GROW UP
This piece was going to be about the discredited doctor Andrew Wakefield, the father of the deadly war on vaccines that has taken root in the American psyche. His legacy is decades of irrational anti-vax hysteria that the GOP weaponized. But I know from personal experience that none of their base will read this, and it will have no influence on them.
So instead, this piece is about anger. I am a poster child for anger management. Anyone who has played golf with me knows I have absolutely no control. I am Djokovic smashing his racket in the second set of the US Open Championship, only with a lot more profanity. Now at an advanced age, I am determined to manage my anger, but I’m being brutally challenged.
Despite a dozen anti-vaccine rightwing radio hosts and politicians who are now either dead from COVID or are secretly vaccinated, several family members continue to eat up their misinformation and refuse to get vaccinated. They offer no example of anyone who was vaccinated that suffered from COVID. Yet, I can give a dozen examples of unvaccinated friends and family who have permanent damage from COVID, including a cousin my age who is still using a walker.
Instead, they regurgitate dangerous paranoid Fox “News” lies about how “journalists are the enemy.” Well, yes, if your household TV runs Fox “News” 24/7, you are definitely immersed in a terrifying alternate reality somewhere between Orwellian and Truman syndrome.
They will argue that “Highly vaccinated Israel is seeing a dramatic surge in new COVID cases,” but will omit the fact that the surge is from travelers bringing back the Delta variant that was caused by the unvaccinated, or that being vaccinated helps recovery, or that the “high vaccination rate” in Israel is not 100% but rather 78%, the list goes on.
Back in my day, there was no such thing as anger management. My mother had my eldest brother at the young age of 16, and she had her third child, me, at the age of 20. Back then, there was no management of explosive emotions, insecurities, or fear. We had rampant disfunction, with base instincts of survival mode taking over.
How little things have changed. Now, the rightwing radicals only have outrage, and would rather break the hearts of their aunts and grandmothers who ask for the simple birthday gift of getting themselves vaccinated for their own safety and that of others. Oddly specific? Yes. All I can say is GROW UP. No more tantrums. Let critical thinking and reason guide you.
I wish I could dismantle the anti-vaxers the way Mevedev dismantled Djokovic. Decisively taking apart their game, shutting them down.
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.