Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[Dānu]

County mandates security at vaccine clinics after reports of fireworks attack and slashed signs

Roving central Colorado with three vans, pop-up tents and folding chairs, public health workers in Jefferson County set out this spring to get coronavirus vaccines to the people who were hardest to reach. They brushed off heckling from passersby who sometimes yelled that covid-19 was a hoax or that the shots were “poison.”

But the harassment grew more frequent, said Jefferson County Public Health Executive Director Dawn Comstock. And more threatening.

One man slashed the mobile clinic signs with a knife, Comstock said, while another person threw lit fireworks into one of the tents. People drove menacingly toward staffers and ran over signs. They hurled insults, trash and liquid, she said, each time fleeing before law enforcement could hold anyone accountable.

Last weekend, Comstock said, it was so bad that she pulled the mobile clinics off the street and said they would go out only with security. She said she is done being “polite” about the vitriol over vaccines that have been proved safe and effective, and she called the harassers “cowards.”

“Those that are spreading lies are promoting distrust, anger and division within our community,” Comstock said in an interview Sunday. “And we simply cannot continue to allow opinions and emotions to outweigh the truth and the science.”

She marvels that “our staff are being mistreated by members of our own community.” She worries about public health workers in other states where vaccination rates are lower and resistance to the shots is stronger. She is tired.

“At this point, the overwhelming majority of people in our country are doing the right thing,” said Comstock, a longtime epidemiology professor who took charge of the department this year. “Why on earth are we letting this minority group that is listening to lies and making their decisions based on lies — why on earth are we still letting them hold us back?”

People who are against mitigation efforts paper over their opposition with arguments about freedom, yet ripping off other peoples' masks and vandalizing vaccine centers make it clear that these rationales are dishonest. They don't oppose vaccines because of freedom or fear, but because it is what the left wants, and they will do anything, no matter how immoral or incoherent, to make sure the left is frustrated in their aims, even if those aims include saving lives.