Everyone should be masking in public
If you subscribe to the right news services or social media accounts and look through the headlines, you will find out that right now, America and the world are facing a new COVID emergency. The problem, largely based on the “Delta variant,” is bad enough that organizations from the California State University System to the Washington Post are starting to require proof of COVID vaccination for those who show up in person, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) announced Monday that it would mandate coronavirus vaccines for its front-line workers. Likewise, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) just announced that all people, including those fully vaccinated, should wear masks indoors again in areas with “high” or “substantial” COVID transmission.
However, U.S. Republicans, whose anti-vaccine, anti-mask diatribes and protests are largely responsible for the new COVID emergency, don’t want to talk about the new COVID surge (except, cynically, to try to blame President Joe Biden, who has made extraordinary strides and numerous public calls for full vaccination). Rather, Republicans want to distract by cosplaying about immigration, attacking the imaginary “Critical Race Theory,” fretting about trans people and their bathroom use, or just about anything else that is part of their 24/7 Culture War.
Case in point: Florida is Ground Zero for the new COVID emergency, with some 20 percent of all new U.S. cases. But as mentioned above, instead of working around the clock to keep Floridians safe from COVID (and to protect the crucial Florida tourism business from losing all its customers), Florida Governor Ron DeSantis traipsed to the Texas/Mexico border to rail against the GOP’s favorite bogeymen, Latino illegal immigrants. Incredibly, as if to make the point that DeSantis should be focusing on the coronavirus at home, Florida’s Attorney General Ashley Moody, who shared a plane ride to the border with DeSantis for their publicity stunt, tested positive for COVID four days later. Meanwhile, others who live in or visit Florida continue to get sick and die, and more folks are worrying that this fall’s school session will be deadly for children and adults alike.
Why are Republicans distracting us from the coronavirus emergency? Because focusing on COVID points the finger at the GOP for making the pandemic much worse. And why are the Republicans making COVID worse, either deliberately or negligently? They’re not necessarily telling us, but we can guess: First, Republicans want to hurt President Biden and win the 2022 and 2024 elections, and they are willing to kill millions of Americans and damage the U.S. economy to do so (we think that strategy will backfire badly). Second, the Republicans have a very selective view of “freedom” against government action, that typically emerges when Democrats control the White House (now, of course, the Democratic Party also controls both houses of Congress). The GOP cynicism and hypocrisy really comes out when they state versions of “my body, my choice” to protest against vaccinations and mask-wearing, while simultaneously attacking women who use the same expression to defend their own right to abortion.
So what do folks who care about the COVID emergency need to do? We need to drive the COVID story. That means talking about it with friends and relatives, sharing articles and posts on social media, calling into radio shows, writing letters to the editor of one’s local newspaper, or whatever particular forms of publicly sharing ideas that one prefers. The main reason is to protect Americans’ health and get more people vaccinated. But the secondary reason is to go on offense with our agenda items so that they become the topic of discussion and action, instead of focusing on the Republicans’ fake distraction agenda.
Photo by FolsomNatural, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/urnCix
