Anti-vaxxers are COVIDIOTS - Summary echo about stupidity

Echo opinion editorial by Charles M. Blow published in The New York Times.

Nothing better exemplifies the gaping political divide in this country than our embarrassing and asinine vaccine response. #TFG Trump’s scorched earth political strategy has fooled millions of Americans into flirting with death. 

Anti-vaxxers are choosing to be stupid rather than live.

And now thousands are once again dying for it.

Almost from the beginning, the efforts to combat the virus were met with disdain from #TFG (a once upon a time failed president) who felt the crisis made him look bad. 

Unbelievably, the science was denied. We came to live in a world where masking was mocked and ingesting disinfectant was offered up as a possible cure.

All the while, the patients on ventilators gasped for breath, and refrigerated trailers filled with bodies. Death is one of the ultimate truths of life, and yet not even it could dissuade the headstrong from casting doubt on the science.

And then, a miracle.

In response to this raging, deadly virus, scientists developed multiple, highly effective vaccines with breathtaking speed. It was like a prayer had been answered. An antidote to the plague had arrived.

We should all have been celebrating in the streets and running to a lifesaving serum with our sleeves rolled up and a smile on our face. But not enough of us were.

(Caused by #TFG incompetence)...The public had been poisoned by partisanship. Masking was a political statement. Social distancing was a political statement. Receiving the vaccine, for far too many, was a political statement.

And so, countless Americans responded with a political statement of their own: (stupid!) defiance.

They hated that businesses were forced to close, and being asked to wear masks inside when they reopened. They hated their children having to stay home from school and being made to wear masks when they returned.

But, the simple truth is that all of this could have been avoided if all Americans eligible for the vaccine — and that’s pretty much every adult at this point — had simply chosen to be vaccinated. But they didn’t. They haven’t. They are too dug in, too committed to the lies and conspiracies, too devoted to rebellion.

In the beginning, as the vaccine was rolled out, there were some access hurdles and some understandable apprehensions. But now, billions of people worldwide have received the vaccine, and very few have had adverse effects.

The vaccine is safe, incredibly safe.

There are no microchips or magnets in it. It does not cause Covid and it is not more dangerous than Covid.

Believing all these lies is a luxury of people who have not sat by a hospital bedside, or watched from behind glass, because Covid regulations prevented them from comforting a relative or friend as they drew their last breath, struggling against a virus that choked that breath off.

It is a luxury to be irresponsible in a society where others will be responsible for you, where you simply assume that you are safer because others take the appropriate precautions to be safe: You do not need to get the shot because others have.

But the Delta variant is testing that faith.

You will not be safe as an unvaccinated person riding on the coattails of the vaccinated. Delta is extremely transmissible and unremitting. It is stronger than its progenitor.

As the Delta variant surges there is an uptick in the pace of vaccinations in the country. It’s almost like religion: Many disbelievers will call out to whatever God there may be when the reaper is at the door. Fear of ideological defeat is no match for the fear of imminent death. And yet, it shouldn’t have taken another surge of sickness and death for good sense to set in.

Why were Americans turning away a vaccine that many people in other parts of the world were literally dying for? Many did so because of their fidelity to the lie and their fidelity to the liar. They did it because they were — and still are — slavishly devoted to Trump, and because many politicians and conservative commentators helped Trump propagate his lies.

A recent Monmouth University poll found that “among those who admit they will not get the vaccine if they can avoid it, 70 percent either identify with or lean toward the Republican Party while just 6 percent align with the Democrats.”

The optics of countless socially distanced funerals is less offensive to those conservatives than the optics of being socially distanced in a Fuddruckers.

It was all lunacy. It is all lunacy. This should never have happened. There are people dead today — a lot of them! — who should still be alive and who would be if people in the heights of government and the heights of the media had not fed them lies about the virus.

But apparently, after you get so used to so much blood on your hands, you forget — or make yourself forget — that you weren’t born with red palms.

So, we have a situation in America where people are dying and will continue to die of ignorance and stubbornness. They are determined to prove that they are right even if it puts them on the wrong side of a eulogy.

This is like watching millions of people playing in traffic.

Charles M. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994, and became an Opinion columnist in 2008.

Preventable Death Litany Grows

Two Multiple Homicides:

Preventable Death Incidents of the Day:

Nevada shooting: teacher and shooter dead. Another preventable gun violence incident in an American school.

By Erin McClam and Daniel Arkin, NBC News

A student opened fire at a Nevada middle school Monday, killing a teacher and wounding two boys, authorities said. The shooter was left dead.

At 7:16 a.m., just before school got underway, the unidentified suspect used a semiautomatic handgun to shoot and kill a math teacher and wound two other students, both 12, before taking his own life, authorities said at a Monday afternoon news conference. Police arrived at the scene in less than three minutes, the authorities said.

The two boys, who were originally transferred to a local hospital in critical condition, are now in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries, Sparks deputy police chief Tom Miller said at the news conference.
Two Shot Dead at Senior Housing Complex Following Lover's Argument.

