Foreword:

It’s been over a year since I’ve written anything on this blog. My indolent cancer has continued on its lazy pathway, so, for the moment, at least, I am fine; the cancer has not grown, and has actually shrunk in some areas. The chemo treatments I take rob me of energy, and can make me a bit nauseous, but, other than that, I can’t really complain. So, I will try to get back to writing, Well, might be more accurate to say ranting.

The plague of ignorance.

The COVID situation in this country makes me very angry. According to the CDC we now have 75,012,446 cases of COVID in the USA. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html   Nearly a million Americans have died from the disease (884,853). Only sixty-four percent of Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID.  There is empirical evidence that increased vaccination rates do reduce the number of new COVID cases, and dramatically reduce the number of hospitalizations and fatalities. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7709178/ Vaccinations alone, do not lower the number of COVID cases, social distancing, mask-wearing, etc. increase resistance to COVID.

Kansas provides direct evidence that wearing masks definitely reduces the spread of this dreadful virus. The governor of Kansas issued an executive order to require mask-wearing in all public spaces, effective July 3, 2020.  Counties in Kansas were able to opt out of the Governor’s mandate. In the 24 counties that kept the mask mandate, the COVID infection rate continued to decrease, but in the counties without a mask mandate the rate increased. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/23/937173060/mask-mandates-work-to-slow-spread-of-coronavirus-kansas-study-finds

If you are unvaccinated, you are 14 times more likely to die of COVID. https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20211124/unvaccinated-14-times-more-likely-to-die-from-covid Yet, many Americans simply refuse to take the vaccine. They are encouraged in their denial by misinformation from FOX News. Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham both called the vaccine dangerous. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/business/media/vaccines-fox-news-hosts.html  Yes, there are side effects to the vaccine—as there are to any vaccine. But the CDC reports only 0.0022% of vaccinated people dying due to a possible response to the COVID vaccine, much lower than FOX’s propaganda would have you believe.

The Republican/FOX anti-vaccine campaign has undoubtedly increased the number of deaths from COVID. A study by NPR found that people who lived in USA counties that voted for Trump by 60% or higher were 2.73 times more likely to die of COVID than those who lived in less Trumpian counties. This study included some 3,000 counties. It is not surprising to see that 59% of unvaccinated people are Republican, while Democrats and Independents each make up 17% of the unvaccinated population. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate

The harm that has been done by fake cures for COVID is unmeasured. Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug became popular based on one study using very high concentrations of the drug in the lab against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Concentrations used in this study would be almost impossible to duplicate within the human blood stream. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58170809 But, anti-vaccine folks would rather take high concentrations of a cat de-wormer than a vaccine with proven positive results.

It must be unbelievably difficult for the front-line folks, doctors and nurses, who are treating people who didn’t need to be fatally ill from a disease for which there is a known preventative. And, especially hard, to treat COVID patients that refuse to admit they have the disease. Front-line workers put their health on the line daily to serve patients who are sick because of their failure to get vaccinated. Patients that crowd hospitals to the point where not all patients can be treated. Not a good time to have a heart attack.

What would the situation be like if everyone eligible to get a vaccine, got the vaccine, including the booster third shot? What would the situation be like if 90% were vaccinated? At the present time it some 64% of Americans are fully vaccinated, with only 28% also having the booster shot. https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+vaccination+rate+in+us&oq=covid+vaccination+rate+in+US&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j0i22i30l8j0i390.6285j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

The current COVID pandemic is a plague of ignorance as much as a plague of a virus. Murdoch’s mavens of misrepresentation are aiding and abetting this deadly virus. Aid that should be criminal.