A True Trumpist Is Willing To Die For Their Hero

When "owning the libs" is your best and highest value

COVID-related American death data shows dramatic differences between Republican and Democratic counties, with the reddest tenth of the nation in October chalking up a death rate six times higher than that of the bluest tenth, NPR reported.

That radical divergence for Republican counties has since dropped to a still startling 5.5 times higher, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who has been tracking partisanship pandemic trends.

NPR’s analysis found that since May, when COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, counties that voted in 2020 for Donald Trump by 60% or more have suffered nearly triple the rate of COVID-related deaths, compared with counties that voted for Joe Biden by the same margin.

NPR gleaned the data by examining deaths per 100,000 people in 3,000 counties.

Though demographics varied widely among the counties, NPR determined that the single biggest factor in the dramatic difference was “misinformation” about COVID-19, which was linked to lower vaccination rates. That held up even when controlling for age, which is the “primary demographic risk” for COVID-19 mortality, NPR noted.

The study found that the higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.

P.T. Barnum once famously said (allegedly) that there’s a sucker born every minute. He predated Donald Trump by many generations, of course, but he would’ve been appalled to see just how true humanity proved his adage to be during the Trump Era (2015-present). In this case, though, being a sucker can- and very often does- come with deadly consequences.

When “owning the libs” is your highest and best value amid a global pandemic, being true to your values can cost you your life. To date, almost 800,000 Americans, many of whom are Trump True Believers, have paid the ultimate price. Some Americans died because of unfortunate circumstances, but many died because of arrogance and willful stupidity. Natural selection, thinning the herd, call it what you will. Unfortunately, the result remains the same.

When one looks at the death rates from COVID-19 vis-a-vis blue states and red states, this pandemic's highly charged and needlessly political nature becomes clear. Large numbers of Americans have died needlessly for stupid reasons. The combination of COVID-19 and politics doesn’t determine who’s right or wrong, only who’s left to bury the losers.

Republicans now make up the single largest unvaccinated demographic group in America. And, since being unvaccinated dramatically increases the risk of dying from COVID-19, it doesn’t require a Ph.D. to surmise who’s doing most of the dying these days.

The desperately sad aspect of this story is that it doesn’t need to be this way, especially when you consider that most of those convincing red America to skip the vaccine ARE THEMSELVES FULLY VACCINATED. Those who aren’t themselves at risk are pushing a dangerous worldview to the gullible and easily propagandized.

This isn’t a political question to me. A deadly global pandemic should be apolitical, and ideology shouldn’t be part of the equation. The ONLY thing that should matter is the question of how to save as many lives as possible. Period. Yet there’s an entire class of monsters who’ve either monetized COVID-19 dezinformatziya and/or are using disinformation to promote their own agenda/brand. It’s sick, borderline criminal, and there should be consequences for those who engage in such behavior. Sadly, thousands of Americans have died because they drank the KoolAid.

“An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat,” said Liz Hamel, vice president of survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank.

Polling by the foundation revealed that Republicans are far more likely to believe false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines. All but 6% of Republicans believe that one or more false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines might be true, and 46% believed four or more statements might be true.

Only 14% of Democrats tend to believe four or more false statements about the disease.

According to Hamel, underestimating the severity of the disease appears to be a major reason Republicans aren’t getting vaccinated.

Politics and ideology shouldn’t even be on the radar of Americans when it comes to a time of mass disease and death. The ONLY focus should be on doing whatever it takes to save as many lives as possible. These days, though, everything is political- even living and dying.

The worst aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic, at least for me, is the discovery of how many truly, deeply, profoundly awful people there are in this country. I’m talking about the number of selfish, self-absorbed people who believe they have NO responsibility to help protect the wider community. Indeed, many of them believe the wider community owes THEM. It’s a travesty of logic and arrogance that defies rational explanation. Still, they’re so marinated in selfishness and self-interest that they don’t believe they have a responsibility to anyone but themselves.

It’s difficult for me to think of a colder, more callous, and pathetic worldview than that. To believe that you owe the world nothing but that the world owes you everything requires a degree of arrogance and disdain I can’t begin to comprehend. Yet, I’ve been in parts of the country where this seems to hold true in large numbers of people. When it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine, it’s become a case where propaganda, disinformation, and selfishness rule the day.

And people continue to die because they’d rather believe propaganda and disinformation over empirical, dispassionate science.

FREEDUMB!!

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