For the past two weeks I have been traveling with my husband across this beautiful land of ours. Driving from Phoenix to North Carolina to see his parents. Mile after mile spent traversing Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina - what we found was disturbing, infuriating, yet not surprising in the least.
Masks were far and few between, while obtuseness was in rich supply.
Despite the dawn of the Delta variant that is cutting huge swaths of the populace down in the form of positive COVID tests and filling hospital ICU beds at an alarming rate, willful ignorance and prideful belligerence is on full display across this country. States led by GQPers are the worst. Science be damned, far too many have politicized this pandemic and there is, sadly, no going back.
As of this morning, our stats are as follows:
36,547,563 - number of positive cases since the beginning of this pandemic (that is 11% of our population)
633,126 - number of dead (which by every metric and expert analysis is woefully undercounted)
109,706 - number of cases per million
1,900 - number of deaths per million (still feeling lucky?)
4,312,896 - number of deaths globally (again, woefully approximate and undercounted/under reported)
Those numbers are disturbing to anyone with functioning gray matter. Our deaths per million are again increasing at a steady clip, up 100 in the past two months alone. Our number of cases per million up over 10,000 in the same time span. And globally, that number has jumped by ONE MILLION since the end of May.
The last one should be compelling if for no other reason than it highlights how farcical it is to have COVID emerge as such a political football in this country. This pandemic is not just happening here. It is in every country on this planet. It gives not one fancy fuck about left vs right, conservative vs liberal, Q vs IQ. All it cares about is staying alive, continuing to spread, and mutating as many times as possible as we try to catch up.
Yet here in this country we have fully vaccinated talking heads like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Candace Owens sitting safe in their inoculation while espousing disinformation to their mASSES. We have governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott gleefully watching their states implode with COVID while passing laws against any attempts to slow it down. And we have politicians like Rand My-hair-is-styled-after-an-IKEA-bathmat Paul goading the experts and doctors and nurses with his verbal screeds against masking and vaccinations.
He tweeted this morning (along with a four minute video): "We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children? Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom."
The level of hubris, the blinding irresponsibility here is staggering. This is not about freedom, this is about freedumb. But hey, as long as you're bringing it up, Rand, let's talk about the harm to our "society, economy, and children."
Our society is not simply fractured. The crevasse revealed by the installation of the most ignorant sack of trash to ever occupy the Oval has become a Grand Canyon. On one side, a political party buoyed by dark money, rabid politicians whose only concern is staying in office, and legions of easily led sycophants. On the other, thinking, logical, science-appreciating, society minded people trying desperately to move this country forward from the devastation already wrought by COVID.
Our society and economy should be almost to the other side of this virus by now. We could have been. We have access to multiple FREE vaccines, we have the easy ability to mask up, and should have the common sense to avoid large gatherings. (Yet here we are, still open mouthed at Lollapalooza and now aghast at Sturgis.)
Sadly, in the face of those three absolute blessings, we also have anti-vaxxers who believe anything they read on Facebook over actual experts in epidemiology. We have careless dimwits who believe themselves to be "bulletproof", "protected by God", and "board certified in American freedom."
I'm not kidding. Those are real quotes. That last one was proudly spouted by a COVID denying Qaren at a school board meeting about masks and vaccines. "I have a bachelor's degree in logic, a master's degree in motherhood, and I'm board certified in American freedom."
As for the former? The men who sputtered those gems did so from their ICU beds during their come-to-Jesus revelations shortly before they died. From COVID.
But back to Qaren and her master's in motherhood. Maybe I went to a different school for my mothering degree, but my graduation was dependent on my being fully fluent in placing my children's health and well being forever foremost in my mind, my actions, my protections of them. But because of folks like COVID Qaren, pediatric cases of the virus shot up fivefold since the end of June, and up 84% in the past week alone.
The American Academy of Pediatrics said Tuesday it recorded almost 72,000 new cases of Covid-19 among children from July 22-29, up from 39,000 the week prior and a sum that comprises 19% of all cases reported nationally over that period.
More disturbing, ICU beds are quickly filling with children in state after state, obliterating the comfort we all took a year ago in the initial variant that was striking hardest at elderly and those with comorbidities. But again, the dawn of the Delta variant changed the game.
The viral load is twice that of the original. The transmission rate is faster and higher because, as is the case when a virus mutates, it does so to become more efficient (read: dangerous and deadly). As of the end of July, Delta was responsible for 80% of the new positive cases.
