How to Draw the Line with Anti-Vaccer Family
According to the CDC, nearly 190 million Americans (48.6% of the US population) have been fully vaccinated, which statistically means we will all have family members who are refusing the vaccination.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reporting drastic increases across the country in the number of people contracting COVID-19. On Friday, the CDC reported the seven-day moving average of daily new cases increased 69.3% compared to the previous week’s numbers. Perhaps even most alarming is the data that the seven-day average of new hospital admissions for COVID-19 is now 35.8% higher than the same time the previous week.
More than 97% of people getting hospitalized with Covid-19 are unvaccinated and Los Angeles County is recording more than 10,000 coronavirus cases a week. The Delta variant of Covid-19 now accounts for the overwhelming majority of infections and this new Delta cycle is indicative of what is to come if we don’t get more people vaccinated: an un-ending cycle of Covid that will never fully be eradicated.
The initial response to those who refused to get vaccinated was, “well fine then, enjoy risking your own life while I am protected with the vaccine.” Considering the truth behind President Biden’s recent statement that this is a pandemic among the unvaccinated, it might seem tempting just to go about our business, but unfortunately, those who refuse to get vaccinated are hurting more than themselves.
The Delta Variant is doing far more damage to children than the original Covid-19 virus. This is how viruses mutate to stay alive — they become smarter and find weaknesses in our systems and our populations so that they can find more effective ways to infect and kill people. When parents chose not to vaccinate their own children, they put their kids at great risk, along with all of the other children who will be exposed to their kids. We are only one month or so away from schools starting up again nationwide.
The vaccination does not fully protect us from getting sick with the Delta variant. While very few people who have been vaccinated are getting hospitalized, inoculated people are still getting sick, which can expose them to other secondary illnesses, make them contagious to others, or harm their ability to work and earn a living.
Yesterday, following the release of the latest Covid resurgence numbers, the S&P 500 market index dropped significantly, European stocks had their worst day of the year and the Dow Jones fell 700 points for its worst drop since October. This is causing leading economy experts to claim that investors actively fear another Covid resurgence.
This problem of people refusing to get vaccinated is no longer isolated with regard to only harming those who refuse to help themselves and their communities — it is hurting us all with the threat of a never-ending pandemic and it is hurting our chances for any kind of real economic recovery nationwide. This means that for many of us, it is time to take a stand against our very own family members and apply some regulations of our own.
I have been writing about the ongoing struggle between my mother and my aunt with regard to getting vaccinated, and my mom’s brave decision to do her personal and civic duty and take a stand. The concept of drawing boundaries with your QAnon family might sound easy in theory, but the truth is that confronting people who are fully entrenched in a cult mentality can be difficult, even for those of us who are trained to be confrontational.
My mother took great care to craft the message she sent to my aunt that defined her new boundaries, so I thought I should share it as a template to help everyone get started. Sometimes it is hard to find the right words to say in any situation and I suspect many people have just been avoiding confrontation altogether since 2016.
Here is the message my mother sent to my aunt that can be cut and pasted and sent in text or email form. You could even call your family members and read it to them if that makes you more comfortable. Maybe you will even luck out and get sent to voicemail and you can read it to them that way.
Good Morning (name here),
I hope you are having a great time at (place of location) this summer and staying cool. I have just learned that infection with COVID (all variants) is up by 70% in the last week nationwide. It’s higher in (Southern California) due to the fact that so many people have not been vaccinated. I would never forgive myself if you got COVID —and/or God forbid died of it — or any of your family got it as a result of going (with me in the car or to my house) without being immunized.
So, as much as I will miss seeing you next week, the lack of vaccination on your part is a deal-breaker. If it is important to you to not be vaccinated, for whatever reason, then that’s your choice. However, something that has been lost lately is the understanding that if you have not been vaccinated, you should still be wearing a mask- EVERYWHERE outside your home. The coronavirus is out there, multiplying exponentially because people are refusing to be vaccinated, and you are at greater risk of contracting it, especially without wearing a mask in public.
With very little exception, those hospitalized and those dying of coronavirus have not been vaccinated. I don’t know whether the news services you hear are telling you this, and I’m sure the social media you listen to is not telling you this so I am telling you now. This is based on fact and not opinion, and you need to hear it from someone who loves you and cares about your health and the health of your family. I’m not suggesting that the people who are encouraging you to not get the vaccination don’t care about you. I am suggesting that they are dangerously misinformed about the facts of this pandemic and have been listening to political rhetoric from people who have their own agenda.
