Image: Sanja Djordjevic - Getty Images
Vaccine protests
With a new, more contagious coronavirus variant in town for the winter flu and COVID season, it’s the perfect time for anti-vaxxer Republicans to go on a killing spree.
Lest anyone think that’s just the crazy, fringe Republicans who are all auditioning as future presidents to attract the same crazy, fringe voters as their former president, it’s not. It’s every single Republican senator.
The U.S. Senate just passed by a vote of 52-48 supported unanimously by Republicans and two Democrats a bill to repeal President Biden’s mandate requiring covid vaccinations or regular testing for government employees and private businesses employing 100 or more workers.
Americans who weren’t among the 795,000 who died of COViD are simply sick and tired of the pandemic and eager for it to end. It’s long past time for all of us to call out Republicans for their grisly, irresponsible sabotage of every effort by Biden to save American lives and finally end the pandemic, a goal that should be shared by leaders of both parties.
Gargling with Ron Johnson
Believe it or not, most elected Republicans are not ignorant people. The overwhelming majority have been vaccinated themselves. Sure, there are notable exceptions on both counts. During the debate, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson actually bragged about not being vaccinated and getting only a mild case of COVID. Absurdly, he claimed gargling with mouthwash was just as effective as vaccination. It’s not. Anyone who believes him could die.
But most Republicans know exactly what they’re doing and that makes it even worse. Biden was elected because most Americans thought he would be a far more effective president than his incompetent predecessor at ending the pandemic and returning their daily lives to normal. Republicans cynically believe the longer they can extend the deadly pandemic by discouraging life-saving vaccinations among their supporters, the more likely it will be for voters to return them to power by taking out their frustrations on Biden’s presidency. The buck stops there, right?
|
|
Republicans don’t think anyone will remember they were the ones increasing the body count by putting the lives of their own supporters at risk. The former president drew some of his strongest support from older voters and those with less education. Many of them are more likely to suffer severe or fatal consequences if they remain unprotected based on either age or limited access to advanced medical care in small towns and rural areas.
Infections Spread
Biden continues to create new programs to increase vaccinations to end the pandemic only to be opposed by anti-vaxxer Republicans. Anti-vaxxers have always existed in this country, but that has never been a widely popular cause. It still isn’t. Very few parents have objected for decades to schools requiring children to be vaccinated. They want their children to be protected. That’s why many were so eager for the government to approve the covid vaccine for their children.
We really are all in this together. None of us should simply pass it off as justice when another prominent Republican anti-vaxxer succumbs to the deadly disease their party has intentionally perpetuated. The problem is until all of us are safe none of us are safe.
The reason that new, more infectious variant is now threatening the country is because not enough Americans have been vaccinated. Until far more than 60% of Americans are vaccinated and community-wide immunity can be achieved, dangerous new variants will continue to emerge.
Clearly Republicans are still so fiercely in the grip of the angry hatred of their defeated president for anyone who opposed him they can’t imagine ever doing anything to help Biden successfully end the pandemic. They don’t consider that to be in their best political interest.
Well, it’s certainly in the best political interest of every American. Most Americans regularly tell pollsters they want the parties to work together to solve the country’s problems. The pandemic that won’t end is the biggest problem the nation has right now.
It’s obvious why every single elected official in Washington isn’t doing everything he or she possibly can to end the danger to the lives of the American people. Even though Donald Trump’s toxic, divisive presidency was soundly defeated in the largest voter turnout in history, the Republican Party refuses to move on from Trump’s failed presidency.
A large, threatening mob of Trump’s supporters tried to prevent a joint session of Congress from certifying Biden’s election in a violent attempted insurrection to overthrow American democracy. They’ve become election deniers perpetuating Trump’s preposterous lie Biden stole the election through massive, nationwide vote fraud.
Until the Republican Party rids itself of Trump’s most dangerously unAmerican supporters, it can’t begin to repair the damage he has done to their party and clear away all the clutter he left behind. That has to happen before Republicans can ever rejoin Democrats in rebuilding a functioning two-party democracy
