WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Waving signs denouncing President Joe Biden and calling for “freedom,” several thousand people demonstrated in Washington Sunday against what some described as the “tyranny” of Covid-19 vaccine mandates in the United States.
Speaker after speaker — including notorious anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust — took to the microphone in front of the white marble Lincoln Memorial to decry the rules.
Like other Covid restrictions aimed at reining in a disease that has infected more than 70 million people in the United States, killed more than 865,000 and brought much of daily life around the globe to a stuttering halt for two years and counting, vaccine mandates have become a deeply polarizing political issue.
“Mandates and freedoms don’t mix, like oil and water,” another speaker said.
“Breathe. Inhale God, exhale fear,” exhorted yet another to applause from the crowd, made up of people of all ages, including children, and largely unmasked.
“I’m not anti-vaccine, but I’m anti this vaccine,” Michelle, a 61-year-old physical therapist from Virginia who declined to give her last name, said.
She said the messenger RNA serums developed by companies such as Pfizer and Moderna in record time were “too experimental” and “rushed.”
The mRNA vaccines, given to millions of people around the world in the past year, have been proven safe and effective, as well as being hailed as potential gamechangers in modern medicine. — NNN-AGENCIES