The coronavirus is REAL. It KILLS people. It is once again spreading out of control, but now it has at least 4 variants. The longer it goes uncontrolled, it will continue to mutate and become more dangerous and deadly. Children are now becoming infected at much higher rates and dying at much higher rates than when it was first identified. The stock market had a huge drop due to fear over the resurgence of the virus. It will not be brought under control until as many people as possible worldwide are VACCINATED.
That was all fact-based information. Now I’ll give you an opinion. It’s really very much like POLIO, in the sense that POLIO has been effectively eradicated because people realized that vaccination was the way to wipe it out. And they vaccinated EVERYBODY. People didn’t stand up and say, I’ll take my chances with my kids not being able to walk or having to be put into an iron lung because I don’t want anybody else telling me what to do. They got vaccinated.
I don’t really know why you have neglected to be vaccinated. But now, there is scientific information that people with compromised immune systems (that includes name here) have a much harder time building antibodies after vaccination, and therefore may need to get a booster shot to have enough antibodies to protect them. I feel a great responsibility to myself, my family, and my community to be vaccinated. I will not help to perpetuate this virus and allow it to keep mutating and infecting even more people with potentially deadly results.
I really don’t understand why you don’t feel the same way. I wrote this down not to prevent a conversation, but to begin one and so that my words were clear and hopefully not misconstrued. If you want to have a conversation about this issue, I’d be happy to. I will not be spending time with anyone that I have reason to believe has not been vaccinated and this will include during the holidays.
I love you,
(Your name here with your choice of emoji if you like)
Feel free to use it word for word or change it however you feel it will best help your cause. I also recommend that you write down a few bullet points that are important to you about why you want them to get vaccinated, in the event that you have a follow-up phone call and emotions get heated. I have underlined passages of the template message with links to credible news sources that are the least controversial I can find. You can keep them or not, but these linked articles will also provide you with some great bullet points for any conversation you might have to have later.
If you are nervous and do not like confrontation, write it all down and just read it, it will help. I also want to tell you that no one really likes confrontation, except for a few twisted people who need medical attention. Even those who do it well can have a hard time with it. I hate confrontation, but I won’t shy away from it because I hate the result of not confronting problems more. My mother, the former judge, wants you to know it was not easy to draw this line with my aunt and to call her out when she apparently lied, so don’t be hard on yourself.
You can also read my other two articles in this series, Trump Shockwaves are Still Dividing Us and The Latest QAnon Rumor if you need any more inspiration. Good luck and Godspeed. Feel free to leave a comment if you are struggling or need advice. Thank you for being a good citizen and family member, I appreciate how hard this is for you. Let me know how it goes!
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
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I greatly appreciate the resources you've provided in this article. I strongly believe that they will assist your readers with having those difficult conversations with their beloved family members who are resisting both science and common sense. I recently had one of those conversations with my sister.
She's 5 years younger than me - in her early 60s - and feels that she can't get vaccinated because of the possibility of having an adverse reaction which would necessitate incurring medical bills. Despite being told that I would gladly handle any medical bills incurred should she have a reaction, she still resisted. Despite assuring her that I would drive to her city from my home and stay with her until the possibility of a reaction was past, she refused. Despite all my offers of support and assistance, she remains unvaccinated and - for the foreseeable future - will stay that way.
Sis claims she goes nowhere that she would contract COVID. She swears she wears a mask in every situation when she goes out in public. She does NOT, however, wear a mask around our mother in her 80s. It makes me angry, frustrated, and feeling helpless, especially since Mom won't take her to task for it either. My other sister in Florida is also not helpful, having fallen into the Trump cult at some point. Like the proverbial horse, though, I can't *make* her do what *I* view as right.
I wish everyone else having to hold these conversations the very best of luck. Meanwhile, I'll cross fingers and toes that my recalcitrant sister doesn't make things worse for anyone other than herself.
I am very, very fortunate that my family, with no exceptions at all, has been vaccinated--that goes for my ex-wife and her family as well. For those who are not as fortunate, your template will hopefully enable some people to convince family members who are vaccine-resistant or vaccine-hesitant. The stakes could not be bigger.