Health rebels
Pandemic, you say? Well then we’ll just make sure health officials can’t take necessary steps to deal with it.
Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases.
Because what mad impetuous fool wants to be protected against infectious diseases?
A KHN review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the covid-19 pandemic began. While some governors vetoed bills that passed, at least 26 states pushed through laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public health. In three additional states, an executive order, ballot initiative or state Supreme Court ruling limited long-held public health powers. More bills are pending in a handful of states whose legislatures are still in session.
God we’re a stupid people.
President Joe Biden last Thursday announced sweeping vaccination mandates and other covid measures, saying he was forced to act partly because of such legislation: “My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you and these lifesaving actions.”
…
Much of this legislation takes effect as covid hospitalizations in some areas are climbing to the highest numbers at any point in the pandemic, and children are back in school.
It’s as if they think the pandemic is an angry god and they can appease it by backing off prevention. Imbeciles.
In Minnesota, unless the wind shifts direction, the Republican campaign theme will be that the current governor used dictatorial powers for mask mandates and for other uses of his power to fight the pandemic as well as he could. It may sell in the rural part of the state, even though there are people dying out there.
I don’t get people, so stubborn and selfish.
I can understand a coal magnate being a climate denier and wanting to shut all climatologists down. That goes with the territory. And besides, if it turns out to be right, the magnate will have enough cash to buy any piece of real estate in Patagonia or Greenland he or she might fancy. But antivaxxers and Covid denialists are something else again. If it had not been for vaccines, an epidemic of smallpox, dyptheria, or any other of those in the list at the link below would have long ago taken them or their immediate ancestors off the chessboard of life.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/diseases/forgot-14-diseases.html
Bari Weiss had some conservative British expat on who made the blunt point that this plague is not even in the top five of deadly plagues we’ve had and that’s the problem. If their kids were dying they wouldn’t be so damn resistant. As is it’s mostly people no one cares about over much and is sufficiently uncommon that if you don’t work in a hospital you can pretend there’s nothing that bad happening.
Eh?
Ophelia: The highest death rates are in poor and minority communities. (And prisoners, and the homeless. Strangely enough, not the “trans community”. Let’s turn the conversation to the trans community, shall we?) Communities too often prone to listening to demagogues and “ministers of the holy bible”, as well as victims of poor health (and health care) in general
Not to mention the elderly (particularly nursing home patients) and prisoners. I’m being a bit hyperbolic in the use of “no one” but I think it delivers a point about broad society.