Why Aren't We Doing The Smart Thing - Back to Lockdown - To Combat the Newest COVID Wave? Because IDIOTS...

As the COVID-19 pandemic gets worse with the Delta variant heading towards the end of July 2021, there isn't as much anxiety as we had back in July 2020. Instead, this time there's a shit-ton of anger building up among the vaccinated towards the contrarian, ignorant, brain-dead, Fox-Not-News-worshipping UNvaccinated SOBs that make up our trumpian neighbors.

Even David Frum is pissed:

In the United States, this pandemic could’ve been over by now, and certainly would’ve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.

Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans. Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty...

The Far Right are driven by Purity Tests: if any of them even flinches or looks like they're changing their mind on something, that person gets driven out. And right now the Purity Test requires these contrarian SOBs to oppose COVID vaccination on the flimsiest of pretexts, based on bad information from fellow contrarians who are neither experts nor correct.

Pro-Trump vaccine resistance exacts a harsh cost from pro-Trump loyalists. We read pitiful story after pitiful story of deluded and deceived people getting sick when they did not have to get sick, infecting their loved ones, being intubated, and dying. And as these loyalists harm themselves and expose all of us to unnecessary and preventable risk, publications—including this one—have run articles sympathetically explaining the recalcitrance of the unvaccinated...

Biden’s America is home to vaccine holdouts too. But state and local leaders in Biden’s America have spoken clearly and consistently about the urgency of vaccination. The leaders in Trump’s America have talked a double game: Like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, they urge vaccination one day, then the next they fundraise by attacking public-health officials such as Anthony Fauci. The consequence of DeSantis’s weeks of pandering to COVID-19 denial: More than one-fifth of all new COVID-19 cases in the United States are arising in the state of Florida—24,000 recorded on a single day, July 20...

Compassion should always be the first reaction to vaccine hesitation. Maybe some unvaccinated people have trouble getting time off work to deal with side effects, maybe they are disorganized, maybe they are just irrationally anxious. But there’s no getting around the truth that some considerable number of the unvaccinated are also behaving willfully and spitefully. Yes, they have been deceived and manipulated by garbage TV, toxic Facebook content, and craven or crazy politicians. But these are the same people who keep talking about “personal responsibility.” In the end, the unvaccinated person himself or herself has decided to inflict a preventable and unjustifiable harm upon family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet...

We are not going to see an end to this until both the monsters distributing misinformation and the fools eagerly lapping it up answer for their sins. And by then, half our school-bound kids (our states are forcing everybody back to in-person classes!) will likely be sick and dying.

Goddamn these goddamn wingnuts.