If I read one more whiny op-ed piece about how we should try to understand the people who are keeping the pandemic going by not getting vaccinated, I’m going to scream. It’s been a year since the vaccines became available, a year that could have been one of America’s finest hours, one in which a divided country could have come together to stamp out a deadly virus.
Instead, a vocal and vulgar minority has teamed up with the virus, prolonging our national agony. I don’t want to try to understand why these people are doing what they do. It’s not worth knowing. I just hope they all get sick. I’ve never wished anyone dead in my entire life, but I’ll be honest, when I hear about an unvaccinated person who dies from COVID, the most I can muster is “And…?”
I’m just tired of the COVIDiots. (My bilingual friend, Alfredo, calls them Pandejos.) They want our Pandemic Fatigue to lead to our just shrugging and accepting their behavior as a matter of different strokes. But it’s not and it never will be. This is not a petulant child making a scene in public until you give them some candy. These are grown human beings who think only of themselves and, in doing so, are indirectly causing the deaths of other people.
They need to be held accountable. For one thing, if the virus-denier/anti-vaxxer shows up at a hospital, they should be treated, but first they have to get vaccinated. The people who work there have to be vaccinated; the people who shop there should, too.
Another thing we can do is get rid of the stupid excuses that the anti-vaxxers and the America haters have been using for the past year.
• It’s against my religion: Well, no, it’s not. It’s not against any established religion on Earth. Now, you might have some crackpot white Reverend Ike on cable TV, screaming, “Just send me your money and God will love you” and spouting lies about the vaccines, but that’s not religion. That’s blasphemy. (You could have asked televangelist Marcus Lamb, who railed against vaccines before he died of COVID last month.)
Many hard-core evangelical Christians in America long ago discarded any respect they might have once had for the Golden Rule in exchange for a twisted version of selfish libertarianism. What used to be bedrock Christianity has been replaced by a demon brew of equal parts heresy, lunacy, and Trumpian nastiness.
Likewise, ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel and the U.S., who had initially resisted getting the vaccinations, are starting to come around on the recommendation of their rabbis, who are, in the performance of their duty and calling, choosing science over unnecessary death.
There simply is no religious reason to avoid vaccination.
• I’m waiting to see if it works (or if it’s safe): That might have sounded like a reasonable excuse to a few people a year ago. Nowadays, it’s the phrase that’s uttered into the speaker to gain entrance to the Dumbasses’ Secret Clubhouse.
Hundreds of millions of people have gotten the first shot and the second shot and the booster shot. The percentage of people who have had adverse reactions is a decimal point followed by a whole bunch of zeroes and then a single digit. Meanwhile, the best guess is that millions of lives have been saved by the miraculous vaccines. And perhaps hundreds of thousands more could have been saved were it now for the confluence of the three M’s—MAGA, misinformation, and morons.
There is no way that somebody can use that lame excuse anymore.
• I’m doing some more research: Unless you have a multi-million dollar lab staffed by brilliant scientists and doctors and a pool of thousands of unvaccinated people who are all of a sudden willing to get vaccinated for science, you’re not doing research. What you are doing is going on the internet, looking for the latest blurt of false information that you hope will somehow bolster the indefensible position that you have already staked out.
That’s not research. That’s you going online to look at something other than porn…for once.
• I had it, it sucked, but now I have natural immunity: Well, maybe you do, maybe you don’t.
It would be great if natural immunity were really a thing, but for most people, it’s at best just sort of a thing. According to science (which, apparently, has been banned from Fox News and right-wing talk radio), almost 40% of all COVID-19 cases produce zero productive antibodies. So, for more than a third of all the people who get COVID (and don’t die), all they have to show for it is some really bad memories and maybe some scarred lungs.
For those who do get some immunity out of the ordeal, that immunity fades faster than the immunity they would have received from a vaccination. Finally, if they have some natural immunity, getting a vaccination on top of that more than doubles the protection against the virus.
• I’m standing up for my individual rights. I’m a patriot: No, you’re not. You’re a selfish little B-word. You and your fellow travelers are the reason why we will soon be going into our third year of this nightmare. We could have put it all behind us with a concerted, unified national effort.
But no…
This article appears in Jan 6, 2022.
I have noted that as we enter another year with a perfect storm of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, economic uncertainty and political machinations, people’s GAS (give-a-sh@t) meters are running on empty.
I saw a guy smoking a cigarette at the propane exchange the other day who looked at me with that “what?” expression we’ve all probably seen lately from people not wearing masks inside establishments that require mask wearing, or my favorite, the people wearing masks under their noses or around their necks like a gaiter.
Anyone who has lived in Tucson for awhile knows how bad our red light runners are, but lately, I’ve started to take my time venturing into the intersection because the red light runners are on the rise like the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19. This also goes for those who roll into an intersection trying to make a turn and forcing you to slow down or yield to avoid hitting them.
Pedestrians also seem to be stepping out into the street a lot more, secure in the knowledge that they have the “right-of-way”, which, by the way, makes a terrible epitaph.
Not a lot of “please” or “thank you” going around either, whether it is doing business or just a casual contact with another human being putting themselves at risk by leaving the relative safety of their home.
Apparently, gun sales are brisk during these troubling times, which I completely understand, but the incidents of accidental shootings and deaths by gun owners seems to indicate that perhaps getting a good watch dog from the humane society would be a safer bet if you are not going to take the time an effort to learn how to handle firearms properly.
