A group of about 300 unmasked protestors gathered outside of Vancouver's City Hall on November 3, 2021 to listen to speakers spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
Made up primarily of white people over the age of 40, the crowd was a collection of your least intelligent relatives, old classmates, and former colleagues that you see commenting on Facebook, but assembled in real life.
Your half-uncle Gary who shares YouTube videos about COVID-19 being a global hoax perpetuated by a group of Satan worshippers who rule over governments and the news media? He was there.
Cheryl from your grad class who lost their job as a nurse last week because she's unvaccinated? She was there.
Lastly, Barb who worked at Pizza Hut with you back in 1998 and who leaves comments about people being "sheeple" because they wear "face diapers"? Also in attendance, clutching a sign with the word sheeple on it.
I myself fall into the demographic of "middle-aged white person", and for the life of me I can't figure out why people who are around my age and who share my colour of skin are the ones primarily represented at these protests taking place outside the walls of the internet.
Is it because we're entitled creeps? Is it because we're used to getting everything our way, and we don't know what it actually means to be oppressed? Or because we're easily triggered by minor inconveniences like wearing a mask to help us get out of the worst health crisis of our entire lifetimes?
Maybe we're just a bunch of a-holes, and it's everything listed above and more.
We may never know the answer, but what we do know is that COVID-19 is very real, it was not manufactured as a global plot, getting vaccinated will help us get out of the pandemic, and wearing a mask is the very, very least we can do to help.
