Vaccination -- Our Superpower over Anti-Gay Christians. Update 1.
It is important for Gays to be vaccinated, many Anti-Gay right-wingers refuse vaccination and terminate themselves.
UPDATE 1: Articles added on to the end of this post.
VACCINE POLICY
It needs to be the policy of all media, institutions, and groups that purport to support Gays to support vaccination and to seek to have the vaccination rate as near to 100% as possible. Getting vaccinated for any disease is a Gay issue.
First discussion of vaccines and mortality and Gays then some policy recommendations at the end.
CONSIDERING THIS ISN’T MEAN
Remember these same anti-vaxxers have been declaring that HIV was god’s punishment for homosexuality.
COVID
We need to understand how getting vaccinated is vitally important for the Gay community.
The level of vaccination in the Gay community is fairly high. Over 90% in one report. On the other hand, a lot of the anti-Gay Christians are also anti-vaxxer as are other anti-Gay right-wingers. Not every anti-vaxxer is Christian or anti-Gay but the percentage of conservative Christians who are anti-vaxxer is much higher than the general population.
There were a series of news stories of prominent anti-Gay and anti-vaxxer radio show performers dying of COVID-19. I think the count reached ten major anti-Gay radio show hosts dying before there stopped being more news stories about anti-Gay radio hosts dying. Maybe the other radio show producers decided to secretly get vaxxed.
Though it is likely that some Gays were not able to be effectively vaccinated due to immune problems or chemotherapy or some other issue, the death toll on the Gay community has been slight. On the other hand, it has hit the Anti-Gay right-wing evangelical communities hard. It isn’t just anti-Gay Christians in the United States. In Greece, the really anti-Gay Greek Orthodox were being devastated by Covid until the disastrous situation forced them to reconsider their thinking on Covid.
Likely well over 100,000 anti-Gay evangelicals have died during the pandemic. Churches lost their pastors and Evangelical Christianity rests on personalities and when a pastor dies often the church fails. Even with Evangelicals dying all over the place, there are right wing Evangelicals still refusing to get vaccinated.
Also, the negative impact on homophobes isn’t limited to mortality. The anti-Gay individuals with Long Covid are not likely to be able to support anti-Gay campaigns with cash or volunteer efforts. Long Covid is likely to reduce their mobility, have them preoccupied with survival, and reduce their financial resources. They won’t be able to do much to support an anti-Gay campaign or anti-Gay church. They might even consider that their anti-Gay religious beliefs are stupid.
The overall fatality rate of COVID-19 for all ages lumped together is about 1%. For those in their 60s, 5% and goes up quickly to 20% for those in their 80s. Also, being overweight is a factor. Given the demographics of white evangelicals being older they probably have been hit hard.
Further the credibility of anti-Gay churches and anti-Gay Christians has been hit hard. As their folly unfolds they appear as crazed fools. In future debates we should call their theology Covid theology.
Yet, Gays don’t bear any moral responsibility for this pandemic which has probably reduced the number of anti-Gay people by well over 100,000. The hater of Gays defiantly did it to themselves against all efforts to convince them to get vaccinated.
FLU AND OTHER VACCINES
Until recently anti-vaxxer sentiment was mostly persons into alternative medicine and were Green Party types or left-wingers or hippies. Santa Cruz, California was especially high in the percentage of parents refusing vaccination.
The big development of the Covid pandemic is that it now has become a right wing thing. There maybe developing a broader anti-vaccine agenda refusing vaccinations for other diseases besides Covid. Why would you accept one vaccine and not the other? If you thought mRNA vaccines were unsafe for Covid, even when people are dying all over the place, why would you get another mRNA vaccine when there isn’t an immediate threat of fatality.
Also, mRNA vaccines appear likely to have much higher percentage effectiveness. For Flu they are thinking that an mRNA vaccine could work against multiple strains.
Flu has a much lower mortality rate than Covid, but it still is another area where Gays can survive and anti-Gay anti-vaxxers can perish. Also, even when an anti-vaxxer doesn’t perish, they can be laid up sick for some time.
THE NEXT PANDEMIC
In the next pandemic, and they will very likely be another, the overall fatality rate might be much higher than the roughly 1% fatality of Covid. Ebola is about 80% in some cases. During the Black Death in medieval times some towns lost up to three-quarters of their population.
Even if the fatality rate was 5% the death toll would be huge. You would have morgues overflowing and bodies not picked up at houses and probably see them along the sides of streets where some sick person seeking help died. There would be police stationed in front of hospitals are mobs tried to get their family member admitted and the hospital is overflowing with people.
With a new emergent and contagious disease the rapid development of a vaccine will be critical and mRNA vaccines are way faster than the other methods. Having a Gay population pro-vaccine and ready to get vaccinated quickly and following safety procedures will be critical to having a high survival rate for the Gay population.
