Confessions of an Ex-Anti-Vaxxer

Rosalyn Morris
6 min readDec 17, 2021
Photo by DJ Paine on Unsplash

When I say I was anti-vax, I was just that. I was ashamed to admit it to even myself at the time. I was not simply cautious or skeptical. I was not waiting for FDA approval, even though the Pfizer vaccine was FDA approved before I got my second dose.

I was NEVER going to take the COVID vaccine.

I hoped there would be herd immunity. That meant that others could get the vaccine, if they wanted to, I didn’t care, but I didn’t have to. Yes, it was a selfish way of thinking, but a pandemic can bring out the worst in us.

When my mother signed up to take the vaccine, not long after they were introduced, I pleaded with her not to. How could she take that poison no one knew anything about?! It was right after I heard this story. I sent it to my mother and begged her in tears not to take the vaccine. She cancelled her appointment, but I didn’t hear the end of it until I could reschedule her first shot. I had to stalk our state’s department of health website until I found an open slot. This is how polarizing the vaccine was for people in the same family. My mother would eventually tell me that I was too educated to be anti-vax and that I should be ashamed of myself, especially since we’d practically held her hostage at the beginning of the pandemic — telling her she shouldn’t go anywhere because she was too old and it was too unsafe.

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