> Many warned, including myself, that large scale mandates of COVID vaccines would lead to this inevitable outcome.

Anti-vaxxers predate Covid.

> Help people make informed choices. Don't make them for them.

Anti-vaccine ideology is like a "memetic" virus: it literally killed millions of people that were infected with it. You can't cure it by "helping people make informed choices". Even when death strikes at large swaths, people still refuse to take the vaccine.

I have no solutions.

> Anti-vaxxers predate Covid.

Every idea exists, the question is how prevalent. I knew many people who did not take it due to mandates, or took it and resisted the mandates (never showed card etc).

In retrospect the alarmism you’re still using was totally wrong. I believe the official story now is that Covid vaccines mildy reduce symptoms and more effectively reduce transmission?

Anti-vax is a meme, but so is anti-anti-vax.

Exactly, the anti-vaxxers are largely convinced they are the ones making the informed choice. Its not as simple as choice.

This is a rewriting of history. Politically extreme oppositional defiant disorder and a concerted effort to sow active disinformation are the roots of the tree that bore that fruit, not vaccine mandates. Mandates followed the oppositional defiance, not the other way 'round.

If you insist on blame--and I can get behind that to some degree--ravening shitheads with political (or, I guess, perhaps mere social-media view counts) greed in their hearts are where to look, not "you are, actually and in fact, rarely but indeed sometimes obligated not to help make things worse for your fellow citizens, and we will make it happen if you lack the civic culture to do so yourself".

This reads like something Hitler would say: "and we will make it happen if you lack the civic culture to do so yourself"

It was actually the other way around. The mandates were a reaction to the anti-vaxxer hysteria.

Removing both the informed and the consent part of informed consent didn't exactly help.