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Posts Tagged ‘SPANISH FLU’

HERE COMES TRUMP 3.0: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on November 30, 2021 at 12:10 am

As millions of Right-wingers refused to get vaccinated, the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19 moved in for the kill.

The result: A massive overcrowding of hospitals—where those who refused to get vaccinated are now taking up beds needed for legitimate victims of strokes, heart attacks, accidents and crime.

Covid-19 Vaccination Map of USA.png

COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021

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

Even after three COVID-19 vaccines have been developed, millions of Right-wingers refuse to get vaccinated. Although they refuse women the right to abortion, they insist “It’s my body!” when it came to mandatory vaccinations.

As a result, in states won by Trump in the 2020 Presidential election, hospitals surge with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients—and graveyards fill with them.

Every hospital bed taken by an unvaccinated Stormtrumper is a bed denied to a legitimate medical patient—such as a victim of stroke, heart attack, accident or crime. 

Yet President Joseph Biden has refused to blame those men and women who are directly responsible for this outrage.

Official Presidential Portrait of Joseph R. Biden Jr (8x10) | U.S. Government Bookstore

Joseph Biden

Doing so would not only be accurate—it would enable Biden to place blame on his sworn political enemies and thus enhance his own popularity: “We would have achieved freedom from COVID-19—but these people have sabotaged their country’s safety out of sheer selfishness and arrogance!”

Trump viciously attacked the nation’s free press as “the enemy of the American people.” But Biden and his fellow Democrats refuse to blame those most responsible for the nation’s continuing COVID-19 epidemic. 

As a result, millions of Americans believe it’s Biden’s fault for not delivering a miracle after he stated, on March 12:

“If we do this together [get vaccinated] by July 4, there is a good chance you, your family and friends can get together in your backyard or in your neighborhood and have a cookout or a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day.

“After a long, hard year, that will make this Independence Day truly special—where we not only mark our independence as a nation but we begin to mark our independence from this virus.”

Anti-vaxxers or their loved ones have filed at least two dozen lawsuits across the country to force hospitals to give them Ivermectin, a drug for de-worming cows and horses. But it remains an unproven cure for the virus. 

Many unvaccinated patients beg—or demand—to be vaccinated. But to their surprise, they’re told it’s now too late.

COVID-19 (Novel Coronavirus) | Santa Cruz County, AZ - Official Website

And as of November 9, comes Omicrom—better-named as Trump 3.0.

This marks the third wave of Coronavirus to strike the United States since Donald Trump became President. Early reports indicate that even twice-vaccinated people might not be safe from it. 

This is directly attributable to those millions of anti-vaxxers and Trump-supporting Right-wingers who have refused to wear masks and get vaccinated—even when vaccines are free and readily available.

And Trump 3.0 is arriving just in time for the coming of winter—and the advent of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. The holidays when Americans crisscross the nation in huge numbers to visit friends and relatives—and stay indoors at close quarters with them.

According to AAA Travel, for Thanksgiving alone, 48.3 million were expected to drive,4.2 million were expected to fly, and one million were expected to use other means of transit, such as busses, trains or cruises.

That will undoubtedly lead to spreading the new across the country—and in intimate settings where 

And with the holidays comes the crowd-magnet known as “Black Friday”—when giant shopping malls offer vastly reduced sales to lure tens of thousands of shoppers indoors—where the virus spreads most quickly.

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It’s long past time to punish the egotistical selfishness of those who refuse to protect themselves and others.

And the most effective way to do this is to turn them away from hospitals when they show up. 

They should be forcibly told: “You say it’s your right to refuse to get vaccinated? Fine. Well, it’s our right to reserve beds for patients who deserve to be treated. And you don’t.”

So long as hospitals cater to these self-indulgent Right-wingers—most of them Trump supporters—they will feel empowered to consume vital medical resources needed for legitimate victims of strokes, heart attacks, accidents and crime.   

