Rep Lauren Boebert is once again facing ridicule on Twitter, this time for making an ill-conceived comparison between allergy medication and Covid vaccines.
“As allergy season gets underway, I encourage everyone to take their allergy medicines so that my allergy medicines can work,” the Colorado Republican tweeted on Wednesday. “You know, it doesn’t work unless everyone takes it.”
The congresswoman added an eye-rolling emoji to drive home her sarcasm. It was not completely clear what she meant, but the tweet appeared to imply that Covid-19 vaccines are somehow less effective than allergy medicine.
The problem with this comparison, to many Twitter users, was obvious.
“You know allergies aren’t contagious, right?” tweeted one reader.
“Allergies aren’t contagious, Lieutenant Corporal,” another wrote, referring to the garbled military title Ms Boebert bestowed on a dead US soldier.
“Yeah. You’re so right,” someone else responded sarcastically. “I remember when I caught that terrible allergy last year from someone who didn’t take their meds because as everyone knows allergies are terribly contagious, and I died.”
As these comments pointed out, Covid-19 is a disease caused by a highly infectious virus that spreads from person to person. Seasonal allergies, meanwhile, are an overreaction of the immune system to pollen and other irritants. They are not contagious.
Even one of Ms Boebert’s colleagues from Congress chimed in.
“Today our word of the day is CONTAGIOUS,” replied Rep Ted Lieu. “Definition of contagious: ‘transmissible by direct or indirect contact with an infected person.’”
The California Democrat also added a link to Merriam-Webster’s definition.
Ms Boebert may have been implying that, like allergy medicines, Covid-19 vaccines should not require multiple people to take them in order for them to work.
In reality, the three Covid vaccines authorized in the United States work extremely well at preventing severe disease in their recipients, regardless of whether other people get them. The concept Ms Boebert may have been thinking of is herd immunity – the point at which an overall population resists a virus – which does require a large majority of people to get vaccinated or infected.
The Independent has reached out to Ms Boebert’s office to ask what she meant.
