Beating the Coronavirus Is About More Than Not Getting Sick
Even as California and other states are starting to turn the tide in protecting their populations from COVID-19, hard core Dear Leader loyalists are working hard to make America Sick Again.
In a few short weeks, the United States will be in the position of having a vaccine surplus, not because enough people have received their jabs, but because not getting inoculated has become a loyalty test.
Everything --and I mean everything-- is about Donald Trump these days when it comes to what used to call itself the Republican Party.
Mailers from the National Republican Congressional Committee are telling donors that unchecking a box making their contributions recur monthly will result in the Former Guy being told they are a “DEFECTOR and siding with the dems.”
(FYI -- this scam apparently is apparently becoming universal with GOP funding appeals.)
https://twitter.com/KenStoneMedia/status/1380349948647010307?s=20)
The Former Guy and his minions have done an excellent job of poisoning the well when it comes to getting Republicans involved in protecting their neighbors.
Party loyalists are ten times more likely to say no to something that should be completely apolitical, showing just how deeply an opposition to basic science and medical facts has become to their identity.
Recent polls indicate that at least 41% of Republicans don't plan to get vaccinated. In Red States like Texas, that number soars to nearly 60%. The most common excuse given is a mistrust of the safety and effectiveness of the inoculations, despite ever increasing numbers of people getting their shots.
https://twitter.com/Laurie_Garrett/status/1380935486680797186?s=20
The misgivings that some have are being amplified by pundits railing against so-called vaccine passports. While the Biden administration has said they have no intention of mandating such a document, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that corporations and public institutions are looking for a way to protect customers, staff, and students.
Because of the increased contagiousness of recent variants, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that something approaching herd immunity will be possible by next fall, the target date for something resembling normalcy in the nation.
As Mark Sumner points out at Daily Kos, even the distribution of vaccines in Red States has a racist taint:
As weeks go on and Republicans’ anti-science position keeps them from accepting the vaccine, not only is it a threat to effectively getting vaccine to those who want it, but the sheer number of unvaccinated Republicans may mean that the nation cannot reach levels required for herd immunity, no matter how much vaccine is rolled out.
Over a month ago, a vaccination at a rural county in Missouri saw 1,500 doses of vaccine go unused. That county went for Donald Trump by 84%. It wasn’t a singular event. Of 2,000 doses sent to another event, only 648 were used. At least four mass vaccination events run by the Missouri National Guard in rural areas had hundreds of unused doses. At the same time, urban areas like St. Louis were seeing hundreds of applications for every dose of vaccine that became available.
Urban areas in St. Louis and Kansas City were getting less doses per population than rural areas, in part because state officials made assumptions that Black populations in those cities would be reluctant to accept the vaccine. Similar assumptions were made in Atlanta, where officials deliberately reduced allocations on the assumption that Black communities would reject the vaccine. Nationwide, Black and Latinx communities are still being shortchanged when it comes to doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
However, actual polling data—along with on the ground experience—shows that Black acceptance of the vaccine is actually much higher than in white communities. Eventually, both Gov. Mike Parson in Missouri and Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia were forced to admit that demand was actually higher in urban areas with a higher Black population, but not until after thousands of doses of vaccine had gone unused at a time when the rising count of cases and new, fast-spreading variants threatened a “fourth wave” of cases. On Thursday, WorldOMeters logged over 80,000 new cases in the U.S. for the first time since February.
As I’ve said all-too-often in the past, what passes for ideology among Republicans these days is akin to nihilism. The cruelty is the point when it comes to the practical business of governing for these folks.
Case in point; the Friday Washington Post story about the past administration’s efforts to shape the flow of information concerning the pandemic for political purposes.
Trump appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with then-President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators.
The documents provide further insight into how senior Trump officials approached last year’s explosion of coronavirus cases in the United States. Even as career government scientists worked to combat the virus, a cadre of Trump appointees was attempting to blunt the scientists’ messages, edit their findings and equip the president with an alternate set of talking points.
Then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to then-HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, 2020, touting two examples of where he said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak.
Pointing to one change — in which CDC leaders allegedly changed the opening sentence of a report about the spread of the virus among younger people after Alexander pressured them — Alexander wrote to Caputo, calling it a “small victory but a victory nonetheless and yippee!!!”
KUSI’s favorite ‘expert’ Scott Atlas was tapped to assist in writing an op-ed disputing a CDC report on coronavirus-related deaths among young Americans. The Trump administration wanted substance to argue for reopening schools as the 2020 election neared.
Example number two is, quite frankly, horrid. Should the United States reach the point where we have a surplus of vaccines, the Trump administration was forward looking enough to build a roadblock keeping them out of the hands of “shithole nations.”.
From Vanity Fair:
The contracts the Trump administration signed with the vaccine manufacturers prohibit the U.S. from sharing its surplus doses with the rest of the world. According to contract language Vanity Fair has obtained, the agreements with Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Janssen state: “The Government may not use, or authorize the use of, any products or materials provided under this Project Agreement, unless such use occurs in the United States” or U.S. territories.
The clauses in question are designed to ensure that the manufacturers retain liability protection, but they have had the effect of projecting the Trump administration’s America First agenda into the Biden era. “That is what has completely and totally prohibited the U.S. from donating or reselling, because it would be in breach of contract,” said a senior administration official involved in the global planning effort. “It is a complete and total ban. Those legal parameters must change before we do anything to help the rest of the world.”
The lesson here is that loyalists to the Former Guy are rooting against America and the world. They’d sooner see thousands more people die than be perceived as cooperating with those they see as the enemy.
This is why the “bipartisan” arguments for passage of legislation are bullshit.
They don’t care. Getting rid of Trump was just the beginning of what’s going to be a long, painful process. Lose sight of what’s going on and he or some beast like him will be running the show. And there won’t be any turning back then.
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1380687266058797056?s=20
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Lead image credit: Fibonaaci Blue / Flicker