According to recent survey results, Democrats are more likely to favor authoritarian rule than the rest of the American public:
55% of Democratic voters would support a proposal for federal or state governments to fine Americans who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.
Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
47% of Democrats favor a government tracking program for those who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
I think this is a function of the Democrats being increasingly controlled by Woke ideology, as Woke thinking is inherently authoritarian, intolerant and punitive. Afterall, consider the thinking of atheist PZ Myers.
Shadow To Light 
At this time last year, these views were ‘conspiracy theories’. But, as the Overton Window shifts, if this is pointed out the response is: “So? It’s for our safety”.
Gulags are acceptable now
I suspect that if Covid were to completely disappear tomorrow, the authoritarianism would remain. Without God, politics has become the new religion for an increasing number of people in the US and UK. Unfortunately it’s a religion in which there is no reconciliation or forgiveness, only complete subjugation or even destruction of the other side. Also it does not offer any hope of a life after this one – the only hope is of a utopia constructed by any means necessary while we are still alive to enjoy it.
This would almost certainly result in bloodshed if tried.
This would almost certainly result in bloodshed if tried.
I would hope so.
> According to recent survey results, Democrats are more likely to favor authoritarian rule than the rest of the American public:
The more I look at the questions asked [Linked below] the more I am shocked that anyone would favour any of the proposals.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/jan_2022/questions_heartland_covid_january_5_2022
> Would you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose a proposal for federal or state governments to fine Americans who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine?
Make them get vaccinated else they get punished by a(n unspecified, so in principle, potentially in practice massive) fine.
> Would you [ditto] a proposal to limit the spread of the coronavirus by having federal or state governments require that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine?
Make them get vaccinated else they get punished by imprisonment at home for a(n unspecified, so potentially a lengthy, in principle a lifetime) period of time.
> Would you [ditto] a proposal to limit the spread of the coronavirus by having federal or state governments require that citizens temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine?
What’s “temporarily”? This is the previous question and answer, except the imprisonment is not at home.
> Would you [ditto] a proposal for federal or state governments to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications?
How about as august a medical scientific authority as an ‘externally peer reviewed investigation’ published (including digitally) in the British Medical Journal?
The BMJ has complained vociferously, got nowhere.
Shoddy science should always be exposed. How do you “follow the science” when you cannot and shouldn’t trust it because the science is, as Ben Goldacre’s book exposing (sometimes deliberately) shoddy pharmaceutical research puts it, “Bad Science”! If adverse side-effects are missed through shoddy clinical trials, then show up later in a storm of bad publicity and howls at people being misled (and harmed?), what trust will remain in “follow the science”?
Let’s rephrase that question: would you [ditto] [ditto] fine or imprison whistleblowers reporting shoddy research practices during a clinical trial of vaccines?
(Looks like Facebook would!)
> Would you [ditto] a proposal for federal or state governments to require unvaccinated citizens to use a smart phone app or wearable device that tracks unvaccinated people to ensure that they are quarantined or socially distancing from others?
It’s electronic tagging, as used on criminals on parole, and with unspecified penalties for those not self-imprisoned (“quarantined”, but no suggestion they even have Covid) at home or in said “designated facilities or locations”.
The (UK) NHS smartphone app’s distance detection is imprecise and the time-distance rules for evaluating whether to issue an infection risk alert look almost worthless. Is the US version of the app more reliable?
> Would you [ditto] a proposal to temporarily remove parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine?
I cannot see a sensible reason to do that, it’s just perverse on child protection grounds.
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The questions are utterly vaguely worded and can be interpreted very flexibly indeed. A fine can be $1 or $250,000; temporarily can be interpreted as a day, week, year or lifetime; social media, television, radio, or online or digital publications can be interpreted as a tweet by the village idiot or an externally peer reviewed investigation published in that paragon of excellence of medical standards, the BMJ.
Vaguely worded, so ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ Nonetheless, I am shocked that anyone would favour any of the proposals, even in their mildest interpretations.
It turns out that a shockingly large number of people are really keen on the idea of a police state, so long as they think that other people will be receiving the police attention.
