(OPINION) Longtime Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten was castigated online for suggesting that those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 should be prosecuted. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Weingarten has expressed disdain to Americans who did not receive the coronavirus vaccine.
“It is hard but not impossible to refrain from hating the stupidly unvaccinated, people who are dragging us back into pandemic,” the WaPo columnist wrote on Twitter in July. “It is impossible, however, to refrain from feeling contempt for them.”
It is hard but not impossible to refrain from hating the stupidly unvaccinated, people who are dragging us back into pandemic. It is impossible, however, to refrain from feeling contempt for them.
— Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) July 21, 2021
In October, he tweeted, “The ‘vaccine hesitant’ are selfish idiots whose selfish idiocy is killing people but we are not allowed to say that because why?” Weingarten even attacked those who are “vaccine-hesitant” in a Sept. 9 column titled: “I have a better term for the ‘vaccine-hesitant.'”
In the piece, Weingarten denigrates vaccine-hesitant individuals as “ignorant people,” “idiots,” and “incredibly stupid people.” On Thursday, Weingarten took it to another level by asking, “Is there a point at which the ‘unvaccinated’ need to be prosecuted?”
The "vaccine hesitant" are selfish idiots whose selfish idiocy is killing people but we are not allowed to say that because why?
— Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) October 30, 2021
In reactions on Twitter, the WaPo columnist was mercilessly ripped to shreds for considering legal punishments for unvaccinated individuals. Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald:
“This is demented beyond words, but as I wrote yesterday, a punitive and sadistic desire to see people imprisoned who dissent from their worldview is an increasingly central and defining feature of American liberalism. COVID can be transmitted by vaccinated people as well as the unvaccinated. And if someone is vaccinated, they are protected against serious illness and death: or don’t you believe in the efficacy of vaccines?” READ MORE
