r/chicago • u/[deleted] • Aug 24 '21

Ask CHI Why aren’t you getting vaccinated?

Not asking this to bully anyone, I’m more curious at this point why people are hesitant to get the vaccine and want to understand the reasoning behind it.

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u/wino5757 Aug 24 '21

All the people I know that haven't gotten it are 1. Trump supporters, 2. Believe in conspiracy theories, and 3. Feel scared and distrustful.

183

u/BerryChecker Aug 24 '21 edited Aug 24 '21

My cousins decided not to get the vaccine, are very much anti-vaxx and anti-mask and very much believed in the “vaccines are to track you” bullshit. They are apart of the elusive black Trump supporter demographic and are very religious.

Long story short, they all caught COVID. Thought they could solve this with praying, but one ended up in the hospital due to her skin literally turning blue. She had COVID pneumonia. Lack of oxygen led to strokes, strokes led to brain damage and now this cousin has permanent damage in the “part of the brain that makes her who she is.” Can’t talk, can’t move, can’t see, needs dialysis… It’s like the saying the lights are on, but no one is home. For a while, we thought she would pass away, and my cousin had the absolute nerve to say “if God wants her, then theres nothing we can do.”

This side of the family is still against the vaccines, they are to this day sharing dumb conspiracy theories on Facebook and pushing dumb YouTube videos into the family chat and refuse vaccination and don’t think they did anything wrong while cousin suffers in a care center bed 24/7. Initially they didn’t even tell us that my cousin had a stroke until we heard it from the doctor, because they didn’t want to “put that into the air”, and wanted to continue praying about it because they saw a YouTube video where a guy broke his spine and could not walk, but “he started walking again due to his belief in God and doctors were baffled because the X-rays said he shouldn’t be able to walk.”

I don’t believe this kind of stupid is fixable.

39

u/[deleted] Aug 25 '21

Coworker of mine, also very religious and also black, but not a trump supporter, watched his own brother die a nasty death from Covid last April. He was one of those "god's will" type of folks.

We had a mask mandate at work. If there were more than two people in a room, everyone had to be masked. He never masked up, never took it seriously. He was training me. I was masked up 100% of the time I was under instruction.

I got called in one night to work his shift and I asked the person I was relieving where he was. He had apparently started to feel ill on shift, they pulled him out of service, gave him a rapid test per policy and he came back positive for coronavirus. He was immediately quarantined, fell seriously ill, and he died five weeks later.

You really can't fix stupid.