Why Liberals ignore Native Americans when discussing vaccine resistance.

Of course, Native Americans have a good reason to fear government...

And that is the point there are emotional, cultural and historical reasons that people reject the vaccine.

Ignoring the diversity of the human experience, even in the interest of public health, does real social damage.

The constant political attacks on "the unvaccinated" as a political stereotype are not helpful to anyone.

Just 50 years ago, Native Americans faced forced sterilization under the auspices of the National Health Service.

It shouldn't surprise you that many are very wary of the government public health efforts.

Mass sterilization to most people is just an event,” Remi Bald Eagle told me recently, holding back tears. “But to us, that’s family that never made it here.” The sterilization campaign that the Indian Health Service carried out in the 1960s and ’70s afflicted somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of Native American women of childbearing age nationwide. Sterilizations were performed through coercion and without informed consent, a grievous violation of the physical integrity and personal agency of the women affected. On the Cheyenne River Reservation, the sovereign Lakota nation in South Dakota where Bald Eagle lives, the campaign left deep scars in the community. “There’s always that loss,” said Bald Eagle.

“The vaccine is an event we have to figure out how it’s going to affect our families for generations to come,” said Bald Eagle. “When we make a decision to get the vaccine, we’re not just balancing whether or not that vaccine is good for me, but whether or not there’s other things involved in this vaccine.”

“Every decision we make, whether it’s putting our children in school, getting a vaccine, the food we eat…is overcast by the shadow of tyranny” Bald Eagle told me. “The wheels of Manifest Destiny are still full of blood, and it’s ours.”

The sterilization campaign that the Indian Health Service carried out in the 1960s and ’70s afflicted somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of Native American women of childbearing age nationwide. Sterilizations were performed through coercion and without informed consent, a grievous violation of the physical integrity and personal agency of the women affected.

“When we make a decision to get the vaccine, we’re not just balancing whether or not that vaccine is good for me, but whether or not there’s other things involved in this vaccine.”

1. Many Native Americans are saying that they will never get a covid vaccine.

2. They are talking about the sterilization campaign as one reason that they don't trust the vaccination effort.

They are expressing legitimate historical and cultural reasons for not wanting to have the vaccine.

For tribal members who choose to get vaccinated, access to the vaccine and as much information that’s known about it are not the hurdles. Chances are high in this tight-knit community that the person administering the vaccine was a schoolmate or at a minimum a familiar face. CRST Tribal Health infection control nurse and tribal member Molly Longbrake, who lost her mother to Covid-19, regularly travels 90 minutes or more, round trip, to administer the vaccine to people living in the reservation’s smallest communities. She and her team, which consists of three providers, eight nurses, and 17 support staff, also go door to door and make phone calls to offer information. “Education, education, education,” is how Longbrake said they are addressing those who say no, need more time, or ask for more information. “I’m not ready to let our guard down by any means, especially with the new strains that are popping up,” she told me.

There are probably many anti-vaxxers with whom I might have a certain degree of empathy. The only ones for whom I don't express any empathy are the ones who have politicized the choice, the MAGAtards.

Except, it was the left who politicized the vaccine.

And belittling the intellect of people who don't share your political views is kind of childish.

In the 1970s forced sterilization was coerced.

The worst thing to do is to call unvaccinated people "idiots".

Instead of outrage, there should be outreach...

If it weren't for your stratospheric IQ you'd probably have been an antivaxxer yourself.

Why do you keep confusing these? Vaccination Sterilization