This article has been updated.
A number of police officers have gone viral on right-wing media recently for their ostentatious rejections of departmental vaccine mandates. Despite the fact that hundreds of officers have died from covid-19 — more than were killed on 9/11 and from diseases linked to that attack — a handful have chosen to resign their positions rather than receive a dose of the vaccine. Often, those choices are framed in the preferred narrative of right-wing politics: that they are rejecting an overbearing or unethical demand from powerful actors.
