Fox News compares COVID vaccines for kids to a stranger giving candy to a child
In response to the news that the CDC has approved a vaccine for children aged 5 to 11, Fox News has added child predators to its roster of dictators in its quest to demonize life-saving medicine. Priming their paranoia was a new ad by Pfizer that featured young children celebrating their COVID vaccination.
This so disturbed Candace Owens — her attention-grasping dial set firmly to 11 — that she gave Rachel Campos-Duffy two minutes of unadulterated fear-mongering. First she trotted out child predators and then threw the Hitler Youth, and Stalin’s manipulation of young Soviet minds, into her roiling cauldron of wild accusation, conspiracy and liberal indoctrination. Complaining about the “undercurrent” of what appeared to her to be “evil” and “sinister”, Owens said,
“They should make every parent uncomfortable. It is something about this but feels like a child predator approaching your child, A stranger comes up to you and says he has some candy.”
And then,
“I always say there is nothing new under the sun and if there's a difficult problem we can always look at history to see where things came from. This is so reminiscent to me when I studied Stalin youth programs, Hitler youth programs.”
She then talks about government and schools brainwashing children — and not just with vaccination, mind you. She has latched like a limpet to the current conservative cause célèbre, CRT and the big government takeover of schools,
“They try to raise up children to do whatever the state wants unquestioningly and that's been alarming. That's a conversation that has been going further than just the vaccines and vaccine mandates. It's going all around the country in terms of what children are learning in the classroom. And it’s time for parents to take control over their children and realize the government is trying to step in as the parent. And quite frankly, it is inappropriate.”
Conservatives extol the virtues of parenthood while at the same time dismissing parents as being too ineffectual to resist whatever insidious agenda the schools are throwing at their children. Perhaps the fact that conservative parents are so easily propagandized by evangelical charlatans, right-wing media, and cynical politicians leads these commentators to believe that all parents are that weak-minded.
Rachel Campos-Duffy also had issues with propaganda and big government, offering this,
“I am sick of the propaganda coming from big Pharma and big government. Enough of talking to my kids about medication vaccines. Talk to me. I'm the parent. Give me the information.”
Does Campos-Duffy think kids listen to medical ‘propaganda’ from big government and Big Pharma? Don't young children generally do what their parents tell them to do? And if the parent is a wild-eyed, anti-vaxxer, I suspect that, whatever the child's feelings on the matter are, they will be ignored.
She wasn't done. Like so many other anti-vaxxers she has ‘done her research’. And she doubles down on the child predator angle,
“When I look at the data, I look at a vaccine, that personally to me as a parent, doesn't seem necessary, it has not had long-term studies and again offering candy, offering days off from school, it's just creepy”.
Parenthood does not bestow medical expertise. For that, you need years of medical school and experience. But these keyboard warriors are just so darn good at ‘research’, they can find out things that have eluded the best medical brains on the planet. Campos-Duffy should realize, however, that “doesn't seem necessary” is not a rational basis for making medical decisions.
Owens then checks another conservative conniption box — censorship,
“Add to that the censorship that's happening. Beyond the bribery, there is the censorship. People are talking about the experiences they've had with the vaccine. They've had bad reactions and you are not allowed to talk about that. You have doctors that are all being censored for giving their honest opinion and their honest assessment about the vaccines. Whether or not they perceive them to be necessary for people who are young and healthy.”
Do Fox Newsers not get the irony of them using cable’s most watched channel to complain they are being censored. The problem is not censorship. The problem is that anyone can say whatever they want, regardless of whether it is true or not — as long as they do not defame anybody.
And then we arrive at the point where the Owens casually throws in the big lie (not the election big lie, the medical one),
“We know for a fact that this virus, and this is according to the CDC, does not harm children.”
Children are far more robust than the elderly, but to say that the virus does not harm them is despicable. Some die. And others who catch it suffer grievously. Conservatives warn of the long-term effects of the vaccine — which leaves the body within days or weeks. But they never talk about the long-term effects of a COVID infection - which can damage lungs, hearts, blood vessels, and even sexual function.
More importantly, the vaccine is not just to keep children healthy. It is to reduce the available space for the virus to mutate into different varieties. You cannot achieve herd immunity if 20% of your population is unvaccinated, even if that 20% is children. The kids may avoid the worst, but their teachers, bus drivers, and grandparents are at risk.
I could understand vaccine-hesitancy if vaccination were a brand-new procedure. But these kids have already had a whole bunch of vaccinations. And while some COVID vaccines use new techniques, existing vaccinations have used a whole variety of strategies. The smallpox vaccine works differently from the current polio vaccine — which is different from the original polio vaccine. That is the way medicine works. After all, we are not still driving Model Ts.
Campos-Duffy has nine children, who I am guessing are all vaccinated (I assume she would have mentioned it if they were not). That would seem to be quite a significant research sample. She should compare their outcomes compared to the fate that awaited nine siblings born 150 years ago. But that would not do anything for Fox’s ratings.