Posted by:
anybody
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Date: July 30, 2021 12:31AM
You probably have heard the famous quote "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad."
The ability of humans to deny reality in the face of overwhelming evidence is one of the most perplexing things I've ever encountered. You expect this in cults -- especially after months and/or years of mental conditioning and programming -- so I suppose it is the same with the deniers. Conditioning over years and years of propaganda and ideology to hate and/or deny anything that goes against anything they don't believe in or agree with. Kept in a constant state of agitation and fear.
Imagining all manner of non-existent threats and plots from all directions. Programmed to avoid and distrust any source of information they are told to avoid.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Only in this case, the price of hubris is death.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/29/alabama-hospitals-delta-variant-vaccine-resistance/Michael Saag is professor of medicine and infectious diseases and virology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
All of us have suffered mightily from the covid pandemic during the past 18 months. Some of us have had the infection. Many more have provided support to a friend or colleague who fought the infection. More than 611,000 Americans have lost their lives to this global plague.
Through the spring and into the early summer, owing in large part to large-scale vaccine production and distribution, every American age 12 and over had access to the vaccine. Many received their “jab” as soon as it was available. As a result, the number of covid cases plummeted, the grip on our hospital systems relaxed, death rates fell and we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
But in many regions of the country, including the Southeast where I live, up to two-thirds of the population chose not to protect themselves. I’ve heard all the reasons: “The vaccines are experimental.” “I am young and healthy; I don’t need the vaccine.” “So what if I get covid?” “The epidemic is over.” “The vaccine will destroy my fertility.” “The vaccine is a government plot.” “I have the freedom to choose.” “Nobody can tell me what to do.” “The doctors are lying to me.”
Like most of my fellow health-care workers, these comments stunned and stung me. We had spent a year fighting a raging pandemic. We suspended activities in our usual disciplines of medical care, rolled up our sleeves and provided care to the more than 30 million people who showed up in our ERs, clinics and hospitals. Covid was more than disruptive; it was exhausting. Most of us survived. But we were also fatigued and battle-worn.
With the current spike of cases, 99 percent of deaths are occurring in unvaccinated people. Almost all of these are preventable. That is particularly troublesome to health-care workers who struggle valiantly to save the lives of those who now present to the hospital, the vast majority of whom chose not to be vaccinated.
Making it worse is the hate we experience from a small, but very real, group of people who seek to undermine our efforts through the steady release of misinformation in social media and elsewhere. I received an inquiry this week from a person who claimed to be a CNN reporter, initially asking me for information about delta and then demanding “proof” that delta is here. Despite my best effort to explain, I was berated with accusations that I was making this up. (He later posted most of the exchange on Facebook.) I am not alone in suffering these types of attacks. It is this sort of behavior that has led to poor vaccine uptake among many people and resulted in this new spike of cases.