What If It Was The Other Way Around?

I scratch my head trying to figure out how elected government officials including Governors, Senators, and Representatives can speak authoritatively about what the public should do, get vaccinated, don’t get vaccinated, and worst of all, what rights does a person have, and that rejecting vaccinations falls within ones rights.  Hmmm.

I would like to think that the quality of our elected officials simply aren’t what they used to be.  But that may not be true.  (Pretty scary to accept that thought.)  Self interest and personal greed are traditional allies of the elected.

Regardless, one must consider that our current crop of politicians are excelling at mirroring their constituencies.  In other words Governor Abbot of Texas and Governor DeSantis of Florida are simply saying what they feel their supporters want to hear.  Hmmm.

Do you think these Governors are taking a big chance?  What if there are large outbreaks of infections?  OMG, yes there are large outbreaks in their States and these Governors are not changing their tune.  Hmmm.

I suspect both Governors are good poker players too.  They have figured that their voters are reasonably young, at least not nursing home voters,  And, in broad, general terms, Covid-19 does not decimate younger people.  But if you are 50 or older, things might be different.  So for that subset of voters, how about a law and order speech?  

If you remember back to mid 2020 and talk of developing a vaccine.  The prevailing view was that vaccines take years, maybe 5-8 for scientist to understand side effects and the ins and outs inherent in mutations to the original virus.  How did Phizer and Moderna suddenly get so smart?

And, how many Americans have experienced a pandemic before?  The plague, yellow fever, small pox, or ebola?  Newspaper and television reports cited the lethality. If you got one of these viruses, you were in for a serious illness if not death.  In World War I, soldiers were struck down by the “Spanish Flu” largely because they and health officials did not know what to do.  But no one said, “don’t give me a vaccine, I got rights”.  

With the coronavirus things are different.  Most younger people who contract Covid-19 are asymptotic and don’t even experience the feelings associated with the annual flu.  Further, most people, including younger ones, are ignorant of viral spread science and do not realize how the coronavirus can be controlled and ultimately eradicated.  Combine these two and one finds the making of the perfect storm.  “I won’t get sick” and “so what if I do”.

Many Americans have been poorly served these past two years.  In addition to rock stupid politicians, many religious leaders have invoked “god” as a natural defense against getting sick.  Vaccines are not needed and may be harmful, some religious leaders preached from their pulpits.  All you can be sure of is that politicians and religious leaders made the calculation that they would be personally better off (more votes, more money in the collection basket) with a line of no action than being coopted by science.

One must wonder what this pandemic might have been like had younger people gotten sick as often and as severely as older and less healthy people?  Virus controlling science may just be too difficult for most people to understand.  Instead, younger people can roll the dice and ignore medical advice and stand a good chance of paying no price for poor judgement.  

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Tags: Coronavirus, Covid-19, florida, Pandemic, texas

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