On July 23, 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene found something to celebrate in Alabama.

Alabama had the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate of any state in the nation. 

Days later, Alabama’s health leader said officials had tossed out more than 65,000 coronavirus vaccines that expired. They had expired due to low demand. 

And that low demand had resulted from Right-wingers’ politicization of the virus.

But that wasn’t enough to satisfy Greene. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene

“Well, what they don’t know is that in the South we all love our Second Amendment rights. And we’re not real big on strangers showing up at our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get.”

In short: People should shoot volunteers promoting coronavirus vaccines through door-to-door outreach.

Her audience—at the Alabama Federation of Republican Women fundraiser—applauded and laughed at the idea of such murders.

Naturally, through her spokesman, Nick Dyer, Greene denied that she suggested people shoot those promoting vaccines.

“Your colleagues in the fake news are making things up and attributing things to her that she did not say,” he wrote in an email.

This despite the fact that Greene’s words had been captured in a video—and countless people had seen it after it was shared on the Internet.

When asked if Greene herself was vaccinated, Dyer refused to answer. 

“It really gets at the heart of the public’s trust in our government and the messaging around solid public health measures based on the science,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

“Our local health officials who are working on the ground are not political. They are completely apolitical,” she told CNN.

She added that Greene’s comments were “disheartening and distressing.”

“Outrageous and violence-encouraging” would have been a more accurate description. 

Greene’s comments demonstrate the twin pillars of Right-wing orthodoxy toward COVID-19: 

1. Ignorance and
2. Violence.

Donald Trump, as President, vividly personified both.

The apex of his embrace of violence came on January 6, 2021, when he refused to permit an orderly transition from one administration to another.

Instead, he incited a mob of his fanatical followers to attack members of Congress who were about to count the Electoral College votes cast for the 2020 Presidential election.

Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers 

Trump had lost that election: 81,255,933 votes had gone to former Vice President Joseph Biden, as opposed to 74,196,153 votes for himself.

Yet even before embracing that final grotesque moment of infamy, Trump had been responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Americans. 

The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.

Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included

• Denial;
• Lies;
• Republican subservience;
• Chaos;
• Extortion;
• Propaganda as news;
• Quackery as medicine;
• Demands to “re-open the country”;
• Ignoring the danger; and—finally—
• Resignation (“Learn to live with it”)

Early on, Trump made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask when you ventured out in public. This despite the fact that, throughout 2020, there was no vaccine available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.

“I think, once Donald Trump and other Republicans made it a manhood issue, or a freedom issue, or whatever kind of issue they made it, it’s hard to walk back that culture war signal,” said conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.

Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart echoed him: “I think, if we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents saying, wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”

Jonathan Capehart

But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.” 

By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus. 

But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.

COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021

George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one. These must be given almost a month apart.

(The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot.)

And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.

By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri—with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40% of all cases nationwide.

And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19. 

By July 27, 2022, there were 90.8 million COVID-19 cases in the United States—and 1.03 million deaths.