Republicans Lose All Credibility As COVID On Track To Be The Deadliest Event In American History

 

     The Liberty Caucus in Texas is going to be wiped out by COVID-19. A photo has emerged of six of these men in a photo. Three of them (Dave Nalle, Jeff LeBlanc, and H. Scott Apley) have now died of COVID-19. The latter of the men expressed anti-vaccination and anti-mask views, promoting public mask burnings while harassing doctors and officials who promoted the vaccine. He and his wife, both equally obese, managed to find their respective tools and produce a baby, who will now grow up without a father because he decided to promote conspiracy theories and deny science. His wife has set up a GoFundMe; this is the sort of "thoughts and prayers" approach that Republicans take toward any form of human suffering, from poverty to school shootings.

     And this may be the perfect demonstration of what is increasingly becoming a Republican virus. Donald Trump started off poorly, saying that COVID, or "Kung Flu/Chinavirus," as he liked to start hate crimes with, was a Democratic hoax, then that it would go away on its own, then that it would be cured by injecting oneself with bleach, then that Dr. Fauci was a public enemy for being a scientist, and that the masks he refused to wear wouldn't have saved him from the life-threatening case of COVID-19 he got anyways. He killed hundreds of thousands of Americans with disinformation and misinformation for political gain; he got the vaccine in secret in January and February. His supporters are trying a delicate balancing act of giving him credit for "Operation Warp Speed" and also claiming that the vaccine he bought is some sort of liberal mind control device. Which is it?

     Other Republicans continue to do the same thing. They are only now beginning to start promoting vaccines, which they refused to do in 2020, and have met backlash after a year of telling their supporters that any government push was unconstitutional. Governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are banning mask mandates in schools, hospitals, and cruise ships as well as "vaccine passports" that have existed in maritime and international regulations for decades. This occurs while COVID soars almost exclusively in states like Florida, Texas, and Missouri, prompting Jim Acosta of CNN to urge that the Delta variant be renamed the "DeSantis" variant.

     It's also almost exclusively in Southern states like Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina that vaccination rates lag at around 40 percent compared to states like New York and California at nearly 80 percent; this is in spite of the fact that 90 percent of Americans live within five miles of a vaccination site. These same people who refuse to get the vaccine will be the only ones upset at mask mandates and lockdowns.

     A good handling of this pandemic would've have resulted in 125,000 to 300,000 Americans dying. Now, coronavirus is on track to kill a million Americans. I said this in 2020, and people thought I was crazy. The Civil War killed 650,000 Americans; the Spanish Flu killed 675,000; the HIV/AIDS crisis has killed nearly 800,000. Right now, we are at nearly 625,000 deaths and are on track to see deaths skyrocket; it could take many more months to get 80 percent of Americans fully vaccinated. COVID is already the fourth-deadliest event in American history, and I have no doubts Delta will bring it to the number two spot. If people continue to refuse this vaccine, coronavirus will be the deadliest event in American history, and the party that gathered militias to stop Honduran children refuse to get a vaccine to save their neighbors.

     To those of you arguing percentages-- "there were less people in 1861, 1918, and 1981"-- you're right, but you're cold. I don't care if 99 percent of the population survives. I care that 625,000 individual souls are dead, that millions more people will live with lifetime disabilities, that tens of millions of people are mourning lost loved ones, and that 10 million people lost their jobs because of an incompetent Republican response in the United States alone. That's called compassion, and I would advise you to consider it a virtue.