- Some unvaccinated people are called “pure blood” in TikTok.
- People have used the hashtags #purebloods and #unvaxxed, declaring that they want to be known by the term above.
- The term comes from the “Harry Potter” series and refers to families with unmixed witch ancestry.
In a nod to the “Harry Potter” series, some unvaccinated people call themselves “pure blood” on TikTok.
People have started using the hashtags #purebloods and #unvaxxed on the platform to share and say they want to be known by the term above. In JK Rowling’s books, the word “pure blood” is used to refer to families of magicians of “pure” descent, or of unmixed ancestry who have never married non-magical people. It also comes with a darker connotation of superiority over those whose bloodlines are a mixture of magical and non-magical ancestors.
A prominent influential TikToker curator, Lyndsey Marie, posted a video with the attached hashtags last week.
“From now on, I refuse to be referred to the vaccine. I want everyone to call me pure blood,” wrote Marie, who has 27,900 TikTok followers.
Another TikTok user with the ID “drakapuffdaddy” expressed his admiration for the term in a video of his own.
“Man, are you pure blood? Yeah, I’m pure blood,” he said in the video. “There is no longer ‘unvaxxed’: pure blood!”
Other TikTok users simply superimposed the word “pure blood” on videos of themselves.
Tiktok users who called themselves “pure blood” in previous TikTok videos did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.
The darkest connotations of the word “pure blood”
The father-son duo Draco and Lucius Malfoy were examples of “pure blood” wizards from the Harry Potter series who promoted the supremacy of blood because of their unmixed lineage.
Warner Bros. Pictures
In the “Harry Potter” series, prominent “pure-blooded” families such as the Malfoys and the Lestranges lined up with Lord Voldemort and demanded a reign of terror in the world of wizards.
The connotation of being perceived as not “pure blood” was also evident in a famous exchange between Harry Potter and his childhood enemy, the “pure blood” school Draco Malfoy.
During the exchange, Malfoy calls Potter’s friend Hermione Granger a “muddy, dirty blood,” a derogatory insult to the descendants of non-magicians.
Rowling’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for Insider’s comments on the use of the word “pure blood” to describe the unvaccinated.
The trend comes at a time when the United States is facing an increase in COVID-19 infections and more contagious variants of the virus, such as Delta and Mu.
A new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that unvaccinated Americans were 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than vaccinated Americans. The CDC also found that unvaccinated people accounted for 84% of deaths recorded in the United States from June to July this year. The results of this study support a statement made by CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in July when she described COVID-19 as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
According to the New York Times vaccine tracker COVID-19, at least 63% of people eligible to get the vaccine in the U.S. have received a dose. Only 54% of the U.S. population eligible for the vaccine has been completely inoculated.