"False. The original anti-vax movement was firmly entrenched in the far left / progressive movement of the Democratic Party. It wasn't until recently that it moved to the far right due to more "fertile ground" established by the Trump administration."
If they say they have never voted for a Democrat they are admitting that they do not look at individual qualifications and just vote party lines. That demonstrates a lack of critical thinking regardless of their other education achievements.
I've observed for years that people who move to one political extreme or the other tend to meet around the back side of the curve in their practices. On a national scale the fascist powers of the mid-20th century were technically extreme conservatives, and communism was an extreme liberal ideology, but in just about every country where one or the other ideology took hold, the day to day practices of the two governing ideologies were very similar.
Living in the Seattle and Portland areas most of my life I've known many extreme liberals and I've been thankful many times they had little or no political power. Political extremists are rarely very good at the practicalities of governing. A talented politico convinces the majority of the population that their plan is a good one and then they get enacted because the people demand it. But that takes understanding not just their base, but those outside their base who are convincable.
Political extremists tend to believe most people already feel the way they do and they act accordingly. When they get push back, they tend to try and force their ideas on the public rather than try and sell them. Many political extremists also suffer from magical thinking of one kind or another. A few are leaders who cook up magical theories, but most are sheep who just follow along with whatever the guru they believe today says.
A friend of my partner is one of these sheep. Her entire world is a sea of "shoulds" cast down from some guru or another and she hasn't given any of them any thought. For instance she avoids gluten even though she has never had any health issues with it because some guru she believe said gluten is bad. I also know people who avoid gluten due to some kind of sensitivity and I don't blame them for avoiding it.
Back in the 90s the anti-vax thing was primarily an extreme lefty thing. I saw it.
It started with Thimerosal which is a mercury based preservative that was common in vaccines then. There were questions about whether some childhood vaccines were contributing to Autism because of the Thiomerosal. I had an acquaintance who first saw signs of Autism in her son shortly after his first rubella dose. And we did see a dramatic increase in Autism diagnosis around that time.
But correlation does not always mean causality. There is a small town in the Netherlands where the thing about storks bringing babies comes from. Almost everyone born in that town are born around the time the storks return to breed in the spring. The reason isn't the storks, but what happened nine months earlier. nine months earlier is the end of the harvest when farmers are often drinking too much at harvest festivals and have some extra energy for the first time in many months, so a lot of women get pregnant around that time and the children are born in the spring which just happens to be when the storks are arriving.
A case where there is a strong correlation without causality. In the 90s medicine became much better at diagnosing Autism, so the number of cases increased dramatically. Same thing happened with ADD and dyslexia. My mother was school nurse when I was in early grade school and she diagnosed a number of my classmates with dyslexia, but they were all fairly severe cases. I was happy because one of my biggest tormentors was sent off to a special school. She completely missed my dyslexia because it was mild and I had little trouble reading, my problem was more output than input.
Back in the 90s questions were raised about whether it was safe to inject small kids with anything that had mercury in it and that's not a bad question to ask. In any case Thimerosal has not been used in any vaccine for children since 2001. We still seem to have just as many Autism spectrum diagnosis today as 20 years ago, so it's almost certainly something else causing it.
But to the sheep who don't think the meme is now vaccines=bad. COVID has changed that on the left to some extent. Some bad actors in the political arena have drummed up all sorts of new reasons for why vaccines are bad, playing on the existing meme. Some political sh** stirrers are very good at using existing memes to stir up trouble and get people upset.
The friend of my partner I mentioned above got the COVID vaccine as soon as she qualified, but my partner and I spent most of an evening explaining to her why the idea that Bill Gates was putting tracking chips in vaccines was patently ridiculous for many reasons.
What is your definition of “all the precautions”?
If a vaccinated individual goes about life as pre-pandemic normal, would you consider that person to be guilty if a close contact becomes sick?
Using the word guilty, a car traffic accident caused by someone who is careful is still the responsible party for all property damage and medical injury of others, even if that person had no malicious intent.
Generally in the law if you are doing everything that the authorities mandate and/or recommend and something bad happens, you aren't at fault. If you are doing something that has been deemed risky by the authorities and someone gets hurt, you're likely going to be liable either criminally or financially.
Civil suits involve this question all the time. Someone who was doing everything in their power to reasonably prevent harm to others are usually able to walk away from the suit without having to pay anything. The law often has a "reasonable person test". If someone was doing what the court determines to be what a reasonable person would do, then they are free of culpability.
In the case of COVID transmission, if somebody is doing everything the CDC and/or their local authorities say to do to prevent spread, then they are not culpable if someone catches COVID from them.