So what we are seeing now is, while heartbreaking and infuriating, not surprising. Children are now the largest population of unvaccinated in the USA. The vaccines have not yet been approved for those 12 and under, so they have been at the mercy of the adults around them to get vaccinated and protect them. Enter the Qarens and Qevins who believe themselves to be bulletproof, believe the virus to still be a hoax, believe anyone who types a screed on Facebook, believes their red state politicians who bleat about freedom and choice, believe bullshit like the vaccine contains a tracking chip/makes you infertile/makes you magnetic.
Daily we are now subjected to stories of these blowhards dying with a ventilator tube down their maws. We get their last words, texts, posts in which they now take it seriously. We get their widowed spouses beseeching everyone to get vaccinated. Frankly, I am as done with these stories as I was with the constant Jethro safaris to far flung diners to find out why they were voting for Trump.
The answer now is as simple as the answer was in those diner queries. They are stupid.
Unkind? I don't care. Prove me wrong. I am over being lectured to understand these people, to not talk down to them, about them. Fuck. That. Noise. These are the idiots who sold out hydroxychloroquine and are now emptying feed store shelves of ivermectin (horse dewormer). They have had access to the exact same information as the rest of us from the very beginning. The difference is they love the taste of liberal tears so they gleefully followed Trump and Company into the abyss. Let them rot in their graves. I save my sympathy for one group - those who cannot yet be vaccinated - the children and the immunocompromised.
As for the rest? I'm done. They are a cult hellbent on playing chicken with death. They are not to be pitied, they are to be pilloried and ostracized. Don't want to get the vaccine? Fine. One by one, city after city, they are going to find themselves on the outside looking in. No vaccination? No entry. This liberal's tears you will be tasting will be from me laughing so hard at how desperate you are to get in a movie theater, a concert, a restaurant, on an airplane.
Vaccines are not new. The concept of a vaccine "passport" - NOT NEW. Vaccines have kept us alive for generations. Proving a vaccination status has enrolled your children in school for decades. Travel across this globe often depends on you acquiring various vaccines before being allowed entry into another country.
And let's put paid to that specious argument about the COVID vaccines not being fully approved, or that they were rushed and therefore suspect.
The vaccines were not rushed. There are dedicated researchers, scientists, experts who inhabit labs around the world, around the clock working on vaccines, drilling down on viruses. The speed of the vaccines for COVID were made possible by them already largely being in existence and having people far smarter than you and I adapt them to the specifics of COVID-19. And as for the emergency use they currently exist under? You whiners will simply word salad another excuse to not get the shots as soon as FDA approval is finalized (which is now within weeks).
They do not magnetize you. Your fertility is not at risk - although, gents? Your ability to oak up takes a huge hit if you contract COVID. There is no tracking chip being magically injected through that miniscule needle of liquid. JFC, that one takes the moldy cake. The same dullards who embrace that scare tactic post about it from THE CELL PHONES IN THEIR HANDS. The iPhones that can triangulate your location. The Galaxies that know where you just ate dinner. The cell phones we all would defend to the death before relinquishing our ability to Google, play games, source music, and stream TV shows at will.
But as I type these words, I am also reminding myself we are up against a segment of the populace for whom 1 + 1 does not = 2. For them 1 + 1 = Deepstatebogeymen5Gshriveledovaries. Oh, and we must not leave out the part where they are special. SO, SO special that they will be tracked. SO, SO special that only they have insider info gleaned from rabbit holing Youtube videos. SO, SO special that they will survive and the rest of us will all wither and die as our vaccine chips are activated when <insert latest bullshit conspiracy theory>.
The reality is many of them will die. They will not be remembered as heroes. They will not be lauded as champions of freedom. They will simply fade into obscurity after their tale of woe is turned into tomorrow's cautionary tale in the NYTimes. They will leave behind families bankrupted by their hubris. (The average hospital bill should you survive is $70,000. And if you think insurance companies aren't crunching the numbers right now? Well, we already know you're dim, so...) Some will bury a child who is dead at the hands of their parents' stupidity and ego. Some will watch their child contract COVID, have seemingly mild symptoms and then watch as their once healthy child is revealed to have long-COVID symptoms, forever thwarting their desire to play soccer, baseball, football, hell, play at all.
The two weeks we traveled were not eye opening. They were simply verification of what we knew. People are dumb. No masks. No precautions. Just hubris writ large.
And far too many of them will soon be "a faded rose from days gone by." Delta has dawned. Get vaccinated or get ready for that mansion in the sky.
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Post script - Current COVID models are estimating 83,000-142,000 more deaths in the United States between today and December 1st. Those same models show that we could prevent 48,000-108,000 of those by simply wearing masks.
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