Coop Scoop: The Pandemic of Ignorance (resend)

No more Mr. Nice Guy

By Marc Cooper

July 30, 2021

Our two pandemics – COVID 19 and the massive Trumplican  mis/disinformation campaign-- have now merged into one deadly plague that is ripping through the land.

Some 90 million eligible Americans are still avoiding vaccination a full six months after the jabs have become available, leading to a quintupling of infections over the last three weeks, a resurgent death toll and new rounds of mask impositions, partial shutdowns and a clamor for mandates to be instituted.

Look at one of the myriad infection cluster maps now and find that ALL of the concentrated outbreaks, some of horrific proportions (see Missouri), track absolutely perfectly with areas that voted in 2020 for Donald Trump.

More than 80% of Democratic adults are vaccinated. Only about 50% of Republicans. And that’s an average.

In some southern states, the epicenter of Trump Country, vaccination rates run as low as 30% or less and that’s where the hospitals are once again overflowing with those being mowed down by Delta.  Joe Biden has called this mounting fourth wave “the pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

More precisely, this is a wholly man-made, wholly manufactured, wholly preventable deadly wave that owes directly to the  refusal to vaccinate, aided and abetted by nearly 18 months of propaganda downplaying the virus,  undermining the vaccine, mocking public health measures, equating masks with Nazi yellow stars, calling for the jailing of Dr. Fauci, pushing hare-brained theories that the vax carries microchips or magnets  and that this whole pandemic was somehow staged or capitalized upon so that a hidden elite can better control the masses.

In other words, this is The MAGA Pandemic.  This is where the Big Lie folds neatly into Deadly Anti-Vax Conspiracy Theories and the result are projections that we will soon be up again to a 1000 deaths per day, that national steps backward could go on into the winter, and that in the most backward parts of America, and I use that word deliberately, defined as centers of rural, conservative and evangelical concentration, the pandemic could linger for several more years.

No sane  politician – except maybe the Governor of Alabama whose mental state I cannot attest to-- would ever publicly blame the voters for anything.  That is prima facia politically suicidal.

Well, I am not a politician.

Still, I am not going to trash the voters or, more specifically, that portion of the voters who refuse to vaccinate.

But if I did speak up and if I did say what I really think, this is more or less what bubbles up:

Hey! No more Mister Nice Guy.  No more pandering or “listening” to your ignorance, fear, and superstition.  I am sick and tired of your Massive Stupid.  Your selfishness is stunning.  Your disregard for others is deplorable, your unwillingness to face reality produces anger, disbelief, and even a certain level of embarrassment of having to live in the same country as you.

America First! Yes. Thanks to you and your imbecile friends we are, indeed, Number One in the world.  Number one in deaths with 612,000 and rising. And also, Number One percentagewise of countries with the greatest number of hesitant nimrods and refuseniks like yourself.

In your fantasy life, you think you are some type of courageous and heroic freedom fighter when, in fact, you are a repugnant ignoramus, now threatening the health and security of 330 million other Americans, you are endangering your own family and neighbors, you are threatening the well-being of your own children at a time when the Delta variant targets the young, you are threatening the economic revival, and you are threatening the very stability of the United States. YOU, my friend are the problem. Nobody else.

I understand that about 5 million of you are innocent, indeed, you are potential victims. I refer to those who are immuno-compromised and cannot be vaccinated. You more than anybody needs to be protected from these idiots.  I also understand that there are some poor and marginal folks who, it is said, have not been sufficiently included and to that I will say: ok, then fucking include them already. I will also note, that some Black and Brown people are as much in outer space as some Whites are. Skin color is not a vaccination against reason.

As to the other 80 million of you others, I see two broad categories: the “hesitant” and the “dead enders” (pun intended). 

To the hesitant: Oh, poor babies.  You are “concerned” about what exactly?  The long-term effects of the vax? The side effects of the vax? Just what exactly?  As of July 30, some 165 million Americans have been fully vaccinated.  Globally 3.5 billion vaccinations have been performed.  Hey, snowflake, in your ongoing search for answers have you noticed the results after 6 months? 

We have spent the last 18 months locked down in a pandemic during which did you take any time to do any serious reading about it? You know, from like a newspaper?  I mean, did you not bother to do any real research other than talk to your manicurist or bowling teammate?  Were you too busy watching American Voices or your favorite prime time line up to actually properly inform yourself?

Apparently so.  I will now do you the favor of completing your research in the off chance that you might actually go get vaccinated some time before the sun burns out.  The verdict is in: the vaccine allows you to live.  Without it, and with Delta hunting you down, you have good odds of croaking ( Though I will reassure you that the one silver lining of death by COVID or any other source is that it has zero side effects).

For those of you holding out for more “incentives,” as if this were an auction for airline vouchers rather than a life and death imperative, you absolutely nauseate me, almost as much as the offer itself. Millions, nay, billions of people around the world are praying every day for access to the vaccine and you want to be paid for it?  This sort of totally egomaniacal position is really hard to grasp in the midst of a national emergency.  Next time you have a heart attack, do you want the paramedic to offer you a gift before you accept some treatment?

