year-old nightclub boss from north Yorkshire succumbed to Covid on monday, despite having no underlying health conditions.
David had posted hundreds of messages on Facebook warning of a conspiracy by ‘Big Pharma’. He mocked people for getting the ‘experimental’ vaccine. Underneath one of these posts, a woman wrote: ‘RIP Uncle David. if you’d had the vaccine, it could have saved you.’
Also this week, Cambridgeeducated leslie lawrenson, 58, was found dead in bed. A lawyer from Bournemouth, leslie had read antivaxxer material online and convinced himself that Covid was ‘nothing to fear’. in videos he posted online, he boasted: ‘i’d rather take my chance with my immune system.’
But for me the most chilling case of all was mountaineer John Eyres, 42, who believed himself to be so fit and healthy that he would suffer only mild symptoms should he contract Covid. But he, too, proved no match for the infection and in his final moments, John told medics he bitterly regretted refusing the jab.
When his twin sister Jenny Mccann was asked if she blamed the conspiracy theorists for his death, she replied: ‘Yes. John would still be here making me laugh if he had not fallen prey to their terrible lies.’
How brave of her to speak so clearly. This is where the deadly absurdities of anti-vaxxers finally end: in healthy people rejecting life-saving treatment, and dying as a result.
That these fools can spread their nonsense is due entirely to the social media companies that continue to give them a platform. Even the normally mild-mannered President Joe Biden has declared that Facebook is ‘killing people’ by allowing anti-vaxxer lies to spread.
it’s enough to make any frontline medic despair. no wonder the NHS is begging younger people to get jabbed: about a fifth of all seriously ill patients in our hospitals are aged between 18 and 34, four times higher than in the peak last winter.
From now on, i’m with Jen. if you refuse to be vaccinated, you’re not in my ‘friendship circle’. no exceptions.