An out-of-work stand-up comic originally from New Jersey. An actor and conservative podcast host dressed in a white lab coat. A gadfly who has run several unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in Los Angeles. And at least a few who had been in Washington the day of the Capitol riot.
They were among the motley crew of vaccine skeptics who recently converged on the entrance of the mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles to protest distribution of the coronavirus vaccine.
The loosely formed coalition represents a new faction in California’s long-established anti-vaccine movement. Their protest was the latest sign that Californians have become the unlikely standard-bearers for aggressive opposition to the vaccine at a time when virus cases continue to spread in the state.
California, which has averaged 500 daily deaths tied to the virus over the past week, will soon become the state with the largest number of coronavirus deaths, surpassing New York.
For months, far-right activists across the United States have been rallying against mask-wearing rules, business lockdowns, curfews and local public-health officials, casting the government’s response to the virus as an intrusion on individual liberties. But as masks and lockdowns have become an increasingly routine part of American life, some protesters have shifted the focus of their antigovernment anger to the vaccine.
Last week at Dodger Stadium, the same small but vocal band of demonstrators who previously staged anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests in the Los Angeles area disrupted a mass vaccination site that gives an average of 6,120 shots daily. About 50 protesters — some carrying signs reading “Don’t be a lab rat!” and “Covid = Scam” — marched to the entrance and caused the Los Angeles Fire Department to shut down the entrance to the city-run site for about an hour.
Then vaccinations continued as scheduled.
— Manny Fernandez The New York Times
Me: That is OK, provided they have a backup plan, but suicide if they don’t. I stay with my strong salt water cure on Coronavirus, before it gets to be Covid, so I won’t ever get Covid – what are they relying on, I wonder?