Friday 4 February 2022

Friendships tested and torn over vaccine mandates and anti-vaccine rhetoric

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/covid-vaccination-friendships-1.6338928

 

Friendships tested and torn over vaccine mandates and anti-vaccine rhetoric

New Brunswickers find different ways to manage the divide in their social circles

"I'm not talking to some people at all," Astephen said from her home in Saint John. 

"To save my own mental health, I avoid the topic and I avoid them."

Astephen is among New Brunswickers who've faced division within their circles of friends over vaccination policy and other efforts to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Response to the division can vary.

Astephen said some of her friends have spread misinformation about vaccines, and she feels that's dangerous.

But what offends her most is what she believes is the misappropriation of the Holocaust. When she hears opponents of public health regulations invoking Nazi Germany, it's something she cannot accept or ignore.

"It just set off huge red flags for me," she said. "There's no comparison to anything like that. This is a vaccine that can save lives."

Astephen said people she knows started getting emotional about vaccines in 2019. 

This was before the pandemic, when New Brunswick's education minister was contemplating legislation that would keep students out of schools unless they met immunization requirements. 

The bill was defeated in June 2020, but Astephen said she could see it polarizing people in her friend groups. That moment opened the door to groups from outside New Brunswick who had intentions of stoking anti-vaccine sentiment, she she said.  

"For me, it started there."

Marc Kranat says a friend's anti-vaccine views have tested their 15-year friendship. (Marc Kranat/Twitter)

Marc Kranat, a member of Fredericton's Jewish community, said he has a good friend who is deeply involved in the anti-vaccine movement. 

It's upsetting, he said, when this friend tries to make excuses for the misuse of Jewish symbolism. 

"He's standing his ground, but I'm not going to fall out with him over it," Kranat said.

"We have a 15-to-20-year friendship, and we agree on most things although we haven't agreed on much since COVID started."

Kranat objects to taxing the unvaccinated or keeping unvaccinated people out of grocery or liquor stores. 

He respects the rights of people to protest, he said. 

At one protest he noticed a group of people carrying big yellow paper stars and equating the vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany.

Protesters and police clashed in downtown Fredericton during a rally last month against COVID-19 related restrictions and vaccination mandates. Protesters at another rally last December were seen wearing the Star of David. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

In German-occupied Europe, Jewish people were ordered to wear yellow cloth badges in the shape of the Star of David. 

The star was intended to humiliate and isolate Jews and make it easier to identify them for deportation to concentration camps where they were systematically murdered. 

Kranat said using the yellow stars was insensitive but, in his view, not anti-Semitic.

"They're actually identifying with the victims of the Holocaust. It's very wrong thinking," said Kranat. "But not anti-Semitic."

In an online discussion group, Kranat said, he tried to persuade some of the protest organizers to rethink their use of the stars.

"I said it's very disrespectful, very upsetting for Holocaust survivors, and it's inappropriate and I think we got through to them."

Christine Lund of Moncton said she has made a great effort to avoid any tensions with her friends, although she describes her social media as increasingly stressful.

"I know people who simply don't spend time with people anymore, because of these divides," she said.

Lund said she and her friends do not discuss whether they're vaccinated or not. 

'I've never asked someone and I've never answered," she said. "That's personal information and within Canada, we're supposed to have the right to medical privacy.

"Breaching that privacy is extremely problematic," said Lund. 

Christine Lund avoids bringing up the topic of vaccines around friends to avoid conflict. (Jeremie Doiron of Midtown Studios)

Lund said she's concerned about extreme views on either end of the spectrum when it comes to vaccines and vaccine mandates. 

She strongly objected to the categorization of people as pro-vaxx or anti-vaxx. She thinks that's inflammatory rhetoric that breeds hate. 

"I know many people who are called anti-vaxx but they're not anti-vaxx, they're just particularly hesitant about this vaccine," she said.

"I also know there are people who aren't anti-vaxx, they are vaccinated. But they don't like the mandates."

Lund said most of her friends are not trying to impose their views on one another.

And the people who are expressing hate or hate symbols are not part of her friend group or her larger social circle, she said.

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190 Comments
Commenting is now closed for this story.




David Amos   
Content deactivated 
I love a circus
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mike Sampson
Defund the CBC
 
 
David Amos
Content deactivated
Reply to @Mike Sampson: Hear Here
 
 
John Holmes
Reply to @Mike Sampson: cancel and defund have similar meanings 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Paul Maxwell 
We've lost a few good friends over this but good riddance, I say. They are antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists, thoroughly unpleasant people to be around. Who knew? They seemed fairly normal pre-pandemic. Life is simply too short to waste another moment with them.
 