Fear has always been a good motivator, whether it is used by advertisers, parents, peers, or politicians, and during this time there are no shortages of fear-mongering, especially from the media as they hype each and every development as a crisis. It occurred to me that if the media doesn’t like to be called “fake” perhaps they could just report the facts and leave all the so-called analysis and opinions for the readers or viewers and stop telling us what to think after they tell us what they think we need to know.
Perhaps instead of a vaccination card, those that refuse to get vaccinated (as opposed to those who cannot) should carry a card that identifies them as an anti-vaxxer and works kind of like a DNR (do not resuscitate) order and allows healthcare providers to just find a spot to let them wait out the end — perhaps in a parking lot next to the propane exchange?
There are a million reasons that many may not be aware of. Here is one:
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210812/german-nurse-suspected-giving-saline-instead-of-covid-vaccine
When that one in a million is your family member you would look quite differently at issues. Thirteen year old Brazilian girl died Monday after receiving vaccine and going into a fatal reaction.
Tom, thanks for putting in words, the Consciousness I exist under, every day. It’s simple nature(I garden). She hates a void, and will ONLY be stopped when you sterilize the environment(US). Very simple, I know, but, that is what drives me nuts, about the Whole thing. It could have been much easier, if the Nation was not lead by a LIAR, the source of most ills in the last 2 years.
The liar has only been President for one year.
At this point, best-case scenario is that the vaccines prevent the pro-plague idiots from taking too many people with them to their painful, pointless deaths.
The unvaccinated will continue to die and to fill up the hospitals. Adios. Selfishness and foolishness hurts others – but the selfish and fools don’t care. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are safe and effective, despite anti-vaxxers pulling fake stats and anecdotes out of their unvaccinated sphincters.
One month ago, I was a victim of a flash bang explosion that burned my face and hands. As I was taken to Banner in an ambulance and in spite of the nearly intolerable pain, I was aware that unvaccinated sociopaths were taking up 30% of the hospital and wondered if I was going to get the treatment I needed or if I was going to be held in the ambulance, until I could get into the trauma/emergency room. What I experienced for the next 3 days in the hospital was almost as traumatic as the accident. My nurse hoped her supervisor wouldn’t ruin her day by sending her to work in the COVID ward. It is really that bad. So to you unvaccinated morons…you are public enemy #1, not just stupid but permanently mentally ill. I want you gone. Off this planet, in a place where you can no longer murder other humans.
There is growing concern that our health care system is collapsing. Doctors and nurses are quitting…we should demand that hospitals no longer accept the unvaccinated.
I’m hoping these comments were all created by a delusional and retarded Racheal Maddow bot.
To those who post anecdotal “research” about the danger of Covid vaccines, I say this: you drive on streets and highways and you fly on airliners, despite the fact that there is a small risk that you could be injured or killed as a consequence. And yet, you whine about 1 person dying among millions who have been vaccinated. Our health care system in southern AZ is being overloaded by unvaccinated fools. If your illness and deaths only affected you, I would shrug and say “vaya con dios.” But it doesn’t. Your narcissistic Lemming-like foolishness impacts all of us.
The funny thing about “oped”s is that they don’t represent any majority anymore than Tom Dahooey does. I work in a hospital ER and sure we are seeing a lot of cases right now – even by those vaccinated. And we are taking everyone from all walks of life, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, young and old, conservatives and given the reaking of pot and meth odor of a few – even quite a few liberals- and some of those think pot is a better cure than vaccination thanks to liberal media and the great State of Oregon . We see it all in the ER. Another thing is that people coming in might test with Covid but they aren’t coming in BECAUSE of Covid and aren’t even symptomatic. It’s car accidents, heart attacks, stabbings and gun shots – which ironically you only hear of a minutiae compared to what’s really going on in Tucson – home accidents, strokes and drug overdoses which are rising more than our Covid inpatients some days. So before you listen to someone like Daphony, go to a hospital, ask questions but ask the right questions. There are plenty of people who will give you the low down and you’d be surprised that those not getting vaccinated come from ALL walks of life and each have their own reasoning some not legitimate and some simply can’t because the risk is to great given health conditions. It’s easy to sit back and let someone else do the judging and agreeing like a little literary mob, it’s a whole other thing to get a brain of you own and stop being scared self-righteous a—h—es who come off sounding worse than those not getting the vaccine.
“It’s been a year since the vaccines became available…” Thank you President Trump.
“… a year that could have been one of America’s finest hours, one in which a divided country could have come together to stamp out a deadly virus.” Thank you pretend President O’Biden.
When you are admitted to a hospital you may be treated by an unvaccinated nurse that was hired back because….it isn’t that big of a risk?
Rhona V Iris, you sound more like a MAGA QAnon nut than an ER nurse. No one said that anti Vaxers ONLY come from one political side.
But they mostly do…
You mention “liberals” who think
Pot can cure it.. but you neglect to mention the right wing nuts who claim ivermectin can cure it.
That and your name calling give you away.
It is time for “Let’s go Brandon” to grow up. His “name” was made up by infants, who think they are cute or funny. How odd it is that most ignorant comments here are made by folks who hate the Weekly while being its most faithful readers. Too much free time and zero education only makes them appear pathetic and desperate for attention. They spend all of their spare time anxiously waiting for the next issue to drop so that they can make some more stupid comments. They are, however, usually amusing and funnier than the AZ Legislature.