{"id":188756,"date":"2021-07-12T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=188756"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:38","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:38","slug":"fox-news-anti-vaccination-hysteria-has-reached-a-disturbing-new-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/07\/fox-news-anti-vaccination-hysteria-has-reached-a-disturbing-new-level\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox News\u2019 Anti-Vaccination Hysteria Has Reached a Disturbing New Level"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>Right-wing media is melting down over President Biden\u2019s push to \u2026 inoculate people against a virus that has killed more than 600,000 Americans.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_188757\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/vaccine-covid19-coronavirus.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-188757\" class=\"wp-image-188757\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/vaccine-covid19-coronavirus-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/vaccine-covid19-coronavirus-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/vaccine-covid19-coronavirus-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/vaccine-covid19-coronavirus-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/vaccine-covid19-coronavirus.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-188757\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Altered Photo. Credit: Ringo Chiu\/AP Images<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>9 Jul 2021 &#8211;<\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/brian-kilmeade\/\" id=\"auto-tag_brian-kilmeade\"  data-tag=\"brian-kilmeade\">Brian Kilmeade<\/a> employed some interesting logic on Friday to criticize President Biden\u2019s push to get more Americans vaccinated.<\/p>\n<div class=\"c-content t-copy\">\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re going to knock on your door, they\u2019re going to demand that you take it, and they\u2019re going to give you a third shot,\u201d the <em>Fox &amp; Friends<\/em> host said. \u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable how offensive this administration is getting with a pandemic that is clearly on the run. We\u2019re doing better than any other country. Almost 60-70 percent of this country has taken two shots, and yet this administration is panicking and infiltrating our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Kilmeade continues his crusade against the Biden administration for wanting to get people vaccinated: &quot;It&#39;s unbelievable how offensive this admin is getting with a pandemic that is clearly on the run &#8230; This admin is panicking and they are infiltrating our lives&quot; <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FCRJZnXPCI\" >pic.twitter.com\/FCRJZnXPCI<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Lis Power (@LisPower1) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LisPower1\/status\/1413479728527253506?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >July 9, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Kilmeade is correct in noting that the U.S. has done a good job tamping down <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/covid-19\/\" id=\"auto-tag_covid-19\"  data-tag=\"covid-19\">Covid-19<\/a>, and even that the virus is now \u201con the run.\u201d The reason for this is simple: People are getting vaccinated. A recent Associated Press <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/coronavirus-pandemic-health-941fcf43d9731c76c16e7354f5d5e187\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">analysis<\/a> of government data found that 98.9 percent of Covid-related hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated. Same goes for 99.2 percent of Covid-related deaths. This is a reason to <em>keep<\/em> vaccinating people, not to <em>stop<\/em> vaccinating people, especially as the highly contagious Delta variant is spreading around the world.<\/p>\n<p>Kilmeade doesn\u2019t seem to get it. \u201cThe focus of this administration on <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/vaccination\/\" id=\"auto-tag_vaccination\"  data-tag=\"vaccination\">vaccination<\/a> is mind-boggling,\u201d he <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LisPower1\/status\/1413116850108502016\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">said<\/a> on the same show a day earlier, neglecting to mention the Delta variant, neglecting to mention infection rates could go up in the fall, and neglecting to mention that this \u201cfocus\u201d on inoculating people against a deadly virus is why life in America has regained some sense of normalcy while other developed nations are still stifled with restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>Kilmeade\u2019s morning musings are only a small example of the vaccine hysteria that has exploded across right-wing media since Biden gave an address on Tuesday calling for a \u201ccommunity-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oft times door-to-door, literally knocking on doors\u201d campaign to get people vaccinated. The speech was pretty innocuous, but conservatives are seizing on the door-knocking image as an example of, as former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) so eloquently <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/atrupar\/status\/1413496773767749634\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">put it on Friday<\/a>, \u201csocialist communist Marxist\u201d overreach. Conservatives are now not only questioning the vaccine, they\u2019re pushing full-blown anti-vaccination propaganda.<\/p>\n<p>Matthew Gertz of Media Matters compiled a sampling of what the watchdog has noticed on <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/fox-news\/\" id=\"auto-tag_fox-news\"  data-tag=\"fox-news\">Fox News<\/a>, including a guest telling Laura Ingraham that \u201cno one under the age of 30\u201d should be vaccinated. Meanwhile, Ingraham\u2019s chyron described \u201cTHE LEFT\u2019S CONSTANT COVID POWER GRAB.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Fox hosts are relentlessly attacking the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. Their nightly effort to delegitimize the vaccines is a big problem. