Rachel Bush wants to watch her husband, Bills safety Jordan Poyer, play football this season. She does not, however, want to get a COVID-19 vaccine. This is a problem for her, because Erie County, N.Y., is planning to require proof of vaccination to attend Bills and Sabres games this fall.
“Our plan is that unless you are vaccinated, you will not have entry to the stadium,” Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz said on Tuesday. “It is easy, it is safe. We can then guarantee 70,000-plus people at the stadium.”
As wonderful as that sounds, the vaccine-hesitant Bush not only isn’t on board, she circulated a petition challenging the vaccine mandate and tweeted a bunch of other misinformation to go with it.
That’s nothing new for Bush, a Candace Owens re-tweeter who last month did the whole what-about-black-on-black-violence shtick, worded slightly differently, and somehow thinks Ron DeSantis has made it “Safe in florida!” with his anti-vaxx stance.
Bush urged people to “Stay healthy-naturally” in a tweet that started with “I had covid,” which, uh… yeah.
When called out by Michael Wooten of WGRZ, the Buffalo NBC affiliate, Bush responded by asking if he should be trusted “as a ‘news anchor’?” as “This ‘model’ makes more than you do.” Why her income matters is an open question, but Wooten was urging people to take their information from “trusted sources, not an anti-vaxx model,” which, while being a needless shot at her occupation, doesn’t change the fact that Bush is not a trusted source.
“Take notes my friend and do some research,” Bush wrote in that tweet. But then, signing off for the night, she wrote, “I just don’t understand how an opinion can trigger so many people. All I am fighting for is our rights & freedom. For a CHOICE. If you want the experimental vaccine get it- if not then don’t. Either way we should all be able to function in society the same. Period.”
Take away the red flag that “trigger so many people” is itself a huge red flag that you’re dealing with an unserious person, and the guise of “rights & freedom” is nonsense. Vaccinations are required to go to public schools, for instance, and there’s a huge difference between “freedom” and “do whatever you goddamn well please,” because doing whatever you goddamn well please can adversely affect people around you. That’s why we have rules and laws. It’s part of living in a society. Yes, Bush has the freedom to skip the vaccine, but by doing so, she sacrifices her ability to go to Bills games. That’s the “CHOICE” that she has to make.
But let’s go back to her concept of “trusted sources.” The Centers for Disease Control posted not only an FAQ page, but also a mythbusting page about the COVID-19 vaccine on its website. There’s another good Q&A page from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which includes information on who should not get the vaccine. The American Medical Association has another FAQ page, leading with the big one on how we know it’s safe.
And specifically to a concern that Bush voiced about pregnant and breastfeeding Bills wives, if she wants to believe that all American sources have been compromised somehow, then Scotland’s health service has that covered — and, in fact, there may be a legitimate concern, as “the coronavirus vaccines have not yet been tested in pregnancy, so until more information is available, pregnant women are not routinely being offered the vaccine.” That said, the NHS advises that “if you are pregnant and not in … higher risk groups, you can be vaccinated following your pregnancy.”
Of course, the pregnant wives and breastfeeding wives aren’t Bush’s only concern. She writes of “Wives who have already had Covid (so it’s dangerous to get vaccinated now) etc etc. NONE of us are comfortable with getting the vaccine. NONE of us should be forced to do so in order to watch our own husbands play live.”
That is where she’s the most wrong. The Mayo Clinic specifically addresses those who have already had COVID, saying, “If you’ve had COVID-19, you might delay vaccination until 90 days after your diagnosis.” So there’s plenty of time between Bush getting the coronavirus a few weeks ago and football season for her to come around, learn the facts, and get her shot. Because while it might be uncomfortable to get the vaccine, that’s going to be the rule, the same way that you’re “forced” to not bring a gun into a football stadium and “forced” to show ID to buy beer there — an argument that Bush was perfectly fine re-tweeting in service of arguing for voter ID laws, failing to recognize the difference between the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote and the choice and privilege of attending sporting events, which often includes additional rules.
Bush says she is “alarmed by the amount of Americans that think it’s perfectly okay for the government to force an experimental vaccine on citizens.” Nobody’s forcing it on her. It’s her choice whether to get the vaccine and attend football games, or not get the vaccine and stay home and watch them on TV, every bit the same way parents have the choice not to vaccinate their kids against measles, but then can’t send their kids to a public school.
Nobody is being forced to be vaccinated, including Bush. She just doesn’t like that choices have consequences, like her choice to tweet, which exposed her as a selfish person who doesn’t have her facts straight.