USA #2 in Covid Deaths per million in 2021 (Johns Hopkins via Kevin Drum). Click for larger image.
Charles M. Blow is shrill today,
It is a luxury to be irresponsible in a society where others will be responsible for you, where you simply assume that you are safer because others take the appropriate precautions to be safe: You do not need to get the shot because others have.
But the Delta variant is testing that faith.
You will not be safe as an unvaccinated person riding on the coattails of the vaccinated. Delta is extremely transmissible and unremitting. It is stronger than its progenitor.
As the Delta variant surges there is an uptick in the pace of vaccinations in the country. It’s almost like religion: Many disbelievers will call out to whatever God there may be when the reaper is at the door. Fear of ideological defeat is no match for the fear of imminent death. And yet, it shouldn’t have taken another surge of sickness and death for good sense to set in.
Why were Americans turning away a vaccine that many people in other parts of the world were literally dying for? Many did so because of their fidelity to the lie and their fidelity to the liar. They did it because they were — and still are — slavishly devoted to Trump, and because many politicians and conservative commentators helped Trump propagate his lies.
…
It was all lunacy. It is all lunacy. This should never have happened. There are people dead today — a lot of them! — who should still be alive and who would be if people in the heights of government and the heights of the media had not fed them lies about the virus.
But apparently, after you get so used to so much blood on your hands, you forget — or make yourself forget — that you weren’t born with red palms.
I think we need much more of this. It is time to call out the politicians and TV/Radio stars who inveigled against the COVID vaccine — and most especially those vaccinated themselves — and say, in the sort of plain speaking that responsible people in public debate have tended to avoid, that opinion-makers who led people to mistrust the COVID vaccine are killers.
In particular, it is past time to call out, in the harshest terms, those Governors who–while claiming they are protecting freedom and choice–prohibit localities in their states from imposing mask mandates and other COVID precautions That includes Texas Governor Greg Abbott and of course our own Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
That is not protecting choice, that is protecting irresponsible and potentially deadly behavior. It is no more responsible than telling people it’s OK to drive on the wrong side of the road, and those traffic-cop supporters are against freedom. We’d call that out, wouldn’t we?
If the powers that be continue to censor doctors, why do you have faith in them still?
https://youtu.be/Em4a_viRGZk
https://youtu.be/XbF1FNxHXHE
https://youtu.be/AtgUGxxzB_c
You should be applying the strictest of scrutiny to the Covid-19 hysteria at all levels.
Nobody is “censoring doctors”. They have the same first amendment rights as the rest of us –which includes some limits, e..g neither you, I, nor doctors can run onto the floor of the legislature and give a speech, or violate rues at a hearing in front of a government body. That is not censorship.
The overwhelming consensus among medical experts is that COVID cannot be contained until a very large % of the world is vaccinated; until then, and maybe afterwards too, we need to wear (good) masks (effectively) in many situations, and perhaps take greater measures — e.g. lock-downs quarantines when there’s a flareup, as we do with Ebola.
Can you find some dissenting crank with an advanced degree? Of course you can, it’s a big country. And no degree, Ph.D, MD., J.D. whatever — vaccinates against crankhood.
Nobel laureate Linus Pauling was a crank regarding Vitamin C. No accomplishment, degree, or accolade is totally crank-proof.
Showing your true colors by criticizing Pauling. What you have is empty barrel syndrom.
William Shockley would have been a better example, but I blanked on his name.
“Froomkin” is either incompetent, ignorant, a troll, or a shill for the criminal establishment. In any case, he spreads establishment propaganda and has no clue what the true reality is …
read “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room –The Holocaustal Covid-19 Coronavirus Madness: A Sociological Perspective & Historical Assessment Of The Covid “Phenomenon”” by Rolf Hefti at https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
Disememvoweled pursuant to the comments policy.
Professor Froomkin is so beloved by his students that they comment on his blog decades later.
If the major outlets of information are removing content and banning users that disagree with this dogmatic position, along with governmental agencies threatening the licensure of medical doctors espousing contradictory positions and advice to patients about this particular situation, does that help manufacture the appearance of expert consensus?