Okay, not entirely fair. I think they’d be perfectly happy if we all just gave up masking and distancing and fighting the Trump Virus and accepted that horrific and needless deaths are just a fact of life. That’s how they approach gun deaths, after all. And it’s not just The Former Guy: the entire party is liable.
Republicans in Congress are willing to shut down the government to fight President Biden’s vaccine mandates. As noted at the link, the Democrats have worked out a tentative agreement to keep going until February, but it’s not guaranteed. And shutdowns are bad for Americans in multiple ways, including public health.
In Tennessee they’ve banned medical boards from disciplining doctors who lie about covid (I assume they’re liars rather than just wrong, given how many medical professionals profit from being anti-vaxxers). A federal Trump appointee has blocked the mandate for healthcare workers using brilliant insights such as if the vaccine was any good, it wouldn’t need booster shots! Like his master The Former Guy this judge is a very stable genius (Roy Edroso vents entertainingly as always about this). So is Rep. Ronny Jackson who claims Omicron is a Democratic plot to rig the 2022 election. And isn’t it suspicious it’s all right-wing anti-vaxxers who die of covid, not Democrats?
While Republicans were outraged over generous unemployment benefits supposedly inspiring Americans to stay home and not work, four states so far have expanded benefits for anyone who loses their job for refusing a vaccine mandate.
And despite their denial that covid is a serious threat, anti-vax conservatives keep dying. Too bad The Former Guy, who took no precautions after testing positive (Scott Lemieux suggests he’d have been delighted if debating Biden infected Biden), got the best healthcare on Earth.
Organ transplant candidates who refuse to get vaccinated are also risking their lives for bullshit (“Breen also expressed skepticism over the public campaign for vaccination, saying she questioned the reasoning ‘behind pushing it so hard.'”).
At the nutjob end of the lying right-winger spectrum, Jew-hating preacher Rick Wiles claims covid vaccine changes our DNA.
“Typhoid Ron” DeSatis is a more accepted figure than Wiles, but he does just as much damage.
Marjorie Taylor Greene goes back to the old “traffic accidents have killed more people than Covid” meme by arguing we don’t close schools for cancer. Which, of course, is non-contagious. I seriously wonder why Greene’s even in Congress as she doesn’t do anything but babble bullshit — is the right-wing celebrity an end in itself or does she anticipate a Fox News show down the road?
To end on an up-note, a reminder the pandemic will end, eventually.
Fraser Sherman's Blog 