‘Selfish, ignorant society.’ Angry Kansas Citians blame unvaccinated for COVID scourge
Selfish. There, he said it. He said it to them and now he’s saying it to the world.
Manny Abarca has siblings, aunts and uncles in Kansas City who won’t get vaccinated against COVID-19. Some have fallen for lies about the shots, deciding they will be healthier without them.
“And that is unfortunate,” said Abarca, who is 33. “I have done everything that I possibly can to educate them on this. It’s a selfish act at this point.”
He is newly engaged and protective of his fiancee’s 3-year-old daughter. There is no vaccine yet for children that young, which is why he’s keeping tabs on relatives who are unvaccinated.
“I cannot risk my 3-year-old’s life because someone wants to be selfish and follow what they’re reading on Facebook,” said Abarca, a member of the Kansas City school board. This week he plans to call on the school district to require vaccinations for everyone — something unheard of so far in the Kansas City area.
So here we are in yet another “us vs. them” moment in the pandemic. Last year, it was COVID deniers versus everyone else. Now, it’s the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated.
People are angry, still — name-calling on social media, screaming at school board meetings about mask mandates, picketing about masks at City Hall, yelling at hospital employees in packed emergency rooms, arguing with nurses who are tired of trying to convince people that the COVID-19 vaccines are necessary.
Know this: Some of those nurses would rather leave the profession than argue with patients about vaccines.
The vaccinated are feeling like the country is held hostage by unvaccinated accomplices to the virus. Some folks are done playing nice. Did you see the governor of New Jersey lose it?
At a press conference Wednesday, Gov. Phil Murphy slammed a group protesting COVID vaccinations.
“You’ve lost your minds. You are the ultimate knuckleheads and because of what you are saying and standing for, people are losing their life,” Murphy said.
“We have become such a selfish, ignorant society,” said Carole Damon, a 71-year-old recent retiree in Kansas City. “It just boggles my mind.”
A new Axios/Ipsos poll found that vaccinated Americans overwhelmingly blame the current spike of cases on their unvaccinated fellow Americans. But the unvaccinated are “far more likely to buy into conspiracy theories involving the media or President Biden,” the poll revealed.
“We’re dealing with a serious misinformation wall at this point that’s clouding facts,” Cliff Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs, said in a statement about the poll.
The Star also recently asked readers to share their thoughts as COVID-19 surges yet again, and they poured out frustration, much of it aimed at the unvaccinated.
Lauren Starkweather of Overland Park, who is chronically ill and immunocompromised, has taken COVID precautions since February 2020 and said when she lets herself “go there,” she feels rage.
“Rage when I think about anti-vaxxers. Rage over misinformation. The selfishness and ignorance is astounding. Sometimes it hits me like a ton of bricks that the clock is ticking. It doesn’t have to be this way. I’m tired,” Starkweather said.
David Thurmaier of Kansas City is angry, too.
“I did everything I was supposed to do — wear masks, get vaccinated, lock down last year, and now I feel like those of us who did that are being punished for those irresponsible people who didn’t.”
For such a “recalcitrant” group, Young said, hard policies and mandates are the only way to change their ways. He would get no argument from people seething as they watch people willfully ignore Kansas City’s reinstated mask ordinance.
“I think the most frustrating thing is when people won’t get the vaccine, but they also refuse to wear a mask or they refuse to follow the social distancing guidelines,” said 22-year-old Gretchen Gleason of Kansas City, who graduated from the University of Arkansas in May.
“So if you’re not going to do any of these things, what are you willing to do to help end this thing? That’s really the most frustrating, when people decide to do nothing. Obviously it just prolongs the pandemic even more.
“There’s no way it’s going to end magically some day just because it decides to stop. People will have to put in the work to get it to end.”
Gleason said a couple of her friends who didn’t get vaccinated are rethinking their decision now as cases surge to levels not seen since last fall and winter’s peak, adding to an alarming shortage of hospital beds across the metro. Most hospitalized COVID patients right now are unvaccinated, nervous hospital officials said last week, urging residents to mask up and get vaccinated to avert catastrophe.
