Week of 08/09/2021

Hell Yes, Blame The Anti-Vaxxers And Anti-Maskers!
– by David Matthews 2

So... here we are in August of 2021, more than a year-and-a-half since the global pandemic started.  A pandemic that crashed the global economy, killed millions, sickened millions more, oh, and helped the loss of a certain narcissist from the White House.  We are also more than half-a-year into the first vaccines being rolled out in the United States.  Three different vaccines so far and more awaiting emergency authorization.

And yet we are back to where we were almost a year ago.

You know, we were doing great.  People were getting vaccinated quickly and eagerly.  There were discussions about which vaccine someone was getting and whether or not they could mix-and-match vaccines and talk about booster shots.  The pandemic restrictions and mask mandates were ending.  People were getting out again.  Business was booming again.

And then the vaccination count slowed and, in many cases, stopped.  The reason?  All of those people who were supposedly “vaccine-hesitant”, who didn’t want the vaccine, who refused to get vaccinated, and they didn’t want any limitations placed on them.  They don’t want to be told they had to get the vaccine in order to take a cruise or to work or to go to Disneyland.  That combined with a deadly variant of the COVID-19 virus sweeping the country is bringing back infections and hospitalizations and deaths up to where they were before and beyond.

Now we’re back to trying to get people to mask up again, even for the majority of us who took the vaccines.  Because this “Delta” variant is so strong that even vaccinated people can get “breakthrough” infections.  Doctors are even likening the contagious spread of this variant to chicken pox.

And yet the same people who refuse the vaccines, the same ones who refused the masks and social distancing previously, are throwing temper tantrums and doing everything they can to stop the mask mandates and stop any attempt to shut things down to try to stop the spread again.  It is as though they *want* us all to get sick and to die.

So now we are being told that we shouldn’t blame the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers for this new spread of the virus.  Don’t be angry with them.  Don’t vent your rage on them.  Try different tactics.  Try different arguments.  It’s not really “their” fault anyway.  They just don’t know any better.

I say to hell with that and to hell with them.

Let’s get brutally honest here... it is high time that these anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers be held to account for their actions, because this whole thing is on their heads. 

They *are* the reason why hospitals are getting overwhelmed again. 

They *are* the reason why deaths are rising again. 

They *are* the reason why even a small portion of the fully vaccinated are getting “breakthrough” infections, even if they’re not dying from it like the unvaccinated are.

They *are* the reason why the original COVID-19 virus managed to mutate into all of these different variants.

They *are* the reason why we are having to go back to mask mandates and social distancing. 

Many of these folks are the same people who refused to mask up and refused to social distance before the vaccines came out.  They didn’t want to be “inconvenienced”, so they threw temper tantrums and made-up phony excuses about having a “medical condition” like a certain narcissist and his “bone spurs”.  They consciously chose to listen to anti-vax propagandists on certain cable “news” and talk radio stations and from some bible-thumper who heard something from their brother’s half-sister’s best-friend’s cousin’s next-door-neighbor’s grandmother’s ex-husband’s retired heart doctor who read something on Facebook that was shared from Twitter that was linked to a bad parody site before it got taken down.  And they have the audacity to call that “doing the research”.

This is on them.  All of it.  The variants.  The new surge in hospitalizations.  The deaths.  The new infections.

This is on them.

Every man, woman, and child who is hospitalized and dies from COVID now is on the heads of every anti-vaccination and every anti-mask protester, along with their political champions like the various governors in Florida and Texas, and along with the media personalities on those notorious cable “news” and talk radio stations who have spread disinformation and out-and-out lies about the masks and vaccines.  Every single COVID hospitalization and death, even from their own, is on them.

The rest of us were doing what we needed to do.  We stayed home when we could.  We masked up when we had to go out.  We tried to maintain social distance when possible.  We cleaned, we sanitized, we dealt with the taped-off-chairs and the to-go-only orders.  We waited for the vaccines to come out and we took them when available. 

The loosening of restrictions and the ending of mask mandates?  That was for us.  That was our reward for doing what we needed to do for others this past year-plus.  It was in the hope that the rest of us, the so-called “hesitant”, would do the right thing and get vaccinated so we could all put this behind us once and for all. 

But they didn’t.  

Because a lot of them aren’t “hesitant” at all.  They are outright vaccine refusers and saboteurs.

So, yes, they deserve every bit of our anger and every ounce of our rage and every moment of frustration we could raise against them.  They need to be pilloried from every perch and post, condemned for the rising hospitalizations and deaths that did not have to happen but only because of them, and to face the consequences for their conscious decisions to make masks and vaccines a political matter instead of the life-or-death issue that it is.

And I know that it’s not just a problem in the United States.  I know that certain countries around the world have this same problem.  They too are having to deal with the idiots protesting about masks and vaccines. 

The difference is two-fold.  First, many around the world don’t have access to the vaccines as we do in the United States.  Every single American adult and teenager can get the vaccine right now.  We already paid for them.  In fact, we are wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on every vaccine that is wasted here because of vaccine refusers.  Second, because we *are* the United States of America.  We should be better than this!  We should be leading the way to being COVID-free nationwide!  But we aren’t.  And that is also directly because of those vaccine refusers and saboteurs. 

This pandemic is going to drag on for years, regardless of who is in office, regardless of which political party is in power.  It won’t matter how many vaccines get authorized, either under emergency or normal conditions, or how many we can purchase and make available for people.  The only way this pandemic will end will be if the rest of the people end their asinine selfish delusions and accept both the masks and the vaccines.  Until then, this is on them, and they need to know it and to own it.