Snake Oil from the Anti-Vaxxers

 

24% of recently Americans polled say the they will NOT take a vaccine for COVID-19.

According to a Monmouth University poll, one in four Americans “say they will avoid getting the vaccine at all if they can help it.”

https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_020321/

WTF- over?

This preposterous posture of ignorance and disregard for their own health and the general health of the nation is the result of the enduring campaign by anti-vaxxers and anti-science proponents.

There are folks who have prospered with a cyber-based cottage industry of anti-science insanity. These people (Ty and Charlene Bollinger among them) are hawking flimflam. They are swindlers of the oldest sort; they are snake-oil salesmen and the huskers for snake-oil sales. They are kooks devoid of medical certificates, degrees, authority, warrant or authenticity.

Yet, they hold a substantial number of Americans in their sway.

One must ask; How is this possible? The answer to that innocent question will fill volumes in the years to come as historians and journalists attempt to decipher the madness of the Trump years. There is not space or time or inclination to explore this dispiriting phenomena here.

Make no mistake, though. This dismissal of science is madness. It is a stark departure from sanity and reality.

However, the Bollingers (mentioned earlier) should not be branded as insane or included in the number of the deluded. Not at all. They are clear-eyed cons working a grift. They are making money hand over fist by hawking their snake oil and proselytizing others to embrace their anti-vaxxer nonsense.

Perhaps that is the most disturbing aspect of this social-media induced madness; that it is a crass, crude grift which naïve, uninformed people are taking as sincere concern for matters of personal health.