Jennifer Aniston Says She's Cut Off Friends Who Refuse To Be Vaccinated
Jennifer Aniston has no room for anti-vaxxers in her life
Jennifer Aniston doesn’t play around when it comes to vaccine status. The actress has revealed that she’s removed people from her life over their refusal to get vaccinated, or their refusal to discuss it one way or another.
“There’s still a large group of people who are anti-vaxxers or just don’t listen to the facts. It’s a real shame,” Aniston said in an interview with InStyle.
“I’ve just lost a few people in my weekly routine who have refused or did not disclose [whether or not they had been vaccinated], and it was unfortunate,” she told the magazine. “I feel it’s your moral and professional obligation to inform, since we’re not all podded up and being tested every single day.”
The actress spent part of the pandemic working on season two of The Morning Show. “We were living in an alternate universe where COVID did not exist,” she said of that time — but it did exist, of course, and while coming in contact with an entire TV crew, it’s understandable that Aniston would insist on keeping her circle small, and limited to those taking the pandemic and the need to get vaccinated as seriously as she was.
“It’s tricky because everyone is entitled to their own opinion,” she explained. “But a lot of opinions don’t feel based in anything except fear or propaganda,” she added, and I can’t help but agree with her on that. I also don’t have space in my life for anti-vaxxers, or even the “wait and see” crowd. There is no legitimate reason to believe the vaccine is unsafe — in fact, the Pfizer version of the shot is likely on its way to full FDA approval in a matter of weeks. Is that what’s going to convince some of the people holding out? Or is it going to take getting horribly sick themselves, or watching a loved one suffer?
Aniston celebrated becoming fully vaccinated herself with an Instagram post back in May. “As we know, the health of one of us affects all of us,” she wrote, noting that Americans are lucky and privileged to have access to the shots when so many people around the world do not. “Thinking about those who do not or will not have the opportunity to get vaccinated and hug their friends and family.”
The actress has also urged her followers to #wearadamnmask, sharing the plight of a friend of hers who had been hospitalized and put on a ventilator with Covid-19 last year.
Even though she lamented that “there are many people in our country refusing to take the necessary steps to… keep each other safe,” Aniston said she really does “believe in the basic goodness of people.” With the Delta variant surging and the need to get vaccinated becoming more urgent than ever, hopefully Americans will prove her right.
