Matt Damon On Covid Vaccines: Trust Science More Than Facebook
In a recent interview, Matt Damon continues to advocate for trusting science and medicine in combating with Coronavirus while slamming the misinformation spread on social media.
The U.S. now has free and readily available vaccines for COVID-19, which has killed more than 600,000 Americans, yet there remains a strong vaccine hesitancy among many Americans. Per Yahoo! Entertainment, only 56 percent of Americans over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated, even as the more highly transmissible Delta variant threatens to create another deadly wave across the nation.
The Ocean’s Eleven actor told the outlet, “There are a lot of reasons that people have, and I don’t want to belittle them. It’s tough for me, I have a couple friends who are immunocompromised and they can’t get the vaccine, so they have no choice but to rely on the rest of us to do our part to get to herd immunity. So I look at it that way.”
50-year-old Damon expressed his wishes that if our country’s mindset was more about protecting “each other better rather than ‘Well, I’m not in this cohort so I don’t have to worry and it’s not going to hurt me that much.’ It’s just about looking at this as ‘me’ thing or an ‘us’ thing. But look, it’s a personal choice. That’s the beauty of America, it’s a free country. And none of us would have it any other way. But I fall heavily on the side of trusting science more than something you read on Facebook.”
Last March, Matt Damon and his co-stars from 2011’s Contagion held a virtual reunion with a series of PSAs at the request of Columbia University vetted by public health experts and scientists. Damon stressed the importance of social distancing and how it can help prevent a mass spreading of the virus.
Contagion regained popularity on streaming services last year due to its startlingly accurate devastating pandemic plot, in which Damon played a man immune to the disease while co-star Kate Winslet and others collaborated with medical experts to encourage people to trust science and embrace social-distancing.
