‘I think that they’re selfish’

While Connecticut’s anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers have grabbed headlines, a similar frustration has built among another — much larger — group of people.

According to state numbers, 84% of eligible Connecticut residents are vaccinated against COVID-19. And according to survey results from the nonprofit DataHaven, 67% of Connecticut adults say they wear a mask very often or somewhat often when leaving their home.

For this largely silent majority, patience with holdouts and protesters is growing thin.

Joly, the middle-school teacher and Board of Education candidate, said he was scared watching video of the protesters in Cheshire, which made him think of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and other recent political violence.

“They have a right to their opinion that I don’t

agree with,” Joly said of the protesters. “But when they verbally accost the governor of our state, that’s where I say it’s too much.”

With a patchwork of rules governing where to wear masks, disputes have become common. In Fairfield, where residents clashed over mask mandates at a local Board of Education meeting, First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick has pleaded with residents “to engage in respectful and civil dialogue.”

“I even had a resident call to share with me that they have been receiving threatening messages,” Kupchick wrote in a recent post on the town website. “One caller went so far to wish COVID19 upon this resident’s child, since they shared a different view on masks.”

Meanwhile, some vaccinated Connecticut residents blame those who have not yet been vaccinated for the state’s recent surge in cases and hospitalizations. In their view, the obstinacy of the unvaccinated minority has caused suffering for all.

“I think that they’re selfish,” said Tim Sperry, a 66-year-old Guilford resident who proudly argues with unvaccinated people on Facebook and Twitter. “I’m not very civil to them. I’m not polite, and I see no reason to be. I think that it’s selfishness run amok.

“This is a disease that is afflicting our community, and our community we have to do what we can to beat it back. And the best tool that we have right now is vaccination.”

Susan Campbell, an Ivoryton

resident and lecturer in communications and journalism at the University of New Haven who writes a column for Hearst newspapers, said she has never felt much sympathy toward anti-vaxxers. In her view, people who dismiss masks and vaccines have “interpreted this in an immensely selfish way as a personal rights issue.”

Campbell said she is exasperated that they cannot join in the collective responsibility of ending the pandemic. This summer, as the pandemic dragged on and her husband was infected with a breakthrough case of COVID-19, that frustration came into sharp relief.

“What I wish people would understand is, by them saying ‘It’s my choice and I don’t have to get a vaccine,’ that’s like trying to say you can have a ‘No Peeing Zone’ in the swimming people,” she said. “You can’t. If you do not get vaccinated, that affects everyone.”

Campbell said she remains optimistic that Connecticut can move past this stage of the grief cycle, to find something beyond anger.

How that happens, though, she’s not quite sure.

“I don’t think my way of shouting and calling names is working out really well,” she said. “There’s different messaging that I can’t come up with.”