Maniacs.
As the famous quotation nearly has it, there’s lies, damned lies, and Hemant Mehta’s lies about statistics. A flagrant example of the last is Mehta’s 31 March 2022 post entitled and subtitled, “Most Americans say ‘religious objections’ to COVID vaccines are insincere: The majority of Americans have working BS detectors, but they’re very hesitant to demand consequences for vaccine deniers.” (Which subtitle tells you indirectly but clearly that the very Democratic-leaning, very authoritarian Mehta wouldn’t be at all hesitant to demand the consequences – here, sacking – that he laments the majority of Americans wouldn’t demand.)
Hmmm, “vaccine deniers”! Really?! Does anyone actually deny the existence of vaccines?!
He starts out by saying the findings of “a new Pew Research Center survey out today” are “troubling”:
The Pew Research Center survey that Mehta quotes figures from is plainly what’s usually described as an opinion poll – an opinion poll. Mehta pulls a out a bait-and-switch: he starts out by correctly reporting the first poll result as “Sixty-seven percent of US adults believe…” – believe –but then he switches to “In short, most Americans know…”, which is an unwarranted claim on his part of unwarranted certainty (“know”) on the part of those polled; Mehta’s making it up as he goes along, presenting his fantasies based on his anti-Christian prejudices as objective truth.
The fantasy gets worse; what most Americans allegedly “know” with certainty is that “faith-based anti-vaxxers are lying …:
There are many reasons to be reluctant to get vaccinated against Covid – I’ll use the Pfizer vaccine, which predominates in the UK, as my example:
#1 The vaccine was rushed out. Patient trials that normally take years were completed in months. (This hardly inspires trust.)
#2 A condition of the UK getting the vaccine as soon as possible was that the British government indemnified the company against damages awarded in any legal action. (Sharp intake of breath! This hardly inspires trust.)
#3 The company marked its own homework. The safety testing was not peer-reviewed. (This hardly inspires trust.)
#4 It has taken a recent, contested – contested! – application to court to force the company to release the get data released into the public domain so that non-company experts can begin to start the process of peer review. (This hardly inspires trust. – I think you get the idea by now.)
#5 The company fought to provide only three months worth of data at a time, with months between releases.
#6 The data provided was in the form of a data dump. With raw data only the experts cannot challenge or critique the company’s conclusions because those conclusions were withheld.
#7 The raw data was heavily redacted.
#8 There’s apparently an overwhelming case that the adverse consequences of the vaccine on the health of children are much worse than the adverse effects of contracting Covid. Vaccination of children was authorised in order to protect the old and the vulnerable. That looks unethical to me, what doctor knowing causes nett harm to their patient!
#9 The British government’s unethical decision to promote vaccination of children calls into question the wisdom and ethics of the other decisions the government made, and the messages promoted, during the course of the Covid pandemic.
#10 There’s a culture of denial that vaccination can cause harm, denial that it has ever caused harm. A sister of mine, a pharmacist’s assistant, had a flu jab a decade or two ago, then within a week developed chronic fatigue which dragged on for more than a year – when she approached her doctor, she was met with total denial that the vaccine could possibly have caused it, it was unheard of. Two husbands of my old schoolfriends my wife keeps in touch with have each died about a week after a Covid jab, of blood clotting. (I’ll add that refrain, This hardly inspires trust.)
(OK, now for an anecdote about the Astrazeneca vaccine. My church’s senior Elder reported that the woman who resides in the cottage semi-attached to the church developed massive and extensive blood clotting after her first jab; and also, foolish woman to proceed, after her second.)
#11 The time in which (the latest research reveals) the level of antibodies (or other protection marker levels) drops to just N% and a fresh booster jab is recommended soon to maintain levels, that time decreased in Israel after each successive booster and seems to be decreasing here in the UK too. The vaccine seems to be getting progressively less effective, the protection more ephemeral.
#12 There’s more reasons again to be very mistrustful of the Covid vaccination, especially in any country (USA?) where medical treatment is costly.
