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COVID-19

Do your research — then get vaccinated | Editorial Columnists | dailyadvance.com

In the face of spiking rates of COVID in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said last Wednesday (July 21), “Here’s, I think, the most important thing with the data: if you are vaccinated, fully vaccinated, the chance of you getting seriously ill or dying from COVID is effectively zero.” Which is odd coming from a guy who is selling, at the same time, coolers and other apparel that proclaim, “Don’t Fauci My Florida.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed: “The way to avoid getting back into the hospital is to get vaccinated.”

On Monday July 19, in his Fox News nightly broadcast, Sean Hannity said this: “Please take COVID seriously. I can’t say it enough. Enough people have died. We don’t need any more death. Research like crazy. Talk to your doctor … I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccination.”

These are bi-partisan realities. DeSantis and Hannity certainly can’t be accused of being too friendly with the Biden administration or the Democratic-controlled Congress. But they recognize that COVID, and its deadly “delta variant,” respects no partisan boundary.

The delta variant is sweeping as a scourge through unvaccinated groups, especially where “vaccine hesitancy” is high. People are hospitalized. And people are dying.

Not just old people or obese people. One Congress member just got kicked off Twitter for suggesting just this (and falsely claiming that “6,000 people have died from the vaccine.”) In a July 20 interview, a reporter tried to bring some reason into the conversation: “But there are children,” she said, “skinny people who have died of the coronavirus .…”

The politician laughed with a gruesome smile: “Tia, you crack me up. You know what, I think people’s responsibility is their own. … I believe in people’s own individual responsibility to read, to find out and to make their own decision.”

OK, I’ll stipulate that. By all means: “Do your research,” as Sean Hannity recommends. You might find out that at least 98% of COVID hospitalizations today are those who are unvaccinated. You might find out that those “break-through” COVID cases — that is, those very few who have contracted the coronavirus after vaccination — are almost in every case non-symptomatic and non-hospitalized.

You might find out that the very, very best way to avoid your own suffering and the suffering of your loved ones is to get yourself and them vaccinated as soon as possible.

You might find out that if you don’t want to go back to the dark days of 2020, with all the shutdowns and the masking mandates and the cancellation of choirs and celebrations and church services, then you will want to join in the vaccination drive. You will celebrate President Donald Trump’s achievement in the remarkable development of the mRNA vaccines (in “Operation Warp Speed.”) And you will urge on President Joe Biden’s outreach efforts to get more people vaccinated.

Because, if you’ve done your research, you might find out that getting more people vaccinated in places like Louisiana and Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Florida, and here in the Carolinas will not only slow the spread of the delta variant but will also stop the mutation of the coronavirus into even worse variants.

The anti-vaxxing conspiracy movement actually aids and abets this plague.

Good research will show how silly and dangerous are the shameless comments of some very irresponsible politicians. One young jejune politician recently opined, about the idea of going door to door in outreach efforts, that “The thing about the mechanisms they would have to build to be able to actually execute that massive of a thing — and then think about what those mechanisms could be used for. They could then go door-to-door to take your guns. They could then go door-to-door to take your Bibles.”

Oh, come on. Perhaps he’s too young to know that in my childhood and yours, it was common for the school nurse to come to your house if you had measles, and she’d put up a big black-and-white sign in your front window that said “Quarantine.” And I never heard tell of Mrs Audrey Eakin RN ever making off with your handgun or your family Bible — unless she grabbed it to bop you on your head in an attempt to turn the lights on upstairs.

Of course, when you do your research, you may look in all the wrong places. You may cherry-pick some opinions that say the vaccine has little nanobots floating inside that will wake up when the 5G network turns on. You may convince yourself that COVID is a hoax, or that vaccination is just political.

And you won’t be surprised to learn that these anti-vaxxing “theories” have a lot in common with the flat earth society. Or with the crowd that says that the moon landing 52 years ago was just a hoax, that the Eagle LEM was just a mockup in Room 237 at the Overlook Hotel. Or with the 4chan and 8kun people who love mixing conspiracy theory with eschatology.

That sort of “alternative” research is, as an old Southern counseling friend of mine likes to say, “just a bunch of crazy-making.” It is also the kiss of death. The President might have walked back his “Facebook kills” comment, but I don’t. The kind of wicked misinformation about the vaccine that’s still polluting social media has undeniably led to unnecessary death, agony and heartbreak.

Partisan politics has driven this crazy-making hot mess of “alternative facts.” Dr. Brytney Cobia said that all but one of her COVID patients in Alabama did not receive the vaccine. “I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post last Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.

“A few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia, “I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.

“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu.’ But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”

That’s what partisan politics does when it infects a health crisis. It kills without giving a damn. And though it’s horrible to report this, you must know that Dr Cobia is now receiving death threats for publishing that post. Think about it: she gets threats for her grief. How low can people go? What cowardice. What shame.

It’s about time that our local politicians, preachers, and leaders take their cue from the likes of McConnell, DeSantis, and Hannity, if they can’t stomach the company of Biden or the Democrats. They need to come right out and say, in these very pages, that everyone should get vaccinated right now. They should denounce politicians and pundits who say otherwise — even if from their own party. They should condemn the death threats and abuse that have afflicted Dr Fauci and many, many other doctors (like Dr Cobia), who’ve only tried to help and heal.

Vaccination should never have had anything to do with politics, or worse, partisanship. It is a simple moral issue. Vaccination is the Christian thing to do. Or Jewish. Or Buddhist. Or Muslim. Or atheist humanist.

It is life or death.

Get vaccinated for God’s sake. And for the sake of your spouse, your family, your community, your child.

As Flannery O’Connor once said, “The life you save may be your own.”

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from The Daily Advance can be found here ***