The unvaccinated were scapegoated for failure of COVID vaccines, study finds
Igor Chudov
A new scientific study found that unvaccinated people were unfairly scapegoated during the pandemic. Psypost reports:
I doubt that the “scientific discovery” of unwarranted and mean-spirited scapegoating of the unvaccinated surprises most of my readers, but the details of the “findings” are interesting.
However, this emphasis on vaccination has also given rise to a complex social phenomenon – the stigmatization and prejudice faced by those who choose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19. A recent study published in the Journal of Medical Ethics aimed to investigate whether the negative sentiments directed towards the unvaccinated can be considered a form of scapegoating.
“My colleagues and I have been studying the social divisions surrounding COVID-19 for some time. We have noticed that much of the existing research at that time focused on conflicts originating from people who discount COVID-19, believe in conspiracy theories, and generally undervalue the threat of the virus. We replicated many of those patterns in our own research as well,” said study author Maja Graso, an assistant professor at the University of Groningen.
The authors seem to be shocked by their discovery that much of the lies and misinformation came from the government and media:
“However, what we found to be missing was an address to misinformation and the consequences stemming from overestimating the threat. Consider, for instance, how in 2020, more than 30% of Americans believed that a COVID infection led to a 50% chance of hospitalization; it never did, nor was there ever evidence to suggest it might. Left-leaning individuals tended to over-estimate COVID harms to a greater degree than conservatives.”
The scientific study by Maja Graso et al. examined attitudes toward unvaccinated people by presenting a questionnaire with fictional characters: a vaccinated person named Katy and an unvaccinated person named Mark. Both Katy and Mark carried the COVID-19 virus and infected a vulnerable individual.
It turns out that, despite being in the identical position, the unvaccinated individual was selected for blame and targeted with extremely negative emotions:
You would expect me to rant against the above-mentioned left-leaning individuals. Instead, I would like to point out that “Trump supporters” were also prone to scapegoating and hatred towards the unvaccinated, although to a lesser extent:
The pandemic propaganda was strong!
The truth, of course, was that the Covid vaccine did not work and did not prevent any transmission, and after a month or two past vaccinations, it made the vaccinated MORE likely to be infected.
However, the impact of the media’s fear-mongering was all-encompassing. 35% of adults believed that half of Covid infections required hospitalization! The authors tried hard to make their findings palatable for an official medical journal:
Second, scapegoating implies that the blame is either undeserved or disproportional. Thus, we encourage public health researchers, practitioners and science communicators to consider the implications of relying primarily on fear-based approaches to mitigating the harms caused by C19.65 For example, if 35% of US adults believed that at least half of C19 infections require hospitalisation,18 it suggests a significant health communication failure. A result is that it can lead people to turn against and blame each other when doing so is not justified by available facts, which may not have been adequately presented to the public. We submit that a relevant ethical question that public health officials should debate is whether it is morally obligatory for them to correct misinformation regardless of whether it overestimates or underestimates of C19 risk.
Third, our findings also show the impact of citizens’ political ideology on scapegoating. We did not test the sources of liberals’ greater likelihood to scapegoat the unvaccinated individuals, but we encourage further investigation of whether media exposure could be a contributing factor. Just as conservative media and politicians are culpable for misinformation leading people to underestimate certain C19 risks,66 67 it is possible that liberal outlets introduced misinformation in the opposite direction. For instance, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, an outlet with a decidedly liberal audience,68 noted in March 2021: ‘Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person.’69 However, this claim was not possible to make at that time,70 nor was it true. The original clinical trials did not test for effectiveness on transmission.71 Early evidence, and reasonable deduction from the research in vaccinology and virology, suggested that the vaccines would not fully stop transmission. By April 2021, more than 10 000 vaccine breakthrough infections had been officially reported across the USA (a substantial undercounting), 10% of which had been hospitalised and 2% of which had died.72 An outbreak investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July 2021 found that 74% of cases linked to a summer event in Massachusetts were vaccinated and most were symptomatic.73 Therefore, we argue that it is important to correct the dubious claims made by both sides of the political spectrum, as both may distort risk and fuel polarisation.
Worse still, this scapegoating, based on complete fiction by official health experts and media, broke many families, as this highly typical 2021 Reddit post from a confused pregnant woman describes:
More details about what happened to that mother two years later and how COVID vaccinators broke families are here:
Hatred and Division Were Intentional!
The authors of the Graso et al. study did not mention an important fact: fear and creating divisions and hatred towards the unvaccinated were completely intentional and had a purpose: to force vaccine refusers (who knew everything Maja Graso et al. described above, in 2021) to vaccinate through alienating their relatives and friends.
Consider this agenda article by the World Economic Forum, which mentioned creating “FOMO,” or fear of missing out.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/3-tactics-to-overcome-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy/
The “another way” link above points to concepts of using social division, hatred, and lies developed in January 2021... guess where… at Harvard University!
Harvard authors recommend:
Inspire FOMO. Second, we recommend incentivizing the fear of missing out, both socially and economically. For example, recently 82 percent of adults said they are not comfortable visiting family or close friends inside their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This inability to socialize is more likely to influence late majority and laggard groups to take the vaccine than health-related messages. …
Harvard researchers call for inducing “guilt and regret,” by scapegoating the unvaccinated:
Inducing guilt and regret. This method was successfully employed in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s to confront diphtheria, which was affecting up to one in seven Canadian children. Simple messages of guilt, with statements like “if your children die of diphtheria, it is your fault because you prefer not to take the trouble to protect against it” proved to be effective and led the late majority to vaccinate their children.
The hatred and division were relentless:
What is the result of it? Almost everyone had COVID anyway. Fortunately, few have died, although both COVID-19, a lab-made SARS-HIV chimera, and COVID-19 vaccines have killed millions and undermined the health of billions.
The worst outcome is thousands of broken families, economic devastation among the families of fired unvaccinated workers, and persisting social alienation and division - all created in the name of anti-human “science” driven by profit and careerism.
I want to thank Maja Graso for her brave study. I also must mention that Modern Discontent, a friend of this blog, also covered that story.
I would also like to thank my readers, vaccine skeptics, regardless of their personal vaccination status, for whatever you did to fight this craziness.
Whatever you did - protesting, sharing messages, or even becoming my paid subscriber - all counts and helped stop the COVID insanity.
Subscribe
I was very touched by the crazy discussion (1,226 messages) following my “burning bridges and reconciling” post that described damaged familial ties. Sadly, I learned that many commenters’ relationships were broken permanently.
Largely, the guilt for these broken relationships lies at the feet of anti-human careerists such as the Harvard researchers above. The relatives who chose to break ties with some of us are also victims of those industrialized mass psychology tactics, which were designed to be irresistible to most. So, even if reconciliation is not likely, please forgive them!
This article was originally published by Igor's Newsletter and is republished here with permission
