Neil Young does not want to be assoicated with COVID misinformation.
It’s personal to him.
In January 2022 during the 3rd year of the COVID-19 pandemic, popular recording artist Neil Young, asked that his songs be removed from the music streaming service Spotify. The explanation was that he was offended and did not want to be associated with the demonstrably false medical misinformation and lies being put forth at times by one of their talk show podcast hosts.
But that’s not the whole story. The thing about Neil Young is that he contracted polio as a child in the 1950’s, before a vaccine was available. He survived, but his body was left permanently marked.
After being released from hospital, he had to relearn how to walk and was disabled for the rest of his life. Disability and risk of death from a vaccine preventable contagious disease are personal to him.
In the 1950s people were scared of polio. For perspective in 1952, there were 58,000 cases and 3,145 people died in the United States. 21,269 would survive, but left disabled. The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to have killed at least one million Americans at the time of this writing. In addition, there are about 5 million disabled USA citizens as a result from their battle with coronavirus. Meaning, they have survived COVID-19 but their bodies are damaged. Not even counting so called “long-covid”… We are talking about things like renal insufficiency, pulmonary fibrosis, cardiac and neurological problems. It’s a wonder we aren’t taking the pandemic more seriously.
Three vaccines? For a virus which greater than 99% of people will survive!?
Where have we seen this before? Oh yes, Polio.
In the following weeks after Neil Young removed his music from the streaming service, other recording artists followed suit. Pressure mounted on Spotify and their podcaster who spread potentially deadly misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccines created to save lives of those whom have contracted the virus. The company quitely removed at least 70 episodes of his show from their platform.