Noam Chomsky on Neo-Liberal Robbery, Covid Vaccines, and Anti-Vaccine Hysteria

 "Unvaccinated people are free to do whatever they want, except harm others. Nobody has the right to walk around with an assault rifle and shoot randomly. That's not freedom. Similarly, if some business - say a restaurant - decides they want customers to be masked - they have a right to do that. They have a right to protect themselves against people who want to feel free to harm them. So therefore, people who don't want to be vaccinated are perfectly free to do whatever they want, except to violate restrictions which, where people try to defend themselves. Like the workers in a restaurant have a right to defend themselves against people who want to come in and infect them. It's as simple as that. It's true that it aroused a huge furor, more sign of the irrationality. In fact, the whole anti-vaccine hysteria that's developed, mainly in the United States, but also in Germany and elsewhere, is another sign of the growing, radical irrationality. There's simply, virtually no doubt that the vaccines are very effective. In fact, it's a triumph of contemporary science. 

And the stories about the harm that they do to you is unbelievable nonsense. They're implanting a chip into you that's going to allow Bill Gates to control you. It's one thing after another. I mean, of course there's an element of uncertainty. That's life. There's an element of uncertainty about anything. But the evidence is simply overwhelming about their positive effect. Every national academy in the world, every academy of science, without any exception, every medical journal in the world, without any exception. I think all just take this for granted (emphasis added). But there's a big popular movement saying we don't believe anything. 

Actually, that has part of its roots in the neo-liberal assault against the population. That's forty years of a major attack on the general population. And it's led - just to give you some figures - in the United States there was a study by the highly respectable Rand Corporation, quasi-governmental investigation corporation. They studied the transfer of wealth from the lower ninety percent of the population - working class/middle class - transfer of wealth from them to the top one percent during the neo-liberal years. Their estimate is about fifty trillion dollars. That's pretty effective highway robbery. And it's had an effect - all over the United States, all over Europe, where the same things, not to that extent, but similar things have been happening. It's led to anger, resentment, distrust of authority, distrust of government, undermining of democracy . . .  the anti-vaccine hysteria is one lethal aspect of that."

--------- Noam Chomsky, June 15, 2022

Source: 

acTVism Munich, "Exclusive: Noam Chomsky on Ukraine, Russia-NATO, Assange, Shireen Abu Akleh and Covid Measures," June 15, 2022