Although the pandemic is currently primarily affecting individuals who have not been vaccinated, don’t assume that all anti-vaxxers are on the correct track. On the left, there’s a lot to see. Jordan Klepper, who has previously poked that particular bear, the anti-mask bear, chose to widen his coverage, demonstrating that the movement against getting safe, effective, and free protection against a highly transmissible virus is a little more diverse than you might imagine.
The Daily Show correspondent traveled to Southern California, where he encountered a new breed of vaccine skeptics – who weren’t so different after all. Some of them may claim not to be “anti-vaxxers,” but when asked what they believe in, they may make even less sense than their Trumpist counterparts.
One severely pierced and tatted individual informs Klepper that he believes in “freedom of choice,” just like the Red Staters whose ideologies he probably doesn’t share. Because mandates are a slippery slope from “Step 1” to “Step 2,” he admitted he didn’t know but claimed he wasn’t a “conspiracy theorist.” He then made strange claims about polio vaccines, saying he’s fine with the mandate because “we’ve known what it’s done” with polio, to which Klepper could only respond, “We don’t know what COVID’s done?” ”
In the perpetually sunny progressive utopia, wild theories fly left and right. There’s the man who thinks vaccines are all part of Bill Gates’ population control scheme to kill out a billion people. Several people sing the virtues of staying healthy, all but repeating remarks made by far-right commentator Dennis Prager, who, after testing positive and likely came very near to death, bragged about contracting the virus on deliberately.
Don’t assume the use of ahistorical and insulting parallels to Nazi Germany is limited to Marjorie Taylor Greene. One progressive woman, a health nut from Germany, argues that “history is repeating itself” with immunization cards. “‘Can you tell me where your papers are?’ What happened to your papers? She said, “It’s extremely comparable to Hitler’s period.”
“So, because they can’t get into gyms, Jews are abandoning Poland?”
” replied Klepper.
