SAY WHAT? - In an admirable, longstanding tradition, heedful Americans are taking multiple, pragmatic, science-based precautions against a virus that in two years has killed 900,000 people, is poised this week to set new records for surging hospitalizations, and is still infecting almost 700,000 people a day. LOL. Just kidding. In moronic fact, despite an "extraordinarily contagious" Omicron variant that doctors at overwhelmed hospitals say poses challenges that kindle, "I don't want to say despair, (but at least) fatigue," crackpots still roam the land, spewing their crazy. As always, the most disheartening are those with, inexplicably, power and a platform. They range from the former guy mindlessly berating his fans to "Rise up!" against often non-existent vaccine mandates to Rand Paul ranting at Dr. Fauci for trying to save lives not make money to Florida's so-called Surgeon Generalurging the COVID-ravaged state's health officials to "unwind the testing psychology" and rely on "natural immunity" A "well-educated COVID crank" - Harvard?! - and fan of hydroxychloroquine and wingnut demon-sperm doctors who's not big on masks or vaccines, Dr. Joseph Ladapo held a press conference to announce the state would work to "unwind this" - here, he haplessly spun his finger around in search of good words - "planning and living one's life around testing." "It's really time for people to be living," he said, "to make the decisions they want regarding vaccination, to enjoy the fact that many people have natural immunity." Testing has "been treated almost like a religion, and that's just senseless," he scolded at a podium that read, "Early Treatment Saves Lives," because if we restrict tests to, say, only grandmothers, we'll magically have fewer COVID cases! We love science.
Lamentably, America is full of Covidiots who eat up this crap. A new poll found just 37% of voters deem the virus one of top five priorities in 2022, while 68% name the economy. (We love capitalism too.) They likely include those who believe Betty White died from a booster, L.A Charger Donald Parham Jr.'s heart exploded in mid-air from a vaccine, older retired teachers should return to infected classrooms to replace young, sick or beleaguered colleagues who've fled, and rising GOP star and California anti-vaxxer Kelly Ernby, 46, died of pneumonia, after denouncing mandates at a rally because "our freedoms." Ernby joins a staggeringly long list of anti-vax recipients of the Herman Cain Award, a fast-growing site of "heartless and unrepentant schadenfreude" that tracks victims of a disease "worse than any understood," from denial to hospital to brutal selfies to family updates on ventilators to frantic requests for prayers to inexorable demise, a "massive record of human suffering" that records "how seamlessly anti-vax communities reconcile themselves to the deaths their convictions will perpetuate." Add to their ranks Alabama's oft-arrested, heavily armed Christopher Key, who as bonkers head of the Vaccine Police has crossed the country to harass state officials over masks and vaccines, often firing off a flamethrower to "exterminate" the deadly "bioweapons" that are vaccines; in Missouri, he accused vax-giving Walmart pharmacists of "crimes against humanity" for which they'd be hung and "executed in violation of the Nuremberg Code.” Having hawked chlorine dioxide, deer antler spray and apricot seeds, he now advocates- "it might seem cray cray” - drinking urine to ward off COVID. He cites "tons and tons of research," also "antidotal" evidence, to support urine therapy; he himself has been drinking his own urine for 23 years, evidently proving, "God's given us everything we need," except perhaps a working brain. Meanwhile, in Germany, a shepherd lined up her 700 sheep and goats into the shape of massive syringe, in hopes people would be encouraged to get vaccinated because "sheep are such likeable animals." Unlike, you know.
(Abby Zimet has written CD's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.)