 
David Amos
Reply to @Paul Maxwell: Do ya think they miss you?
 
 
Marilyn Carr
Reply to @David Amos: at least they wont catch C from those vaxed super spreaders
 
 
David Amos
Content deactivated
Reply to @Marilyn Carr: I like your style
 
 
Marcel Belanger
Reply to @Marilyn Carr: false, there’s no such thing and you know it.
 
 
John Holmes
Reply to @Paul Maxwell: yet you are wasting a considerable amount of your time dwelling on that subject
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Kim Grondin
more propaganda...of the leftist socialist agenda.
 
 
David Amos
Content deactivated
Reply to @Kim Grondin: Yup
 
 
Marcel Belanger 
Reply to @Kim Grondin: so go elsewhere. 
 
 
John Holmes
Reply to @Kim Grondin: yes make it into a left versus right battle for extra distraction from the real problem, that seems to work in some circles 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Romney Wordsworth
Is everyone all fragile and sickly or something? I haven't seen a doctor in at least 25 years and I'm healthy as an ox. I got covid in 2020 and pretty much walked right through it. Janet Russell herself said on Dec 6th, 2021 "the covid 19 virus can infect anyone it comes in contact with whether or not they have been vaccinated". Three of my friends who are triple vaxxed came down with covid and had a worse time of it than I did. It's a nothing burger if you are healthy and without serious
 
 
Jen Corvec
Reply to @Romney Wordsworth:
People are not sickly; they love this hatered and division and love "lording" it over others. Sickening. And if you're sensible, you don't fit in.
 
 
Kim Grondin
Reply to @Romney Wordsworth: you are totally right. The data says 99.6% survive...even after two years and different variants this has not changed.
 
 
David Amos
Content deactivated
Reply to @Kim Grondin, Jen Corvec & Romney Wordsworth : Amen
 
 
Marcel Belanger 
Reply to @Romney Wordsworth: it’s very apparent you don’t get it. Comparing every one with yourself.
 
 
Marcel Belanger 
Reply to @Kim Grondin: false
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mike Connors
Well I am sorry to hear that the mainstream media was able to tear apart long term relationship apart with their fear propaganda.
 
 
David Amos
Content deactivated
Reply to @Mike Connors: Me Too
 
 
Marcel Belanger 
Reply to @Mike Connors: false and you know it. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Samuel Hide
The fact that a global health pandemic became so politicized is the root of the issue here
 
 
Rich Hatfield
Reply to @Samuel Hide: We were "all in this together" until "mandates".
 
 
Johnny Lawrence 
Reply to @Rich Hatfield: No, we were "all in this together" until a small minority chose ignorance and selfishness over the well being and health of the majority.
 
 
Roland Stewart
Reply to @Johnny Lawrence: I know the ones you mean. They are the out of shape people, the smokers, unhealthy eaters, people who live dangerously that have been filling up and straining our health care for years before covid came along.
 
 
John Montgomery
Reply to @Roland Stewart: None of those things affect you. Those are all personal choices. Being vaccinated is not a personal choice, because it is impossible for anyone to be sure whether they are spreading it to other people or not.
 
 
SarahRose Werner 
Reply to @Rich Hatfield: "We're all in this together" sounded good at first, but quickly became an excuse for some people to label people as "selfish." "You're not doing what I think you should be doing in order to protect me! You're selfish!" In hindsight, we should have gone with a message that encouraged everyone to take responsibility for protecting themselves.
 
 
Ashleigh Mcsanderson
Content deactivated
"Being vaccinated is not a personal choice, ..."

You read it hear first folks.
And two years later some still espouse such nonsense.
 
 
Wes Gullison 
Reply to @John Montgomery: actually using your own logic.... these people are taking up beds which is slowing down surgeries and care of others so it is having an effect on others. If they had made different choices they wouldn't wouldn't effecting others. Right? Lol
 
 
Rich Hatfield
Reply to @Johnny Lawrence: Johnny, Look up the word " Othering " and read the definition. Tell us if this rings true to you.
 
 
David Amos 
Content deactivated 
Reply to @Ashleigh Mcsanderson: Therein lies the rub
 
 
David Amos 
Reply to @Rich Hatfield: I resemble that mark.

In 2004 I was falsely arrested in Boston and held in solitary confinement with no bail under the charges of "Other".
 
 
 
 
 

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