Weekend festival questions vaccine
Billboards promote rallies to raise funds, oppose mandates
An organization behind local efforts to discredit coronavirus vaccines is planning a festival on Saturday at a farm in rural Columbia County.
“Festival in a Field” is being put on by Do We Need This?, a Columbia County-based organization dedicated to opposing vaccines and other protections against COVID -19. The festival is being held as scientists, doctors and governments at every level are trying to confront the spread of misinformation about COVID -19 vaccinations and the efficacy of the shots.
Photographs on the group’s website show anti-vaccine rallies in the Hudson Valley and Albany, as well as anti-vaccination billboards the group drives around the county on pickup trucks.
According to its website, the organization is against “mandated Covid vaccines, mandated yearly boosters, masks, fearmongering, lockdowns, school closures,” as well as “5G networks installed without community consent,” a possible reference to an unfounded conspiracy theory that COVID-19 is caused by cellphone signals.
Columbia County Health Director Jack Mabb is aware of the local group, saying they have parked their billboards outside schools in the county and were a constant presence at a vaccination site for 12-18-year-olds at the Chatham Fairgrounds.
“The people who were coming on the fairgrounds had already made a decision to vaccinate their child,” Mabb said. “I did not see anyone who was deterred from getting a vaccination.”
Mabb, Board of Supervisors Chair Matt Murrel and the county’s emergency management director met with members of the group early on in the pandemic, he said.
“They don’t like to look at conventional science,” Mabb said of the meeting. “They have journals, articles, experts and things like that from a wide variety of sources that don’t seem to be traditional, mainstream science, and so we agreed to disagree.”
Mabb said any gathering of unvaccinated people has the potential to be a spreading event, but there was not much he could do about the festival. The group is small, and he believes attendance will be limited.
The festival will be held at Cowberry Crossing Farm in Livingston, according to an online flyer.
When contacted, Cowberry Crossing Farm proprietor Richard Harrison claimed the event — advertised online as including vendors, organic food and performances by nine entertainers and bands — was “a small, private family event,” and declined further comment.
So far, efforts to interview organizers have been unsuccessful. The festival flyer does not offer any indication of safety precautions planned for a gathering that is likely to involve unvaccinated people.
The suggested donation for the event is $20, which will go toward funding three organizations dedicated to opposing vaccines.
The groups include Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nonprofit Children’s Health Defense and the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN). Kennedy has faced withering criticism for spreading disinformation about coronavirus vaccinations on social media.
The organizations often cherry-pick data or take it out of context, rendering it inaccurate. For instance, the latest blog post by the Children’s Health Defense claims 5,859 Americans have died after getting COVID -19 vaccines, citing the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own data.
However, the blog post fails to note that people can die for any reason in the days after getting a shot. In fact, one of the first entries in the CDC data the post cites states that “there is no evidence that the vaccination caused patient’s death.”
There were 40 active cases of COVID -19 in Columbia County as of Friday, the last available day of data from the county Health Department, including five people who were hospitalized.
Ninety-six people have died in Columbia County from COVID -19, according to the Health Department.