Friendships tested and torn over vaccine mandates and anti-vaccine rhetoric

Lynaya Astephen says she's had to walk away from some longtime friends because of their views on vaccines and vaccine mandates and how they express their opinions.  

"I'm not talking to some people at all," Astephen said from her home in Saint John. 

"To save my own mental health, I avoid the topic and I avoid them."

Astephen is among New Brunswickers who've faced division within their circles of friends over vaccination policy and other efforts to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Response to the division can vary.

Astephen said some of her friends have spread misinformation about vaccines, and she feels that's dangerous.

But what offends her most is what she believes is the misappropriation of the Holocaust. When she hears opponents of public health regulations invoking Nazi Germany, it's something she cannot accept or ignore.

"It just set off huge red flags for me," she said. "There's no comparison to anything like that. This is a vaccine that can save lives."

Astephen said people she knows started getting emotional about vaccines in 2019. 

This was before the pandemic, when New Brunswick's education minister was contemplating legislation that would keep students out of schools unless they met immunization requirements. 

The bill was defeated in June 2020, but Astephen said she could see it polarizing people in her friend groups. That moment opened the door to groups from outside New Brunswick who had intentions of stoking anti-vaccine sentiment, she she said.  

"For me, it started there."

Marc Kranat, a member of Fredericton's Jewish community, said he has a good friend who is deeply involved in the anti-vaccine movement. 

It's upsetting, he said, when this friend tries to make excuses for the misuse of Jewish symbolism. 

"He's standing his ground, but I'm not going to fall out with him over it," Kranat said.

"We have a 15-to-20-year friendship, and we agree on most things although we haven't agreed on much since COVID started."

Kranat objects to taxing the unvaccinated or keeping unvaccinated people out of grocery or liquor stores. 

He respects the rights of people to protest, he said. 

At one protest he noticed a group of people carrying big yellow paper stars and equating the vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany.

In German-occupied Europe, Jewish people were ordered to wear yellow cloth badges in the shape of the Star of David. 

The star was intended to humiliate and isolate Jews and make it easier to identify them for deportation to concentration camps where they were systematically murdered. 

Kranat said using the yellow stars was insensitive but, in his view, not anti-Semitic.

"They're actually identifying with the victims of the Holocaust. It's very wrong thinking," said Kranat. "But not anti-Semitic."

In an online discussion group, Kranat said, he tried to persuade some of the protest organizers to rethink their use of the stars.

"I said it's very disrespectful, very upsetting for Holocaust survivors, and it's inappropriate and I think we got through to them."

Christine Lund of Moncton said she has made a great effort to avoid any tensions with her friends, although she describes her social media as increasingly stressful.

"I know people who simply don't spend time with people anymore, because of these divides," she said.

Lund said she and her friends do not discuss whether they're vaccinated or not. 

'I've never asked someone and I've never answered," she said. "That's personal information and within Canada, we're supposed to have the right to medical privacy.

"Breaching that privacy is extremely problematic," said Lund. 

Lund said she's concerned about extreme views on either end of the spectrum when it comes to vaccines and vaccine mandates. 

She strongly objected to the categorization of people as pro-vaxx or anti-vaxx. She thinks that's inflammatory rhetoric that breeds hate. 

"I know many people who are called anti-vaxx but they're not anti-vaxx, they're just particularly hesitant about this vaccine," she said.

"I also know there are people who aren't anti-vaxx, they are vaccinated. But they don't like the mandates."

Lund said most of her friends are not trying to impose their views on one another.

And the people who are expressing hate or hate symbols are not part of her friend group or her larger social circle, she said.