These people need to be forcibly taught that there are consequences for irresponsibly selfish and arrogant behavior.  So long as they are catered to, they will never learn this vital lesson.

And there is an even more important reason for taking what many will see as a radical step. 

Those unvaccinated men and women who survive to 2024 will eagerly cast their votes for Donald Trump. Trump makes no secret of his desire to be “President-for-Life”—and incited a treasonous attack on the United States Capitol to overturn the free and fair election of 2020.

If he re-enters the White House in 2024, he will never voluntarily leave—and will establish a dictatorship backed up by military, police and judicial power to remain “President-for-Life.”

So the more of these unvaccinated Right-wingers who aren’t around to cast their votes in 2024, the safer democracy will be.

President Biden may not feel free to say this. But it remains brutally true nevertheless.

HERE COMES TRUMP 3.0: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on November 29, 2021 at 12:20 am

First, there was COVID-19, which slammed into the United States in early January, 2000.

Then, in June, 2021, as COVID-19 seemed on the wane, the Delta variant struck.

Now, as of November 9, the world is facing Omicron—a new variant of COVID-19.

Discovered in South Africa, Omicron would be better-described as Trump 3.0.

As President of the United States, Donald Trump bequeathed to his country two deadly legacies:

  1. A treasonous lust to overthrow democratic government; and
  2. The deadliest virus seen in America since the 1919 Spanish flu epidemic.

Throughout his Presidency, Trump “joked” about how wonderful it would be for the United States to have a “President-for-Life”—such as  Xi Jinping in China.

Trump proved that he was not joking on January 6, when he incited his followers to stop the counting of Electoral College votes in the United States Capitol Building.

Related image

Donald Trump

This amounted to an attempted coup. Had the violent mob achieved its aims, the vote count would have ended before Joseph Biden could be officially pronounced the next President of the United States. And Trump would have remained President.

For it is the Electoral College vote—not the popular one—that determines the outcome of Presidential elections.

Biden had received 81,268,924 votes to 74,2164 for Trump. But it was Biden’s winning of 306 votes to Trump’s 232 in the Electoral College that made him President.

A year later, Trump continues to spew lies that millions of Right-wing Americans eagerly believe: “Trump won the election; Biden is an illegitimate President.”

Even worse: Trump’s followers in Republican-controlled states are working to rig the upcoming 2024 Presidential election to guarantee a Republican win—even if voters decide otherwise. 

So much for Trump’s legacy of treason and criminality. 

Now for his legacy as Coronavirus-in-Chief.

From the outset of the pandemic, Trump lied about the dangers Americans were facing.  

On February 7, 2020, he told Washington Post editor and reporter Bob Woodward: “It goes through the air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed….It’s also more deadly than your strenuous flues.”

Interferon Plays Pivotal, Inflammatory Role in Severe COVID-19 Cases

COVID-19

But from January to early March, 2020, Trump and his allies within the Republican party and Fox News Network repeatedly assured Americans they had nothing to fear. 

And 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.

Even worse: Trump declared open warfare on those Democratic governors—such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer—who imposed quarantine “stay-at-home’ orders to halt the spread of the virus. And he repeatedly ridiculed the warnings of medical experts—such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious disease. 

For Trump, assuring his own re-election in 2020 took precedence over everything. He knew that as long as Americans stayed home the economy would be depressed. And citizens in depressed economies don’t re-elect Presidents they blame for their suffering.

So for Trump, getting millions of parents back to work meant getting millions of children back to school—no matter the risk. Toward that end, Trump even threatened to cut off federal aid to schools that did not forcibly return children to classes.

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.”

PBS NewsHour | Brooks and Capehart on voting and gun violence legislation | Season 2021 | PBS

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.

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.)

What had happened?

“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized New York Times columnist David Brooks. “‘Who knows what’s going to happen to all these people who get the shots in 10 years or 20 years?’ So, why should I take the risk?'”

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