CNN host Don Lemon during his Wednesday prime time segment urged Americans to start “shaming” and shunning “stupid” unvaccinated people. He told CNN co-host Chris Cuomo that society must leave the unvaccinated “behind” as they are ultimately “harmful to the greater good.”
The hugely provocative and controversial statements came during a bizarre conversation that compared taking the Covid-19 vaccine to Botox injections. Lemon suggested that people are fine not knowing what’s in Botox injections, so they should be unconcerned with what’s in the vaccine and ‘trust’ the science. He also implied that all of the ‘vaccine hesitant’ are Trump supporters, and appeared to blame the former president for people currently refusing the vaccine.
“I think we have to stop coddling people when it comes to… the vaccines, saying ‘Oh you can’t shame them. You can’t call them stupid,’” Lemon began the discussion.
“Yes, they are. The people who aided and abetted Trump are stupid because they believed his big lie,” Lemon argued. And that’s when he gave his audience of millions a viewers a call to action, which will no doubt lead to deeply hostile interactions for anyone actually following Lemon’s advice:
“The people who are not getting vaccines who are believing the lies on the internet instead of science, it’s time to start shaming them or leave them behind.”
The argument echoes some prior pundits who have begun to question whether the unvaccinated should even have emergency medical access, especially given in some states reports of ICU bed shortages.
Recent social media videos have increasingly showed such bizarre “shaming” incidents nearly leading to fights or angry verbal exchanges and even people “stalking” the unmasked or unvaxxed in order to “call them out”…
“Vax Americana wants to hold the unvaccinated accountable for the public toll of their private choices,” one recent Washington Post op-ed said.
In saying “leave them behind” Lemon appears to be also agreeing with those now arguing that the unvaccinated should be refused priority medical treatment at hospitals and clinics across the US, essentially creating a massive group of “second-class citizens” which are segregated against – a trend increasingly on display at “red carpet” events and some public venues.