A physician who tweeted against “antivaxxers” and sees herself as a martyr for the vaccine illustrates what some researchers have identified as “the ugly face of hatred” among vaccine messianists. 

Critical care specialist and American Medical Association (AMA) member Dr. Natalia Solenkova, MD, PhD tweeted Sunday she will under no circumstances regret taking the vaccine: 

I will never regret the vaccine. Even if it turns out I injected actual poison and have only days to live. My heart and is was [sic] in the right place. I got vaccinated out of love, while antivaxxers did everything out of hate. If I have to die because of my love for the world, then so be it. But I will never regret or apologize for it.

Solenkova, who features Ukraine’s colors next to her name, subsequently locked her tweets to the public.  

Tweeting against “antivaxxers” is a regular activity for Solenkova, who last week lamented that they were not being censored.  

“The anti-vaccine & anti-science quackery is in full swing on Twitter. All disinfo grifters are restored & super active promoting their deadly ideas,” she wrote. 

Ironically, Solenkova also tweeted last week that refusing a pharmaceutical product is about “power and money.” 

The thing is that antivax agenda has nothing to do with vaccine safety. People eat/drink/smoke/vape/inject/insert garbage in them all the time without reading/knowing/understanding labels or being concerned about side effects. Antivax is about power&money. Not about the truth.

Last week, Solenkova tweeted that she has received six shots and would do it again. 

The physician’s unbridled hostility towards those who refused the injections manifests “the ugly face of hatred” among those who have morphed their vaccination status into an identity. 

Last year, Frontline News correspondent Yudi Sherman sat down with sociology and criminal justice expert Dr. Josh Guetzkow who explained that hatred for the unvaccinated isn’t new — it's been happening before COVID-19. 

There's a concept in sociology and criminology called a moral panic. And in the context of a moral panic, there's always what they call a “folk devil”. There's always some group in society that is kind of picked out as being the cause of all of these problems. 

An example of folk devils would be Catholic immigrants who came to the US after World War One. Prohibition was the result of a moral panic against them and the problems they allegedly caused, fueled by alcohol. 

The folk devil of the COVID-19 era is the “anti-vaxxer,” a term used to disparage not just those who are against vaccinations, but even well-established scientists and reputable doctors who raise legitimate concerns about vaccines. 

Dr. Guetzkow also discussed a study from Denmark showing that some among the vaccinated hate those who refused the shots more than the most hated groups in the world. 

The study sought to determine the level of prejudice against people who did not get the COVID-19 shot, which it measured with one simple benchmark: How would you feel about someone not vaccinated against COVID-19 marrying a member of your family?    

The results showed that among 10,740 respondents across 21 countries, people who are vaccinated would not want an unvaccinated person marrying a close relative, which the study classifies as “antipathy”. In fact, respondents had 2.5 times more antipathy towards the unvaccinated than towards Middle Eastern migrants, “a group battling high levels of discrimination globally.”    

Notably, the unvaccinated were found to have no antipathy towards the vaccinated.   

While this antipathy reflects stereotypes the vaccinated harbor, such as the unvaccinated being “unintelligent” and “untrustworthy,” the study found that the main driver was fear of being infected.    

While fear of COVID-19 infection would not naturally cause such fear in humans, Dr. Guetzkow says that the media amplified fear of COVID-19 enough to cause senseless hatred. 

“There's been this full-on, non-stop fear campaign about COVID,” said the Princeton alum. “The media has been spreading so much fear about this.” 

Because of the media’s depiction, discussions about COVID-19 are no longer about a disease, but about political identities.