“They heard stories about bad reactions to the vaccine and those crazy conspiracy theories about the vaccine causing infertility and making you sicker,” she said. “The couple of friends I talked to said they heard all that from their parents, which is really interesting, and that’s what scared them.”
Medical advice from Tucker Carlson?
As of Aug. 6, only 42.5% of Kansans had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19; 41.8% in Missouri, according to state health departments.
Thus, masks are back.
Damon hates wearing masks.
“I resent having to do it, because if everybody had gotten in line and gotten their shots when they were available we wouldn’t need them,” said Damon, who hasn’t had a chance to start traveling in her retirement because of the pandemic.
She doesn’t want to “throw rocks” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but “when they came out and said if you’re vaccinated you don’t need to wear your masks anymore, I knew at that moment that we were in trouble because the people who refuse to get the vaccines, they figure that applies to them, too.”
The CDC later updated that recommendation, saying even fully vaccinated people should wear masks indoors in places with high COVID-19 rates — like Missouri and Kansas.
Damon earned a virtual slap on the wrist from Facebook recently when she slammed a COVID denier who commented on a Kansas City Star story about the coronavirus. The Star’s Facebook page is her go-to place to vent these days.
“Some reader wrote what I would term an idiotic, science-denying response about how vaccines don’t work, masks don’t work, kids will be fine, not to worry,” said Damon, the retired executive director of the Tile Contractors’ Association of America.
“I got a community standards violation ding from Facebook because I said to this guy … do us all a favor. Go out, find the most crowded indoor venue you can find, inhale deeply, lick a few doorknobs on your way home and then send us the (name of the) hospital where your wife and kids are going to be in ICU so we can send them flowers.”
She had just found out about a COVID outbreak at her 2-year-old grandson’s day care. It scared her. So she was angry.
“There’s no guarantee with delta that these little kids are going to sail through it with no problems,” said Damon. “They may not die, but what are the long-term implications for this?
“I have been frustrated all along. I have kind of crossed over the edge into anger. And what makes me angry is I’ve got grandkids. I’ve got great-nieces and nephews under 12 and ineligible to be vaccinated right now. These kids are at risk.”
She’s frustrated by people — including the parents of the four kids who live next door — ignoring vaccine advice from public health officials because she knows where some of them get their COVID information, and it’s not the CDC.
Health officials say they have never seen the likes of this much misinformation about any other health issue.
“If you’re not going to believe the experts, but you’re going to take your medical advice from (Fox News host) Tucker Carlson, how can I possibly convince you that you’re not doing the right thing?” she said.
She’s among the many wondering whether resisters have to endure a case of COVID themselves to open their minds.
“The problem with that, though, is, they’re going to take a lot of innocent people and kids along with them as collateral damage,” Damon said. “It just frustrates me to no end.”
‘Do they want Darwinism?’
About 30% of unvaccinated people say they are waiting for the vaccines to receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, according to a June survey by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.
Some people consider the shots experimental, though the vaccines had to be proven both safe and effective before the FDA granted them emergency use status. And, some health experts think those folks won’t get the shots even after they’re fully approved.
Polls also have shown that politics and partisanship affect whether Americans choose to get vaccinated. Kaiser surveys, for instance, have consistently found that Democrats are more likely to report being vaccinated than Republicans.
And Republicans are more likely to say they definitely don’t want to get vaccinated.
Robert Verstraete sees it happening and is “disgusted at the lack of leadership” across the country. He feels Republicans and Democrats have failed to work together to stop the virus.
He can’t understand why it seems to be Republicans fighting vaccination efforts. “Do they want natural selection to happen? Do they want Darwinism,” said Verstraete, 56, a registered Democrat who lives in Kansas City.
But it’s not just conservatives who tick him off. He’s mad at anti-vaxxers on the far left, too — some of those folks who don’t want their kids vaccinated for measles, either.
