Trust and COVID

   

While most of us are increasing vigilant about COVID exposure risks, “Other people, however, have lately begun arguing for a different approach in op-eds, Substacks, and appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher. These folks are taking a principled stand against . . . having to do anything at all to avoid either catching, detecting, or transmitting the novel coronavirus. They are so over COVID! This whole pandemic thing? They’re not fans, and unlike everyone else apparently, they are brave enough to say it…  But while a growing segment of talking heads may be done with the pandemic, the pandemic is not done with them.” Joe Berkowitz, FastCompany.com, January 24th. Unfortunately, political forces and disease unpopularity are dramatically ineffective in stopping infection and death. Why do so many people simply disregard truth?

Thirty years ago, 65% of Americans generally trusted their government to do the right thing and act in their best interests. In 2022, that statistic is wholly reversed. Despite over 60 judicial decisions, including by many Trump and local GOP appointed/elected judges, ruling that there was no measurable fraud in the November election, that the same ballots that elected the president were also the ballots that elected members of Congress and local officials, that there hasn’t been a single audit producing a contrary result, that claims that voting machines were controlled by malevolent forces through the Internet were negated inasmuch as those machines were not even connected to the Internet and the failure of finding a meaningful shred of tangible proof of voting fraud, a full 70% of polled Republicans still maintain that Donald Trump won the election. If a candidate wants to get kicked out of the GOP or shoved into a marginalized and subordinated role, all he or she has to do is say that the election was fair.

A combination of Fox News (which admitted in court filed documents that no reasonable person would believe Tucker Carlson, its lead “news” host) and its ilk, the ability to cloister one’s access to information to curtail conflicting information on social media and the continuation of false and often subversive anti-constitutional narratives from individuals elected to high office that we used to believe, have led to a near unraveling of American democracy. While a possible civil war could kill lots of us if it broke out, those false narratives are killing plenty of people right now. 

While most Republicans do not believe in the sanctity of a woman’s body when it comes to free choice, for some reason they believe in the sanctity of their own bodies when it comes to vaccinations of individuals to stop the spread of a disease from them to other, innocent individuals. There is no real possibility of a full reacceleration of our economy, plagued with COVID-related labor shortages and supply chain problems resulting in exploding inflation, unless and until we contain this novel coronavirus (and perhaps new variants and new super-deadly pandemics). And until those dramatically responsible for keeping those transmissions high, providing bodies for the virus to mutate and crowding out truly needy patients from access to emergency rooms, ICUs and critical care, we cannot get there.

George Washington battled Congress over smallpox mandates among his troops during the revolutionary war, and battles raged since our inception over vaccine mandates, a matter that seemed to be settled in the 1905 Supreme Court decision, Jacobson vs Massachusetts: “In 1905, the Court declared that the Massachusetts law did not violate the Constitution and affirmed that ‘in every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint.’ They also determined that mandatory vaccinations were neither arbitrary nor oppressive if they do not exceed what is ‘reasonably required for the safety of the public.’

“To this day, most schools and universities require a series of vaccines for students to enroll. For example, for a child to enter kindergarten, the Florida Department of Health requires four doses of Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), four doses of polio (IPV), two doses of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), two doses of chickenpox, Hepatitis B, and pneumococcal conjugate (PCV13), and haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib). When attending college, I had to show proof of vaccination for the same vaccines. Similarly, health-care and child-care workers are often required to show proof of vaccination for Hepatitis B, influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, pneumococcal disease and varicella.” Lindsay Chervinsky, The Long History of Vaccine Mandates in the United States in the August 5th Governing.com.

Having spent five days in a major Los Angeles hospital for a non-COVID life-threatening emergency during a recent variant outbreak, I can personally attest to the anger of doctors, nurses and medical technicians over the selfish and callous disregard of health and safety of others from those who refused to get vaccinated and the pandering politicians who let them spread the disease, literally forcing unbearable working conditions. My “room” was a curtained partition with one toilet for every 16 patients, no showers and no privacy. Simply put, the rage of current COVID hospitalizations and deaths are almost entirely comprised of unvaccinated individuals.

The January 28th YahooNews summarized this latest bout with anti-vax sentiments based almost entirely of political fealty and misinformation: “Inaccurate information about COVID-19 vaccines is one of the reasons why more than 36% of the U.S. population still isn't fully vaccinated despite a much higher likelihood of hospitalization and death for those who are not inoculated.

“‘It’s tragic,’ Dr. Michael Saag, associate dean for global health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). ‘These folks don’t have to die from COVID, but they are dying because they’re not getting vaccinated. And the misinformation that’s out there that’s telling people that the vaccine kills people, telling people these vaccines are unsafe, that’s just wrong. And it’s killing people.’

“A 2021 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that 35% of Americans either believe or are unsure about whether deaths from the COVID vaccine ‘are being intentionally hidden by the government’ while roughly 31% believe or are unsure about if the vaccines ‘have been shown to cause infertility.’ (Data has shown there are no links between the COVID vaccines and infertility.)… Additionally, the survey found that 1 in 4 individuals either believe or were unsure whether vaccines could give you COVID or contain a microchip, and 1 in 5 entertained the idea that the vaccine could change your DNA.” 

Take a good look at the above photographs. The black and white represents a children’s polio ward in 1953, which gave rise to polio vaccinations. The other hospital picture is of a recent COVID ward, with unvaccinated people on ventilators (many of whom died). It’s time to hold unvaccinated people, those who spread anti-mask, anti-mask false rhetoric accountable, financially and politically. Personal beliefs are an insufficient justification for allowing infected people to spread unnecessary suffering. Taxpayers and insurance carriers are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions, on irresponsible people, when that money could be used for so many other necessary programs.

As Florida has been crippled beyond most other states because of bans on mask and vaccine mandates by gubernatorial order, please explain to me why Governor Ron DeSantis, responsible for so many deaths, is leading in the polls as he faces reelection. Is misinformation that powerful? Why are those of us in society who have been vaccinated paying for the self-indulgent many who will not take the necessary steps to stop the disease? Such as those anti-mandate protestors, as pictured above, who believe they have the right infect others? That the vaccines actually prevent the hospitalization and death of those who stepped up, even if infections are not completely eradicated, is enough to hold those who refuse fully accountable for their stupid selfishness and unwillingness to try and get the truth about vaccines. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time for hospitals to turn unvaccinated adults (who do not have bona fide medical reasons for not getting vaccinated) away … or make them pay outside of healthcare coverage… to keep hospital beds available for those suffering from other life-threatening ailments.