Initially right-wing anti-Gay people will probably resist getting vaccinated, but likely when the death toll mounts, resistance to getting vaccinated will crumble and the initial right-wing anti-vaxxers will be inline waiting for the vaccine. Having the Gay community ready to get vaccinated as soon as possible could be the difference between getting vaccinated before being exposed to the disease, and getting vaccinated after a former anti-vaxxer. When the threat becomes obvious likely there will be a sudden rush to get vaccinated.
On the other hand the fatality rate might be like Covid, 1 or 1.5%, and anti-vaxxers will repeat the same anti-vax nonsense and behavior. However, we will not know the fatality of a new disease right away. They won’t know until they have a significant number of patients representing a variety of patient types. Or a deadly strain might raise. with Covid we got Omicron, but it might have been deadlier than Delta. Gays need to be vaccinated before a deadlier variety shows up or the morbidity of the current disease is apparent.
If Gays survive and anti-Gay right-wingers delay or refuse getting vaccinated, we have won a great victory over them. Anti-Gay people are cranks. Thus they are susceptible to crank ideas. One of these crank beliefs is anti-vax beliefs.
We need to think strategically what we might do to utilize this advantage.
GAY POLICY ON VACCINES
Though the percentage of Gays who are vaccinated is now over 90%, we need to make sure it stays over 90% and improve it to be as close to 100% as possible. We shouldn’t just presume that vaccination rates will stay over 90%.
First step is that we need to publicize Gay anti-vaxxer and anti-medical safety cases like this one to show the foolishness of Gay anti-vaxxers.
https://dallasvoice.com/a-harsh-lesson-in-the-reality-of-covid-19/
GAY ANTI-VAXXERS AS A RISK FOR DISEASE: We need to point out that a Gay anti-vaxxer has not likely to have gotten existing vaccinations for Hepatitis A &B, HPV, and meningitis. When new vaccines come out for HIV and Herpes and other STDs, they are not likely to have gotten vaccinated for these diseases either.
Gay anti-vaxxers need to be recognized as STD disease risks. Even if you are vaccinated for everything, there is still a risk for breakthrough infections. You might have a problem with your immune system and the vaccination wasn’t as good as it should be, or you have some medical issue and have difficulty mounting an effective immune response. Or there is a new variant of the disease and until a new version of the vaccine is developed there is a higher chance of breakthrough infections.
Even if the Gay anti-vaxxer is not pressured to get vaccinated, he will likely be pressured not to be speaking against vaccines.
It will put pressure on Gay groups, in particular those who might be ready to be supporting anti-vax ideas, because they don’t want their members to be thought of as disease risk factors.
It might not be thought important that one or two Gays not get vaccinated for COVID or some new diseases, but they negative impact isn’t just on them. They can potentially infect other Gays who might be waiting for a vaccination, or might have some compromised immune system.
SUPPORT FOR GETTING GAYS VACCINATED:
Gay organizations and Gay media need to provide support for their members getting vaccinated and the community getting vaccinated.
Information should be provided as to where vaccinations can be obtained.
Transportation should be provided for those needing it to get vaccinated.
The importance of getting vaccinated immediately needs to be emphasized in Gay media and groups. It needs to be conceived as a Gay issue.
With Covid mostly individual Gays got vaccinated on their own. I know a Gay couple who got Covid because they thought they had to wait for so many months before getting the booster. I didn’t wait, I got the booster as soon as possible. They likely would have escaped Covid had they been better informed and not waited for the booster. At the time there was a lot of contradictory and confusing information in the media. It is important that the Gay community is working to get Gays vaccinated as rapidly as possible by doing what is necessarily to get them vaccinated immediately.
SUPER POWER OVER ANTI-GAY CHRISTIANS
By having a strong policy for vaccinations and there likely being a continuing opposition to getting vaccinated by anti-Gay Christians, we have an ongoing opportunity to bring them down by surviving and being healthy while they don’t survive or don’t remain healthy. Further we have something to bring their credibility in politics to an end.
The Gay community has few strategic advantageous over anti-Gay forces. However, being pro-vaccination is one of our few advantageous. We need to push and drive it to the ultimate limit.
UPDATE 1: Korean Christian’s Covid craziness has resulted in them being discredited in Korean society. The Korean Christians are overwhelmingly and often violently anti-Gay. What happened in Korea shows that there is a potential that the anti-Gay Christians Covid craziness can be used to discredit them in society.
https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/christian-apocalypse-pandemic-stricken-south-korea
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea-church-idUSKBN25Z1MU
Popular K-Dramas show how the Korean public has gotten fed up with Christians.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20211201000848
The link below is to an article how the Conservative Christians have decided to focus on attacking Gays.
https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1005380.html