In what will likely become a trend, Governor Gavin Newsom has made California the first state to announce that vaccines will be mandated for kids to attend public or private school in person. The mandate is contingent upon FDA approval for each respective age group—which has not been granted yet — and will be required the following semester. Which will likely mean we will see enforcement in the fall of next year for grades 7-12, and even later than that for elementary aged children. In what is also a trend, bro country artists are speaking out against the mandate, most notably, Jason Aldean.
Aldean is a star in country music, a genre known for conservative values and fanbases, and he posted to his Instagram to allege that Newsom’s mandate was taking away his decision as “a free American” on whether or not to vaccinate his children. It is worth noting that Aldean lives in a mansion in Tennessee — a state that will be one of the last to issue this mandate, if at all, considering the rest of its voting trends on pandemic-related topics. His commentary followed the typical mindset of conservative backlash posts, wherein one politician is held accountable for a decision that likely many experts and politicians weighed in on, as though a pandemic mandate by the Governor of one state is tyrannical. He then follows with the now unfortunately normalized rhetoric inciting others to be “outraged” and “start standing up and speaking out NOW.” It might be fall, but lest we forget that the year began with a fucking insurrection, stoked in large part by this same type of drivel. And sure, this isn’t typically anything new at this point in our Covid timeline, but it shouldn’t go unnoticed. This continued, red-faced blustering from influential far right characters continues to fuel this pandemic.
