I Pity The Folks Who Attacked Mr. T For Getting Vaccinated

If people don’t want to get COVID-19 vaccines, that’s their choice. But should they be insulting and wishing death upon those who do?

Entertainer Mr. T., who is perhaps best known for acting in the movie Rocky III and the television series The A-Team, recently made headlines when he posted a video to his Instagram page that showed him getting a COVID-19 booster shot. I learned about it shortly afterward when I saw Mr. T’s name trending on X (the social media platform previously known as Twitter.)

The reason he was trending was because a lot of people were posting on the platform about him getting vaccinated. Unfortunately, the majority of the posts were rude and nasty in their content.

Scrolling through several dozen of them, I saw several posters writing things like the following:

“Mr. T is a f*cking fool for believing the hoax known as COVID!”

“Mr. T! How could u encourage people to destroy themselves with that demon juice? How much did they pay u? Sell-out!”

“T is a big piece of sh*t for doing this and making people think they should too.”

“Mr. T u gonna die now because u got that. And u know what? I hope u do! Die!!!”

Sadly, the most common kinds of comments I saw were very similar to the last one above — ones in which people were wishing death upon Mr. T because he got the vaccine.

After over three years of COVID-19 being in all of our lives, I’m of course aware that there are a lot of anti-vaxxers out there in the world. A lot of people have very passionate feelings about whatever their reasons are for not wanting to be vaccinated.

Personally, I’ve gotten each COVID-19 shot and booster shot as soon as they’ve become available.

However, I have NEVER felt any sort of desire to insult people who choose not to get the shots. Even though they feel differently than I do, I completely respect their choice to not be vaccinated.

That’s up to them.

Just like my decision is up to me.

Should people on either side of the vaccine issue be viciously ripping apart people who don’t share the same beliefs about it that they do?

The attacks, of course, are not just limited to celebrities like Mr. T.

Someone very close to me recently posted a picture of herself online, in which she was wearing a sticker on her arm that indicated that she had just gotten a COVID-19 vaccination. Almost immediately, a total stranger replied to her by posting multiple images of tombstones.

That kind of stuff is not only completely unnecessary, but it’s just downright mean.

Mr. T’s well-known catchphrase is “I pity the fool.” I was initially going to play off of that and call this post ‘I Pity The Fools Who Attacked Mr. T For Getting Vaccinated.’ However, I changed ‘fools’ to ‘folks’ because I didn’t want to insult anyone by calling them a fool.

I decided to keep the ‘pity’ part, though. While I respect that people feel passionately about things, I have a very hard time with witnessing people attacking others for not agreeing with them — especially if they’re wishing death upon them.

I just wish that people would show more kindness and respect toward others, even when we don’t agree on things.

We can disagree without always attacking each other, right?

I sure hope so.

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to connect with me outside of Medium, you can also find me on X, Instagram, Threads, and Goodreads. I’m also the host of the GOTTA POP podcast. Links to all of those things can be found here.