So, there’s many reasons in addition to religious reasons, many good reasons why a person might wish to decline the offer of vaccination and continue to decline. Realistically, someone declining for religious reasons will have strong and solid other reasons to decline; the religious reason(s) – I know that stem cells from human embryos were used in the early vaccine research, are there any more? – the religious reason(s) will be one or a few reasons among many good reasons, and are likely to be thrown in for completeness rather than being the sole or main reason. And in a society that gives weight to religious reasons in general, any religious reasons that can be added in are likely to be.
If Mehta thinks that religious reasons are the sole reasons for declining vaccination, he doesn’t get out much. Looks like the “65% of American adults” who elect for Pew’s binary choice answer that “Employers should allow employees who have religious objections to keep their jobs even if they decline to get the vaccine” get out more than Mehta does, and are aware that where there’s religious objections there are often or usually other objections. Many of these objections, I note, are objections that even atheists, even strong Democrats, even both, can understand and empathise with – and perhaps hold themselves.)
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As I said above, Mehta wouldn’t be at all hesitant to demand the consequences – here, sacking – that he laments the majority of Americans wouldn’t demand. I guess the poll results and Mehta’s response thereto show that the majority of Americans have more commonsense than Mehta has.
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I am myself a model of the kind of person Mehta (and the now five times vaccinated PZ Myers) would heartily approve of: triple-vaccinated at first opportunities, mask-wearing in public indoor spaces such as shops (even after the legal requirement was dropped), continuing to exercise the familiar basic precautions against contracting and spreading the Coronavirus, and naturally much more inclined towards quiet domesticity than socialising and crowds.
My wife is firmly vaccine-hesitant, firmly vaccine-resistant; I have expressed to her my worries for her, but she has good reasons – see the numbered list above for some of them. I’ll emphasise that despite her being a lifelong churchgoer, not a single one of her reasons is a ‘religious objection’.
I’m prepared to deny that the stuff people are getting injected with on account of COVID is a vaccine, and I’ll accept the label on that basis. I’m not sure how anyone would go about demonstrating that I’m wrong unless they relied on the argument, “everyone calls it a vaccine”. Sure, but everyone is calling a bunch of men women these days, so I’m relying on my lying eyes rather than what people tell me. They also call abortion “healthcare”, if you hadn’t noticed. The correlation between what people say and what is true has dropped into negative figures on most important topics.
As for religious objections, yes, I have those. I also have philosophical, medical, political, and personal reasons for refusing the jab. My ultimate fall-back is the personal reason, not the religious one: “I distrust it and don’t want it.” If that reason isn’t good enough for you, then apparently you consider yourself my lord and master.
TFBW > I’m prepared to deny that the stuff people are getting injected with on account of COVID is a vaccine
Yes, the Pfizer technology is new, different from what we used to know a vaccine is; and its novel use is basically experimental, inadequately untested, safety unproven, especially long-term. Add that and “I distrust it and don’t want it” — my list gives plenty of reasons for distrust — as two more examples of good reasons. These are two reasons my wife espouses; and whereas I have followed government guidance, I can readily acknowledge it is my wife, not me, who has followed the science.
> They also call abortion “healthcare”, if you hadn’t noticed.
Rival groups of protesters continued demonstrations outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday, with … abortion rights supporters shouting “abortion is healthcare”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61302740
> As for religious objections, yes, I have those. I also have philosophical, medical, political, and personal reasons for refusing the jab…
Probably few have just religious objections, there’s so much to object to.
I’m sufficiently aware of the science to follow it (or at least select among conflicting reports), and quite aware of what government authorities want. Rather than follow either of these, however, I tried to follow certain principles. The most important of these principles was that my health is my responsibility: not the responsibility of governments or scientists, and therefore, whatever else happened, the choice had to be mine and mine alone to make. Anyone trying to pressure me one way or the other is an enemy of that principle. Persuade me, sure, but sanction me for making the “wrong” choice? That way lies enmity, and it will come as no surprise that I feel considerable enmity towards my ostensibly “liberal democratic” government these days.