To the Dead-Enders:  I really have no words for you even in private, let alone in public.  I suppose if pressed, I would say, you are disgusting.  There are no arguments left to serve up.  You have decided to join what is now a blatant death cult. It’s unfortunate that your reprehensible behavior affects so many others because when it comes down to the final battle between you and Mr. Delta, I am afraid not too many will be betting on you.  The virus doesn’t give one fuck about how many Gadsden flags you’ve adorned your F-150 with, nor does it care how much of tough guy you think you are, nor how many rounds of .223 you have to fight it off… Delta’s gonna clean your clock, podna. And if it does not, you have earned the permanent scorn of millions of us for the rest of your squalid life.

I want to see a nationwide mandate for vaccination…now. We’ve done it many times before and have eradicated many communicable diseases.  And I want to see a frggin’ iron clad vaccination passport.

I want these intransigent diseased motherfuckers barred from any indoor public space unless they have proof of vaccination thru a national digital data base.

No vaccination? No proof of immuno-suppression? No passport. No passport? Great. No entry in bars, restaurants, cinemas, sporting events, concerts, retail shops, or even markets. You need food? No problem, patriot! Pick up your phone and have Safeway deliver it to you as you sit calmly and safely (for the rest of us) on your couch and watch more of those who David Plouffe calls The Merchants of Death on Fox prime time.  Or… better yet…. try to sneak into the market without a passport, get caught, get busted and get thrown in a special jail for the unvaccinated,

Ok. Remember, this is what I would say only if asked what I really think.

Emotion, even informed emotion, is not a good basis for public policy.  I am sure that a whole lot of people in government have the same view I outlined above, but politically, I’m not sure it is...um...a viable option.

That said, while I think Biden’s speech pleading with people on Thursday morn was a good one he is still being too deferential to these imbeciles.  I understand his panic and his desperation. But asking states to reward these scoffs with $100 per shot is the wrong route. And the wrong moral message.

Positive reinforcement has not worked and will not work going forward.  The $100 will make no difference, especially among the MAGATS.  Even the sudden turn of Republicans like McConnell, Scalise and Sean Hannity now encouraging the vax will fall on deaf ears.  The MAGATS have shown tremendous discipline in breaking with, shouting down and shunning any Republican who departs from the official line of sedition and denialism and the calls to vaccinate will be met with the same defiance – no matter their source.

Biden needs to move more forcefully toward negative incentives.  Hey, Macron did it with one stroke of the pen.  There were protests afterward, but so what?

The MAGATS have been protesting against anti-COVID measures since the initial lockdown. Who gives a damn if they protest any action Biden might now take?  But the president himself, true to character, seems somewhat limited by fear of becoming too ham-handed.

Why such a slow process to get to where we know this is going with the US military?  Just order the mandate today.

The same with final approval of the vaccines by the FDA.  Yeah, yeah, Biden has vowed to not interfere with independent agencies.  Biden, please interfere with the FDA so we can remove from the tab;e the bogus MAGA claim of the vaccines being “experimental.”

Biden must also urge if not mandate that school districts “require” not only masks, but vaccines for those over 12. And a twin mandate for those under 12 when their vaccine will be approved, probably in September or October.

I am rather conflicted as to what sort of mandate, or “vaccine requirement” Biden might be able to impose nationwide.  He’s probably right to leave it to the private sector who is looking to be quite aggressive in imposing vax mandates on both employees and customers. The administration, however, should be readily prepared to act with decrees if the private sector push stalls or fails.

No question the MAGAT refuseniks have triggered quite a negative response in public opinion as the Fourth Wave continues to mount.  You can bet that the reluctant turnaround among elected Republicans now supporting vaccination owes more to alarming private polling than it does to any attack of conscience.  It’s hardly just me that’s sick of this crap. So are a great majority of Americans.

Note to readers:

 I want to once again stress that the big issue here is not the person of Donald Trump.. Trump is as much a construction of his followers as he is their oracle.  Same with the Republican Party. It is following the MAGATS, not leading them. Trump was merely clever enough to take stock of the regrets, complaints, suspicions, superstitions, disorientation and despair that had been building among millions of Americans for decades and spin it to his benefit. If not him, it would have eventually been someone else, as it still might be the case in the near future.

The political ground for Trump was well-tilled and wonderfully prepared long before him by Reagan and Bush who popularized greed and arrogance and was further assisted by a line of Democratic presidents who studiously avoided serving the true the interest of their most fervent voters in order to curry favor with a new powerful technological and global financial network.

What we face today is the culmination of that 50-year process that has produced a massive anti-democratic, non-rational, semi-insurgent movement on our doorstep. Trumpism was a startingly effective accelerant for this movement and if we do not take it seriously, if we let complacency reign, if we do not oppose it with effective counter-politics (which we have not to date), we run the risk of being consumed by it. 

I leave you with these strikingly prescient words from the late Carl Sagan who penned this almost 30 years ago as a reminder of just how endemic this Know-nothing force has become:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

If Sagan only knew how prophetic his words would become. ++

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