8/10/21: Nothing like a relaxing
vacation to rejuvenate the body, mind, and soul, and… what in holy hell!
COVID-19 is making a comeback!
I went to Oregon for ten days, hiked in the mountains, wore
my mask on the plane coming and going. Now we’re facing a fourth wave of deadly
infections and thousands of fresh hospitalizations.
____________________
“Half of the children in our hospital today are under two
years of age. Most of the others are between five and ten years of age – too
young to be vaccinated just yet.”
Dr. Mark Kline, chief physician for Children’s
Hospital New Orleans
____________________
Right-wing stupidity continues to clear a broad path for a rebounding
virus. And no one plows a wider swath through logic than Rep. Marjorie
Taylor Greene, Georgia’s own lawmaking lunatic. On Monday, Twitter
suspended Greene’s account after she claimed vaccines don’t work. That was opposed to what she said in March,
when praising former President Donald J. Trump for his fine work on Operation
Warp Speed – which got those vaccines into the arms of the delighted American
people.
“President Trump saved lives!” she stated emphatically, at that time. With vaccines
that don’t work.
Now she’s seeing the situation with greater clarity. “These vaccines
are failing & do not reduce the spread of the virus & neither do masks,”
she shrieked. “Vaccine mandates & passports violate individual freedoms.”
The
anti-vaxxers got another boost from social media outlets
run out of Russia, after it was claimed
that if you had the AstraZeneca vaccine you’d turn into a chimpanzee.
Sure.
Why not.
*
Beds
filled with people who listened to people like Abbott.
ON
THE OTHER END of the logical spectrum, the American Academy of
Pediatrics reported that 94,000 coronavirus infections had been logged among the nation’s
children in one grim week. Medical experts warned that we were facing a “substantial”
increase in cases, just as schools reopened.
Dr. Mark Kline, chief
physician for Children’s Hospital New Orleans, explained that many of the youngest
patients his staff were seeing were much sicker, as a result of coronavirus mutations.
His hospital, in a state hard-hit by the latest wave, was seeing an “epidemic
of very young children” infected. “We are hospitalizing record numbers
of children,” he told ABC News. “Half of the children in our hospital today are
under two years of age. Most of the others are between five and ten years of
age – too young to be vaccinated just yet.”
Not too young to be put at risk by science-deniers like
Greene and the fools who follow her ravings on Twitter.
In red state Arkansas, where the governor had signed a ban on
mask mandates by local governments, he was forced to backpedal. Gov. Asa
Hutchinson admitted there were only eight unoccupied ICU beds in his state. On Monday,
another 103 COVID patients were hospitalized there. In fact, all the beds in
ICU would have been filled, save for the fact that 21 patients passed beyond
the realm of medical care by dying that day.
In Mississippi the situation was dire. The Delta variant was sweeping
the state like “a tsunami.” According to State
Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs only six ICU beds were unoccupied last week.
In Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott had banned local mask
mandates, he was forced to ask hospitals to cancel elective surgeries as – once
again – beds filled with people who listened to people like Abbott.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, another mask mandate-denier, saw Florida
lead the COVID-19 resurgence. On Sunday, Florida racked up a new daily record:
28,317 fresh cases. Hospitalizations soared to records eight days in a row. “There are only so many beds, so many doctors, only so
many nurses,” Dr. Marc Napp, chief medical officer for Memorial Healthcare
System in Hollywood, Florida, explained.
*
Speed
bumps on the deep state road.
Yet, the right-wingers still don’t get it. DeSantis and Greene
are joined in a cacophonous chorus of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, healthcare Luddites,
and all manner of kooks and nut jobs.
North
Carolina has Rep. Madison Cawthorn. He calls mask requirements
for children in schools “nothing short of psychological child abuse.”
In
Tennessee, Pastor Greg Locke warned his flock that the governor was planning to
lock the
unvaccinated in “quarantine camps.” You couldn’t fool Locke. He said he didn’t
believe hospitals were filling. He demanded that someone carry a camera into
ICU wards and document all the filled beds. This, of course, would be a
violation of every medical privacy law passed since the glory days of smallpox.
Pastor
Locke then started listing various Democrats and liberals he hated and shouting
at the people seated in his church pews:
You
better wake up, church! You better wake up! They hate us. We are speed bumps to
the deep state on the road to their progressive communism, and I’ll shout it
from the rooftops if I’m the last one. I live by what I say, and I will die by
what I say if I have to. I’ll fight this garbage until my dying breath.
Locke
was joined in his bellowing by radio host Dick Farrell. He insisted that Dr.
