Alice in It Makes Wonder Land

 

To anyone who actually paid attention in high school science classes or who might have actually accessed accurate medical and biological information through credible sources, from qualified physicians to genuine online sources (e.g., WebMD), or might have gone on to college, the notion of making a clearly medical infection into a political movement is nothing short of amazing… in a bad way. What is even more fascinating is that educated politicians are willing to exploit the passionate gullibility of angry voters who have been duped by hypocritical leaders into believing that somewhere, despite Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, they have some clear right to resist measures aimed at saving hundreds of thousands of lives, caused by a plague that has killed over 700,000 Americans. It’s all a liberal exaggeration, an attempt to take over their lives against their will. Well, that’s their thinking, anyway.

That those hypocritical leaders, including “I am still the President” Donald Trump and their major Fox “News” propagandist anchors, have all been fully vaccinated seems to skip notice. Quack eye doctor (never practiced), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), has obsessed over Dr. Anthony Fauci (senior COVID advisor in both the Trump and Biden administrations), calling elderly and very credible Dr Fauci a lying manipulator, a fabricator of the fact that the Delta variant is and has been a serious threat. Even as red state morgues are filling up and hospitals in red states are packed like sardines, some with rationed “who lives and who dies” healthcare. 

We are witnessing the positive impact of massive vaccinations, much higher in blue states where additional mask and social distancing requirements still proliferate, producing a downturn in COVID infection rates. Some experts tell us that the worst is behind us, although we have heard that mantra too many times before. The increase of federal and private employer mandates has had a highly effective impact on infection rates where these requirements are enforced. 

But red state resistance, the continued politization of a plague, is still jaw-dropping evidence of how completely gullible and vulnerable so many individuals still are when it comes to the seriousness of COVID. We also should know that there is no right to act in a manner to hurt or infect others. But so many don’t. Will we have yet another resurgence of COVID? I hope not, but if red states continue to fight common sense preventative measures, we just might. Nothing screams dangerous politicization of a medical reality that the poster-state for denial and legal misinterpretation: Missouri.

Writing for the October 3rd Guardian (UK), Edward Helmore gives us the British perspective of this inane state: “Welcome to Missouri’s Covid culture wars… This Republican-run midwestern state was hit hard and early by the pandemic, and again with the Delta wave. Tens of thousands of people have become infected.”

“Though rates are now going down again, the state’s population is still only 48.18% fully vaccinated. With winter coming and new variants looming, health officials are concerned that the culture wars that have roiled Missouri – and other parts of the US – will leave the state vulnerable again when a next wave strikes… In the heat of the sometimes bizarre battle over masks, mandates and vaccines, many observers worry that Missourians’ personal convictions, often fed by misinformation and nourished by religious conviction, are being harvested for political gain.

“Among such politicians is Missouri’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is running for US Senate… Schmitt has sued China, claiming “irreparable damage to countries across the globe, causing sickness, death, economic disruption, and human suffering” caused by Covid-19 and, more recently, initiated a class-action lawsuit against local school districts throughout Missouri, seeking to prevent them from enacting mask policies.

“‘Forcing children to wear masks in school all day long flies in the face of science, and could hinder crucial development by eliminating facial cues and expressions,’ Schmitt said last month… On Tuesday [9/28], a judge threw out Schmitt’s request to block mandates in public schools in Boone county, which includes the city of Columbia, and to expand the action to sue every school district in the state that has a mask requirement.” Hellmore is particularly intrigued by one extreme resister in small town Missouri:

“The boarded-up storefront of Rae’s Cafe in Blue Springs, Missouri, does not look much like a Covid-19 battleground – but it has become a cause célèbre of the anti-masking movement since owner Amanda Wohletz began a campaign in July to defy local Jackson county mask mandates imposed after Delta variant infections surged.

“Despite warnings, citations, the revocation of a food permit and a county health department’s order to close her doors, Wohletz persisted, claiming in court that the mandate ordering everyone aged five and up to wear a face covering when visiting indoor public spaces was ‘unconstitutionally created’ and efforts to enforce it were ‘unlawful, nonsensical’.

“Now the restaurant is shuttered. In a 23 September ruling, a county judge rejected Wohletz’s argument of medical exemptions and the claim that the restaurant could skirt the mandate by operating as a private club. The judge ordered Rae’s to cease operations until it obtained a valid food permit.” 

That serious politicians, candidates for the highest elected offices in the land, are running to create a legal system that denies science, enhancing the probability that clearly preventable serious infections and death will endure, should shock the conscience of our entire nation. That it does not, that millions of Americans continue to resist and deny medical reality to prove fealty to a distorted politization of truth, does not augur well for the future of this nation. Russia (a hefty disseminator of disinformation) and China are loving every minute of this moral plague that weakens the United States beyond any external threat.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I sure hope the rising and better educated generations take over the majority of elected positions before this country simply splits apart.