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2gfLo7UXIm\" >https:\/\/t.co\/2gfLo7UXIm<\/a> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/y7OdhuVst1\" >pic.twitter.com\/y7OdhuVst1<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MattGertz\/status\/1413468151686352897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >July 9, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unclear how vaccinating people against a virus that has now killed more than 600,000 Americans and 4 million people worldwide constitutes some sort of Democratic power play, but that doesn\u2019t even matter. The idea is displayed in all caps for Ingraham\u2019s viewers to absorb in all its incoherence, and absorb it they have. According to an ABC\/<em>Washington Post<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/post-abc-poll-biden\/2021\/07\/03\/54e95b6e-db43-11eb-8fb8-aea56b785b00_story.html\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">poll<\/a> released over Fourth of July, 93 percent of Democrats have either been vaccinated or plan to get vaccinated, compared to only 49 percent of Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>The QAnon contingent in Congress isn\u2019t helping matters. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/laurenboebert\/status\/1413103995967746051\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">tweeted<\/a> this week that Biden is sending \u201cNeedle Nazis\u201d to her district, referring to the vaccine as the \u201cexperimental vaccine.\u201d Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mtgreenee\/status\/1412201898829135873\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">wrote<\/a> that \u201cno one cares about the Delta variant\u201d and that \u201call voters are over Covid.\u201d As Phillip Bump of <em>The Washington Post<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2021\/07\/06\/third-white-conservatives-refuse-get-vaccine-refusal-shown-both-polling-real-world\/\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">points out<\/a>, Greene\u2019s district in Georgia is one of the least vaccinated in the nation. So is Boebert\u2019s in Colorado. In fact, <a href=\"https:\/\/geographicinsights.iq.harvard.edu\/vaccineuscongress\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">according to a Harvard analysis,<\/a> of the 50 least-vaccinated congressional districts in America, 46 are represented by Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>The right\u2019s campaign to keep people unvaccinated is starting to extend beyond Fox News chyrons and tweets. Republican lawmakers in Tennessee have for weeks been attacking the state\u2019s health commissioner for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennessean.com\/story\/news\/health\/2021\/06\/16\/gop-lawmakers-tennessee-health-department-kids-covid-19-vaccines\/7718710002\/\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">\u201cpeer pressuring\u201d<\/a> teenagers about getting vaccinated. <em>The Tennesseean<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennessean.com\/restricted\/?return=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tennessean.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Fhealth%2F2021%2F07%2F08%2Ftennessee-halts-covid-19-vaccine-events-teens-wake-republican-pressure%2F7873131002%2F\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">reported<\/a> on Thursday that the the state\u2019s Health Department has now \u201cinstructed its county-level employees to halt vaccination events focused on adolescents and stop online outreach to teens\u201d as a result of the pressure from elected officials.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Republicans said the health officials were \u201cpeer pressuring\u201d kids to get vaccinated. So officials deleted a digital flyer it used to recommend vaccinations.<\/p>\n<p>You may ask yourself: How pushy was the flyer?<\/p>\n<p>This is it. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/J8fambqdoN\" >pic.twitter.com\/J8fambqdoN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Brett Kelman (@BrettKelman) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrettKelman\/status\/1413206507412393984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >July 8, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The Tennessee Department of Health\u2019s reversal \u2014 which has included the deletion of some pro-vaccine Twitter and Facebook posts \u2014 is especially concerning considering how quickly the Delta variant could spread. \u201cThis variant is simply more transmissible,\u201d Dr. David Aronoff, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, told the paper. \u201cIf it gets into populations that are not vaccinated, it will sneak into and through and across those groups more quickly than the original virus, which already did a pretty good job of spreading on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose groups\u201d are plentiful in Tennessee, which ranks seventh-lowest in the nation in percentage of the population to have received at least one shot, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/us\/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">according to <em>The New York Times<\/em><\/a>. States that voted for Trump in November occupy 21 of the bottom 22 slots on the list. Fox News is more hell-bent than ever on keeping it that way.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/politics-news\/fox-news-anti-vaccination-hysteria-1195003\/\" >Go to Original &#8211; rollingstone.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>9 Jul 2021 &#8211; Right-wing media is melting down over President Biden\u2019s push to \u2026 inoculate people against a virus that has killed more than 600,000 Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":188757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2425,887,232,958,1829,1868,2504,2485,1864,2484,1447,2482,888],"class_list":["post-188756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-astrazeneca-vaccine","tag-big-pharma","tag-capitalism","tag-control","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-johnson-and-johnson-vaccine","tag-moderna-vaccine","tag-pandemic","tag-pfizer-vaccine","tag-science-and-medicine","tag-vaccine-passports","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284838,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188756\/revisions\/284838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}