Why?

Almost 9,000 unvaccinated Texans died of Covid since February…and of the ones who died because they refused the vaccine, I'm betting the vast majority got vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, polio, whooping cough. They got their tetanus shots every 10 years or so. They made sure their kids got the shots too.

They vaccinated their kids, and were glad their parents did the same for them, because those are nasty diseases that can cause disabilities like blindness or deafness or mental and developmental disabilities. Sometimes, though rarely, they are fatal. Of course they protected their kids from those things!

If those who refused the Covid vaccine are older, they may also have gotten vaccinated against pneumonia and shingles.

But not this one, the one that would have protected them against the most dangerous, the most lethal disease we've seen in our lifetimes. That has killed not hundreds, not thousands, as those diseases now almost wiped out by vaccines did before we had vaccines for them, but hundreds of thousands. And will leave millions with disabilities caused by the long term damage the virus did to their organs if they survived it.

Why? They give a host of reasons, the vaccine's development was too rushed, the technology is too new, infertility or birth defects, microchips, becoming magnetized. But I don't think those are the real reasons. The technology is decades old, the vaccines were in development for 20 years. Women in the trials got pregnant at the same rate as tens of thousands of women of childbearing age always have, their babies had neither more nor fewer birth defects as babies have had over the last ten or twenty years of data collected. Microchips and magnetism? No idea what to say to that but it doesn't matter if the objections seem reasonable, though incorrect, or bizarre.

I think the reasons come from a different direction. They see "us" and "them" and "they" are getting vaccinated and saying everyone should, and being one of "us" - and more importantly not being one of "them" - is literally worth dying for. Identity is a powerful force.

July 22, 2021, the second summer of this pandemic:

Texas has seen nearly 9,000 COVID-19 deaths since February. All but 43 were unvaccinated people.