Social worker turned vaccine protester: Rachael Love Cohen’s journey off the grid
By Kendall Little
Rachael Love Cohen, 39, is a mother of three, a wife of one, and submissive to none, including federal and state government.
Cohen refused to follow state-mandated emergency procedures and led several protests to open up Florida after it was shut down due to the pandemic. She has always firmly believed that she should be able to make her own choices about her body and health — including wearing a mask or receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I’m an autonomous individual and I need to be able to make health decisions for myself and for my family, not the government,” Cohen said. “The government shouldn’t tell me how to make health decisions for my body.”
When the pandemic began to affect the United States in March of 2020, Cohen watched everything shut down, including the places she regularly took her kids to.
“I couldn’t take my children outside to do anything or go anywhere, even our community pool was shut down, and you were not allowed to be out on the streets unless you were actively engaged in exercise, and so suddenly we’re living a life where young children have nowhere to go,” she recalled.
Cohen was no stranger to social distancing. She stated that she and her family had been distancing for years due to her children’s health conditions.
“I felt that it was my responsibility as a person, as a part of a family where we had preconditions or immune issues, and it was our responsibility to take those on and to deal with them, not to tell everyone around us,” Cohen said.
When mask mandates began in Florida, Cohen pushed back.
“We have zero long-term studies proving that wearing a mask during the day, all day every day for 365 days out of the year is a safe thing to do,” she said. “We don’t know what the long-term implication is for health.”
As a result of not complying with the public mask mandate, Cohen’s husband lost his job.
Cohen’s husband, Yishai, has a neurological condition called Tourette’s Syndrome which causes him to experience facial tics. Cohen claimed that wearing a mask was detrimental to her husband’s health.
“When he wears a mask it reduces his oxygen intake and increases his tics,” she said.
Though several research studies have debunked this, Cohen finds it hard to believe nationally recognized officials.
“I still believe in evidence-based science, but you have to look at the funding sources and who’s giving money to the CDC,” she said.
According to Cohen, though science is ever changing, nationally recognized officials are often exposed for known inaccuracies in data or research.
“Fauci stated in email form that masks were not helpful in preventing the spread of COVID-19,” she said.
There is much speculation going on regarding Fauci’s emails that were released to the public, but several sources such as CNBC and USA Today state that the emails were sent during the early stages of the pandemic before information was readily available.
But Cohen’s doubt about mask mandates led into new doubts regarding the vaccine.
“We don’t believe that vaccines should be mandated and that’s not something that started with COVID-19,” she said. “My husband has a neurological disorder that my kids have inherited. It’s not safe for them to be vaccinated so long before any of this.”
Cohen did not vaccinate her children prior to the COVID-19 pandemic either.
In order to combat possible vaccine mandates, Cohen became a part of the vaccine choice movement. She rallied with other Floridians who believed that they should be able to have the ability to choose whether or not they receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Through protests, Cohen and her family gained friends, but also lost some.
“We’ve lost many friends that self-identify as Democrats because we walked away from the Democratic party,” she explained. “We’ve also lost a lot of friends that are part of the LGBT community because we have made decisions based on our family’s health.”
Most of Cohen’s friends in the Democratic party and the LGBT community disagreed with her mentality, causing her to have a disconnect with the two communities.
The biggest change that the Cohen family experienced was when they made the decision to leave South Florida and purchase a five-acre plot of land in Volusia County.
“When we looked at the situation we felt like South Florida was not a sustainable location for us,” Cohen said. “We felt like we needed to be in a place where we would have a lot more control over our own bodies.”
The Cohens now operate a single-acre vegetable farm and raise animals on the property for food.
“We’ve certainly taught ourselves a lot of skills in a very short amount of time,” Cohen said. “We were pretty urban dwellers, but we felt like self-sustainability and self-reliance were going to be really important things to learn and to have skills in.”
As of now, the Cohens have no plans to move back to South Florida.
“I miss South Florida deeply, but I know that my children and my husband are so thrilled to be living with all this space and autonomy to make our life choices as we wish,” Cohen said.
Though her family’s journey has been all but simple, Cohen said she wouldn’t change a thing about it.
