Is it anti-vax, or is it really anti-healthcare?
Let’s face it. America is the most obese large country in the world. At the start, obesity was a key Coronavirus morbidity factor, although I have not seen this followed up much lately.
But before Covid, healthcare was about watching your diet, or dieting, or fad diets. It was about not smoking. It was about only mildly drinking fine wines, and not excessive liquor. It was about avoiding illegal drugs. It was about not drinking or getting high and then driving. It was about the Affordable Care Act, covering the last 20 or 30 million without healthcare plans. It was about extending healthcare to those under 26, and those with pre-existing conditions. The ACA we have to remember, was already viciously opposed by Republicans, who tried to kill it by more than 60 congressional votes. They had already politicized it by renaming it Obamacare.
The “freedom” of no mandates and no disclosure of vaccinations were and still are the standard arguments used in gun control, to oppose any record keeping of sales of guns and ammunition. The risks children face in schools without masking and vaccine mandates was previewed by the disinformation campaigns against the horrendous mass shootings in schools. The denialists were the same people now raging against Dr. Fauci and the science of virology. The incredible denialism of vaccination in the Republican Party began way back with the Birtherism movement headed by Donald Trump, and continues today with the denialism of the Loserism of Trump in the 2020 Presidential election, and the Riotism of the January 6th assault on the Congress of the United States. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we listen to Tucker Carlson.
The low-vax states are strongly correlated with those Republican states that refused to adopt the ACA, even though it was initially free, and then they would only have to pick up 10% of it. Eight of the 12 non-ACA states are Southern including Texas, the other four being Wisconsin, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Kansas. Part of the low vax population also correlates with poor and minorities who are not regularly served and advised by their doctors, whose advice they learn to take. Lots of these people were denied coverage by the ACA by their states’ unconcern for them.
The health care discussion by the American Public Health Association that I watched today was ended with Dr. Peter Hotez talking about the effects of the last 20 or 30 million not getting vaccinated. It is a lot worse than that. Yesterday, the news was hopeful that the non-vaxers are reduced from 34% to 20%. However, 20% of 330 million Americans is 66 million. We have all heard several doctors on the news saying that your choice is getting vaccinated, or getting infected by the virulent Delta variant. That implies a lot of people potentially going through our hospital system.
“Freedom” to the anti-healthcare contingent means eating as much of whatever you want, drinking as much as you want, smoking, gun owning, non-masking, non-social distancing, socializing and partying as much as you want, and undoubtedly with the same people as yourself. Observe the Trump rallies. It is these who are definitely going to catch the Delta variant. Because of their anti-healthcare comorbidities, they are also going to suffer the most, and be the most likely to perish. They are also going to run up the highest healthcare bills, which the rest of us will get taxed to pay. Party on, Dude.
Republicans are the greatest at rebranding things to their advantage. The Democrats and scientists settled for the neutral Delta for the so far most contagious variant. They could have chosen from a hundred or a thousand more frightening and appropriate names to emphasize what a villain this is. Just starting with the “Thanos Variant” comes to mind. In “Avengers: Infinity Wars” Thanos says: “Dread it, Run from it, Destiny Arrives all the same.”