All those involved were residents of the 80-apartment Pablo Davis Elder Living Center in southwest Detroit.

Reda shot the first woman, who was aged in her 50s, while she sat on a bench outside the complex, police spokeswoman Kelly Miner told the Associated Press. Reda allegedly then went back inside and shot the second woman, who was aged in her 60s.

The first woman was pronounced dead at the hospital, the second died at the scene, police said.

“He came outside with an assault rifle and told me to get on my hands and knees and pray,” one resident told WDIV at the scene.

Americans become passionately wistful when reading name lists of those who were killed in wars.  No doubt, these same decent Americans, who abhor reading the names of fallen war dead, will disdain reading the daily list of people who are the victims of our nation's growing epidemic of gun violence.

The time is overdue when our nation's newspapers should be covering the names of people murdered by gun violence in America.

A map should alsobe included in each report showing the demographics describing where these deaths are occuring.

The purpose of these death reports are to raise awareness among those who are intimidated by National Rifle Associaiton (NRA) zealots who are obsessed about their gun rights.

Constitutional Second Amendment Rights to own guns should not be more important than human rights. Americans need to know how Second Amendment Rights are now more important than protecting human life.

Adding to this problem are zealous Right to Life groups that interfere with women's health care to protect human life. Nevertheless, these groups do virtually nothing to protect the lives preventably taken, prematurely, through gun violence.

All the more reason why Americans should be exposed to read daily lists of the names of people who increase the litany of those who are the victim of preventable death by gun violence.  

Preventable Gun Violence Deaths - When Victims are Victimized

All gun violence deaths are preventable, so, let's do more to prevent them.

Gun violence deaths are more easily preventable than treatments and interventions for bacterial infections, viruses or chronic illnesses  There's only one cause of gun violence deaths - and it's a highly visible vector.  Guns.  If guns were bird flu viruses,  would they be outlawed? 

Nevertheless, many Americans have adopted gun ownership as an inalienable right under our US Constitution's Second Amendment, regardless of how many innocent people are murdered as a result of  wrong minded or mentally ill gun owners who deliberately inflict harm. 

Compounding the tragedy of gun violence is the "in your face" attitude of those who want to protect gun ownership rights, regardless of the consequences of unbridled and unregulated access to weapons intended to murder humans.
 
Moreover, the tragic distress caused by gun violence is exacerbated when families of preventable death victims are, themselves, victimized by zealots who simply don't want anybody to infringe on their right to own guns, regardless of the pain it causes to others. Brave parents of the innocent Sandy Hook Elementary School children, who were murdered on December 14, 2012, in Newton CT, went to the public and the US Congress to petition for expanded background checks, prior to gun purchases. But their petition was overruled by the Senate. While these families grieved and witnessed the US Senate vote to defeat the background checks legislation, some other right wing commentators gloated, while a majority of the nation mourned.  It defies our democratic "gravity" that a majority of Americans supported expanded background checks prior to gun purchases, yet our elected political leaders voted against the will of the people!

There are political consequences for the politicians who voted against the will of the people and defeated the background checks legislation.

Even if some who opposed common sense regulation of gun ownership somehow manage to escape political retribution, their legacy will forever be tainted as a result of their "no" vote. In fact, they'll live their lives  knowing they compounded the victimization of at least 20 grieving families of Sandy Hook Elementary children by defeating the legislation in full view of the victims families, and a nation that largely supported the regulation. 

Americans support expanding background checks for gun owners.

The 45 Senators who voted "no" have twice victimized the victims of preventable gun violence

Every one of the 45 must be voted out of office and here are their names:

REPUBLICANS who voted against the Gun Background Checks

 

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) (isn't he a pro-life Republican?)

Kelly Ayotte (R- NH) (shame on her!)

• John Barrasso (R-WY)
• Roy Blunt (R-MO)
• John Boozman (R-AR)
• Richard Burr (R-NC)
• Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
• Dan Coats (R-IN)
• Tom Coburn (R-OK)
• Thad Cochran (R-MS)
• Bob Corker (R-TN)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Mike Crapo (R-ID)
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)
• Michael Enzi (R-WY)
• Deb Fischer (R-NE)
• Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
• Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
• Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
• Dean Heller (R-NV)
• John Hoeven (R-ND)
• Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
• Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
• Mike Johanns (R-NE)
• Ron Johnson (R-WI)
• Mike Lee (R-UT)
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Jerry Moran (R-KS)
• Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
• Rand Paul (R-KY)
• Rob Portman (R-OH)
• James Risch (R-ID)
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)
• Marco Rubio (R-FL)
• Timothy Scott (R-SC)
• Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
• Richard Shelby (R-AL)
• John Thune (R-SD)
• David Vitter (R-LA)
• Roger Wicker (R-MS)

DEMOCRATS WHO VOTED AGAINST THE PROPOSAL

• Max Baucus (D-MT)    
• Mark Begich (D-AK)    
• Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)    
• Mark Pryor (D-AR)    
• Harry Reid (D-NV)  (Voted "no" as a procedural move to preserve option to reintroduce the bill.)