Anthony Fauci was a “power tripping lying freak” who wanted us all to mask up and
get shots. That, in some mysterious fashion, was part of a plot to take control
of our minds and bodies and kill us all! Farrell ended up in a hospital with
COVID-19, and a few weeks later took the next logical
step by leaving his
bed in ICU in a hearse.
 |
Mr. Apley with his son Reid. |
You
also had Leslie Lawrenson, who posted a video on social media, telling
followers he was “glad” when he caught the virus – didn’t feel bad at all – and
it was “nothing to worry about.” He wasn’t going to be one of the sheeple,
getting shots, wearing a “muzzle,” just because medical experts said shots and
masks saved lives. He soon contracted the virus and joined Farrell, knocking at the
Pearly Gates.
Sadly,
the line kept getting longer, because the uninformed kept listening to the
ravings of the ill-informed. In Dickinson, Texas, Republican City Councilman H
Scott Apley, kept shouting bloody murder about masks and vaccinations. Mr.
Apley, 45 (seen above with his son in a recent photo), will not be watching little
Reid Apley learn to walk, and talk, and attend school, and, we hope, lead a long
and happy life. After spouting off on Facebook, saying he wished he could go to
a “mask burning” party here in Cincinnati, and calling an advocate
for the Pfizer vaccines “an absolute enemy of a free people,” Reid’s dad caught the
virus.
Councilman
Apley went to the hospital.
And
died.
*
“Give me liberty
or give me smallpox!”
So,
let’s be blunt. People like poor Apley not only put themselves and loved ones
at risk. By their obstinacy, they endanger your family and your loved ones if
you should cross their infectious paths.
None of this is confusing. When we learned that HIV could be spread
by contact with the blood of infected individuals, we didn’t shout, “The right
to bleed profusely on anyone is the soul of freedom!”
No one screamed, “Give me liberty or give me smallpox.”
No one stirred up irrational fears by talking about the
government locking up parents who refused the polio vaccine for children.
If the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers could live in their own infectious
bubble, no one outside would need to care. The anti-science types can’t. And they
don’t try. Today the nation is paying a renewed price for their foolishness. In
the last week, the U.S. has seen caseloads skyrocket, with 775,000 Americans infected in seven days.
Most will survive.
So will most of the children who end up infected.
Yet the death toll climbs. According to the CDC, 620,727
Americans have succumbed to a disease the same right-wing deniers once insisted
was no worse than flu. That’s slightly more dead than this nation suffered
during four bloody years of Civil War – our most costly conflict.
I taught history for several decades and don’t remember soldiers
in blue or gray saying they’d refuse to put up fortifications to protect them
from cannon and rifle fire. Almost none of the thousands of deaths this summer,
in June, in July, and now August, have been necessary, had all of us been
vaccinated.
On August 1, we lost another 242 family members, friends,
neighbors, countrymen and countrywomen.
Remember how furious Republicans were when just four
people were killed at Benghazi?
8/2: 372 American
lives lost to coronavirus
8/3: 527
8/4: 486
8/5: 507
8/6: 544
8/7: 303
8/8: 223
8/9: 449 (all numbers subject to slight revisions, as new reports arrive)
*
An unwitting
biological weapon.
SO, LET’S END by taking a clear-eyed look at the numbers. In
one recent report, states like Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut and California noted
that 0.0% of deaths from COVID-19 in their states had been “fully vaccinated”
individuals. The “highest toll” in any of the twenty states reporting, was 0.01%.
An additional chart offered up figures like these, reported
out of Oklahoma and other red states: 4,928 deaths among the vaccinated, only 19 among those who
had had shots; Arkansas: 2,611 and 68; Indiana 4,574 and 46; Montana 324 and
10. A blue state like California reported similar differences. Only 93
fully-vaccinated persons had died. That compared with 38,154 Californians who
chose not to get shots or died before they became available.
How then did Sen. Rand Paul from Kentucky and Sen. Kevin
Cramer of North Dakota spend time Tuesday?
They introduced the No Mask Mandates Act – which has zero
chance of passing – in the U.S. Senate.
If boneheads like Paul and Cramer, and poor Farrell and poor Apley
had their way, an infected passenger on an airplane could give you a
potentially deadly virus, because he or she or they didn’t want to be bothered
to don a mask. Personal freedom and a big “F**k you, pal,” to any seatmate.
A non-vaxxer in the ranks of teaching could spread infection
to your child, to any child in a classroom.
Again. Most would survive.
Some might “just” end up hospitalized and you’d “just” be stuck
with the medical bills.
Each infected child would be an unwitting biological weapon,
threatening any and all unvaccinated grandparents, other children, and all
unvaccinated individuals in the broader community.
Or we could all use the brains god gave us, stick a mask on
our face, in case we’re already infected, and do our part to stop the spread.
We could protect ourselves and those we love by getting our dumb asses
vaccinated.
R.I.P. all lost persons, of all political persuasions.
WEAR A
MASK AND GET THE SHOT.
