The No Mask Mandate Of The Red Death…Covid Becomes a GOP Disease

 

Masque of the Red (state) Death



Recently, I wrote about how I suspect that the Renew America Movement may eventually succeed in retaking control of the Republican Party because, well, bluntly, Trump and his QAnoning supporters have limited shelf life. (See  RAM tough…check out the Renew America Movement).


Among the reasons I believe that are stories in the press like this one: “Covid Gets Even Redder: The partisan gap in deaths has grown larger,” by David Leonhardt, which appeared recently in the Washington Post.(1)  In the piece, Mr. Leohardt looks at how Covid has become increasingly a disease of the Red States and Republican voters. 


There are a good many reasons for that fact. Republicans voters tend to be more often anti-vaccine and anti-mask. They are more likely to be swayed by conspiracy theories about Covid, or even to believe that Covid is itself a hoax. And, finally, they tend to be older, which means they get hit harder by the disease if they get it.


As a result, Republicans tend to get Covid more often, and to be much sicker when they do.


The good news, notes Leonhardt, is that more Americans in general are getting vaccinated. And anti-viral medications, like Pfizer’s PAXLOVID™, are now coming online which may drastically reduce deaths associated with Covid. Pfizer is saying that its pill showed “an 89% reduction in risk of COVID-19-related hospitalization or death.”(2)


That’s pretty darn astonishing. It means that if the drug is approved, and if it works as the studies suggest it will, then nearly nine out of ten Covid patients won’t even see the inside of a hospital, much less an ICU. In combination with the vaccines, moreover, antiviral medications could mean that by this time next year, or even sooner, the Covid crisis will tamed.


Let’s hope so, anyway.


But the question is, will that come soon enough to save the GOP from its own Covidiocy? Or will, alas, evolution continue its relentless work? A process made all the more tragic by the fact that it will completely unnecessary? 


~mjt






Sources


1. “Covid Gets Even Redder: The partisan gap in deaths has grown larger,” David Leonhardt, the Washington Post, Nov. 8, 2021Updated 9:55 a.m. ET, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/briefing/covid-death-toll-red-america.html



2. “Pfizer’s Novel COVID-19 Oral Antiviral Treatment Candidate Reduced Risk of Hospitalization or Death by 89% in Interim Analysis of Phase 2/3 EPIC-HR Study, November 05, 2021, https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizers-novel-covid-19-oral-antiviral-treatment-candidate


3. Image source: "The dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet". From Tales of Mystery and Imagination ... Illustrated by Harry Clarke, by Edgar Allan Poe. London : G. G. Harrap & Co., 1919. (British Library item 12703.i.43). Illustrating The Masque of the Red Death. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_dagger_dropped_gleaming_upon_the_sable_carpet_-_Harry_Clarke_(BL_12703.i.43).tif

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