He took a break from Twitter a while back but returned a few days ago, mostly to counter some of the “stupid things” he’s hearing people say about the vaccines.
He’s not afraid to argue the merits of vaccines with members of his pool league, which he described as a mostly conservative, blue-collar bunch.
Afraid of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine? Well, get one of the other ones, he’ll tell them.
Don’t like restaurants and businesses requiring vaccinations? Then be prepared to just “park it at home,” he says.
He had it out with the mother of one of his son’s buddies who proudly proclaimed herself to be anti-vaccines.
Did you get your son vaccinated for school, he asked her?
Well, of course, she said.
“Then you’re not an anti-vax family, you’re an anti-coronavirus vaccine family,” he told her. “And the only reason you feel that way is because you’re a staunch right-winger … you’re a Trumpster. And he got vaccinated, so I’m just confused why you think that.”
In his comeback tweets on Aug. 3, Verstraete grumbled that he couldn’t deal with the “uneducated … unintelligent” American population, poking at 20-somethings and 30-somethings by reminding them that they never had mumps because they were immunized.
“Your parents were forced and yes forced to get you immunized in order to go to a public school,” he tweeted. “So it isn’t the first time or the last time we will be forced to do something for the good of the whole.”
Verstraete’s job as regional manager for a medical equipment company gives him a close-up view of what overrun and understaffed hospitals are going through right now. The University of Kansas Health System is hosting a town hall soon for its employees, who are sure to vent concerns about taking care of more patients than the system has ever cared for.
The virus, Verstraete said, “is getting better at killing.”
It’s one of the reasons he’s so angry with people who are ignoring the city’s re-established mask mandate.
He watched a woman walk into a local Mexican restaurant without a mask to pick up an order.
The server at the to-go counter asked her to mask up. The woman refused.
The bartender asked her to mask up. She didn’t.
Verstraete decided it’s time to do curbside pick-ups again.
Arrogant Latino males
As of Aug. 5, the CDC had racial and ethnicity information for about 58% of people who had received at least one dose of the vaccines, and rates for Black and Hispanic people still lag far behind those for white people.
About two-thirds of people in that group are white, while only 16% are Hispanic and 10% are Black.
A silver lining: Recent vaccinations nationwide appear to be reaching larger shares of Hispanic, Black and Asian communities compared to overall vaccinations.
When Abarca talks to fellow Latino men about getting vaccinated, “the No. 1 response is ugh, it’s a shot,” he said.
They’re afraid of a shot?
That frustrates him.
“You’re so machismo that you can’t go get a shot? That’s what you’re telling me? You can’t put everything aside and get a little prick in your arm?” he said.
“It is an arrogance that ‘I can get COVID, I’ll get better.’ But the reality is if you want to be an arrogant Latino male, stand up for your family and protect them by getting the vaccine and don’t get sick, die and then leave your family with no one, because that is a reality.”
Abarca is worried that in spite of mask mandates and plastic shields and other COVID safety measures in place for the new year in Kansas City’s public schools, unvaccinated children will still be at risk. “The reality is this is going to hit elementary age kids a lot harder than anyone else,” he said. “And I don’t think we’re ready for that.”
Abarca and his fiancée have postponed their engagement party and wedding because of those relatives that still won’t get vaccinated.
He said it’s time for people to do what’s right for their community, their families, their children, “and get vaccinated and be healthy.”
But will it happen? Damon and others are losing hope and are prepared for things to get worse.
She is stuck in a frustrating new norm of feeling anxious, dreading the COVID news each morning brings.
“This time last year, I was hopeful,” she said. “I thought we’re going to nail this. I trust the scientists. I trust modern medicine. They are going to figure this out because we’ve had viruses since the beginning of time and eventually they figured it out.
“Well, they figured it out. But now, the wealthiest country on earth with the greatest resources can’t convince its citizens to take the medicine that will make this thing go away.”
This story was originally published August 8, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
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