None of the top 11 states by COVID 19 death rate are in the Midwest.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

The top Midwest state is South Dakota, in 12th place.

This is overhyped ragebait masquerading as news. The reality is more nuanced - not everyone is on board with the idea that the government gets to mandate medical practice, and those people get framed as stupid or stubborn or antisocial.

There are deep and rigorously rational and ethical reasons to be against the current vaccine narratives promulgated by this administration. It's ignorant and disingenuous to dismiss the arguments as equivalent to the "vaccines are made of mercury, cause autism, the lord is my vaccine,etc" single digit iq cretins.

It got politicized because apparently both parties decided it was OK to fuck with America's pandemic response, because it justifies expansion of power and control. Never let a crisis go to waste.

I will like to say I've been to anti-vaccine mandate rallies. I have found all of them with no exception to be anything matching the description.

Everyone I talked to believed in one or in most cases many conspiracies up and down the list. There was alot of anti joe-biden pro trump activity and a lot of Evangelical Christian crap (main speaker led everyone in Christian prayer).

Lots of Bill Gates and Fauci hate and lots of 5g is a world domination conspiracy.

I don't deny there may be some people only there about the mandate. But I've found that , that sort of person seems to be rare

Rallies of that sort aren't attended by rational people anyway. That's not where most people opposed to mandates align politically. The rallies are political stunts and attract the same crowd you'd expect at an old circus freak show. Just like framing Republicans based on what you saw at MAGA rallies, or democrats by whatever drama AOC is up to at the moment - those are the 2-5% fringe folks that make for salacious clickbait, while the remaining 90% of adults in the country are more boring and complicated.

I'm a counterexample. I was hesitant about getting vaccinated for covid because it was developed so quickly and all medical interventions carry some risk, so you shouldn't completely abandon decision-making. I eventually got vaccinated because it felt like the risks favored that. But at that time, in my country, only 1 person this year had died from covid and also 1 person had died from the vaccine (yes, the vaccine does kill people occasionally). In a covid-free country, the relative risk of vaccine is much higher.

Also, orthodox Jews are idiot conspiracy theorists? Yes, I guess so. People neglect to include Jews when they criticize religious people because they have their favorite demonized religion (Christianity) and somehow venerate the others.