March 17, 2021: Be Glad Your Ancestors Were Allowed to Come to America

 

3/17/21: Happy St. Patrick’s Day, especially to those 31.5 million Americans who have Irish roots to the family tree.

 

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“There was but one hope: America.” 

Irish immigrant, 1848

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Be grateful that rules of immigration were lax in the 1840s, when your ancestors fled starvation, hoping to find a better life in this country. As one immigrant explained, “There was but one hope: America.” 

Be glad your ancestors weren’t turned away to starve. In Ireland, in those bleak days, observers noted dead and dying people scattered by the roadsides. Many of their faces were stained green from eating grass in vain attempt to stay alive. 

When you hear about the 4,200 children, unaccompanied by adults, currently piling up on our southern border, and hoping to gain refuge, call it something besides a crisis “on the border.” We’ve rescued people from around the globe before. We took in nearly four million Irish. They were feared because of their religion. 

We took in three million Italians. They were feared because they supposedly all belonged to the Mafia. 

We took Russian Jews, who spoke no English on arrival. 

We took in Cubans, Iranians, and Vietnamese, fleeing brutal oppression. 

We enticed millions of undocumented workers to breech our borders, with a promise of jobs, low-paying as they might be.

 

Don’t forget your ancestry when you think about the “crisis” on the border. It’s almost certain that someone in your family fled poor conditions in distant lands and risked all to reach the land of the free.

 

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ALSO, IF YOU ARE A TRUMP FAN worried about dangerous criminals traipsing across the border and killing you in your sleep, don’t forget Rejected-President Don’s prediction. He insisted that if Biden took office the media would quit talking about COVID-19. He said all the media really wanted to do was talk about the virus to make him look terrible. 

What a whiner that guy is! 

Even now, loyal, science-averse Trumpophiles tell pollsters they are reluctant to get the vaccine. In one recent poll, 56% of white Republicans said they were either unsure about or opposed to being vaccinated.

 

So here is where we stand. The U.S. continues to lead all the nations of the world in total deaths. 

Second place in a contest no one wants to win goes to Brazil, led by another virus denier, Jair Bolsonaro. According to Worldometers, as of March 17, Brazil had suffered 285,136 deaths from the virus. 

That meant President Bolsonaro was looking hard for scapegoats to explain his nation’s problems, having fired his third healthcare minister and appointed his fourth since the pandemic began.

 

According to Worldometers, the United States has suffered 1,656 deaths per million population. To our north, Canada has managed the crisis much better: 594 deaths per million. To our south, Mexico, with its less advanced medical system, has also fared better: 1,502 deaths per million. 

Almost every other country in the world has done better – because they have not been led by virus-deniers, and fans of the virus-deniers have not been fed a diet of medical bulls***, by idiots like Rush Limbaugh. France, hit hard by the first wave of disease, has rallied, and held losses to 1,399 per million. At one point, we were tied with Ireland at 350 dead per million. Ireland has lost 917 per million as of today. South Korea took the coronavirus threat seriously from the first. That nation has lost 33 per million. Finland, a socialist country, has lost 145. Germany, with a trained scientist as president, has lost 889. The death toll in Israel is 659 per million. Sweden, another country where medicine is socialized, first tried for “herd immunity.” They soon realized that was a mistake. Still, their losses are lower than ours, at 1,304 per million. No leader in Japan claimed COVID-19 was “just a flu,” as did Trump. 

The death toll in Japan: 69 per million.

 

The bottom line is clear. The U.S. has some of the most expensive healthcare in the world. Virus-denier Trump downplayed the threat; and hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly, as a result. 

Worst-performing nations in the world, measuring deaths per million: 

Gibraltar:                   2,791 (94 total deaths)

San Marino:               2,266 (77 total deaths)

Czechia:                      2,229

Belgium:                     1,942

Slovenia:                     1,899

Montenegro:              1,861

United Kingdom:       1,847

Hungary:                    1,807

Bosnia

  and Herzegovina:    1,739

Italy:                           1,712

Bulgaria:                     1,695

United States:      1,656