Nation of Fools
Note: the following first appeared on my personal web page. However, unfortunately, it is still all too relevant.
I’m kind of in a fury at the moment, so forgive me ahead of time. But, I’m in a fury because I’m reading articles on the web which indicate that vaccine-resistance is now fundamental in Trumpesque ideology. It is, apparently, an article of faith among Deplorables that the Covid vaccines are either useless, or harmful, or part of some inexplicable government conspiracy.(1)
In a word, bullshit.
Simply put, the anti-Covid vaccines are safe, useful, and, more importantly, are our single best defense from the virus. But, right now, we are facing a return to the bad old days of the pandemic because…and only because…these idiots are refusing to get their shots.(2) They are getting really sick, and some of them are dying.
No. Really. People are dying. They are dying, and they don’t have to, and the only reason they are is that they are too Goddamn stupid or stubborn or both to drive themselves to a drive-through clinic where …for free… they can get the shots that would save their lives.(3)
And, oh, by the way, if they think it is their body and their choice, and whether they get a vaccine or not only affects them…they’re abjectly wrong. If you get Covid, you probably end up in a hospital, which means you occupy a bed in the ICU, which means that the same bed isn’t available for someone who might have been in, say, an automobile crash, or who has had a heart attack. In other words, you are consuming resources, chewing up staff time, passing the cost to the rest of us, and quite possibly killing someone in the process. And we haven’t even begun to consider the possibility that even if you are asymptomatic, you could infect someone else, say, your grandmother, or a child.
The question, of course, is what do we do about this? What do we do about these fools who are refusing to save their own lives, and maybe, in the process, save our society from disruption and tragedy? Frankly, I don’t know. I suppose we need to continue to try to educate them as to why they ought to disregard Trumpian nonsense, and that is sort of what medical authorities are doing. But that only go so far. True fanatics will not listen.
I suppose, too, that we ought to sometime consider criminal charges against the people and and institutions who have promoted vaccine-resistance. Politicians, media figures…Trump himself…could and should be subject to legal consequences for their actions. I wonder if they couldn’t be charged with murder, or at least manslaughter.
But, even then…
Well, there is a terrified part of me that wonders if we can do nothing. I am afraid that we may let people die…if they are so intent to doing so.
The terrible thing, of course, is that they won’t just take themselves when they go. Alas…
It is true that pride…and stupidity…goeth before a fall.
But all too often they take innocent bystanders down with them when they go.
Let us pray that no one we love is among the fallen.
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Until next time…
Onward and Upward.
~mjt
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PS: there are several excellent stories on the web right now on this subject. I cite a number of them in the sources below (a particularly painful one is the Raw Story piece, which is No. 3, entitled “Texas man who called vaccines 'poison' dies from COVID-19 after spending 17 days on a ventilator’).
But let me also draw your attention to this piece from the BBC, “Coronavirus doctor's diary: Unvaccinated patients with many regrets,” by Dr John Wright. In it, Dr. Wright quotes from the statements of individuals who avoided the vaccinations, and then seriously regretted it. My favorite line in the piece is actually from another doctor, Dr Abid Aziz, who is working in the Covid ward at Bradford Royal Infirmary. He says, “About half of the patients on the ward today haven't been vaccinated … I have stopped asking them why, as they are clearly embarrassed.” (4)
Embarrassed, and lucky to be alive.
~Michael Jay Tucker
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Please visit my webpage here: https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/
Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker
Sources:
1. See, for example, “Vaccine hesitancy morphs into hostility, as opposition to shots hardens,” By Dan Diamond, Hannah Knowles, andTyler Pager, The Washington Post, July 15, 2021|Updated yesterday at 8:35 p.m. EDT, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/covid-vaccines-biden-trump/2021/07/15/adaf6c7e-e4bd-11eb-a41e-c8442c213fa8_story.html
2. See “U.S. COVID Deaths Are Rising Again. Experts Call It A 'Pandemic Of The Unvaccinated’” by Becky Sullivan, NPR, July 16, 20215:03 PM ET, https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1017002907/u-s-covid-deaths-are-rising-again-experts-call-it-a-pandemic-of-the-unvaccinated; and “C.D.C. Director Warns of a ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’” by By Emily Anthes and Alexandra Petri, New York Times, July 16, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/health/covid-delta-cdc-walensky.html; and “99.2% of US Covid deaths in June were unvaccinated, says Fauci; Cases rise in nearly half of states as low vaccination rates met with more transmissible and severe Delta variant,” by Lauren Aratani, The Guardian, July 8, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/08/fears-of-new-us-covid-surge-as-delta-spreads-and-many-remain-unvaccinated.
3. Want a really agonizing story of this sort of thing? Try this one: “Texas man who called vaccines 'poison' dies from COVID-19 after spending 17 days on a ventilator,” by John Wright, Raw Story, July 16, 2021, https://www.rawstory.com/anti-vaccine-texas-man-dies/
4. “Coronavirus doctor's diary: Unvaccinated patients with many regrets,” by Dr John Wright, BBC, July 17, 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-57866661
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