Covid: Republicans Ready To Snatch Defeat From The Jaws of Victory
Since President Biden took office on January 20, the U.S. has made significant progress in the fight against the pandemic. Currently, the U.S. response to Covid-19 is the envy of the world.
When President Biden was inaugurated, America was seeing over 185,000 new COVID-19 cases per day. Now, it’s less than 11,000. When Trump left office, an average of over 3,000 Americans were dying from COVID-19 per day. Currently, that average is less than 300.
When President Biden was sworn in as president on January 20, more than 117,000 Americans were being hospitalized from COVID-19 per day. At the present time, it’s less than 2,000.
Remember when the GOP complained that not enough children were attending class in person? You don’t hear about that anymore since the number of children attending school has gone up from 41% on January 20 to 70% at the present time.
This amazing progress on fighting the pandemic is not a coincidence or serendipity since 300 million COVID-19 vaccine shots have been administered since President Biden took office. The American Rescue Plan contained funding for the ramped up production and distribution of vaccines. (Every Republican voted against it.) Moreover, the Trump Administration didn’t have a plan to distribute the vaccines.
All of this progress has now been put in jeopardy by the refusal of millions of Republicans to get vaccinated. According to a recent Monmouth poll, approximately 20% of Americans say they will not get vaccinated. Unfortunately, there is a partisan divide on the issue. Among the vaccine resistant, 69% align with the Republican Party while just 13% either identify or lean toward the Democrats.
Dave Leonhardt of the NY Times had an illuminating column on how Republicans and Republican leaning areas of the country have low vaccination rates: “Covid remains a serious threat to unvaccinated adults, especially those middle-aged or older. And now the surprising trends from the spring may be coming to an end: Cases have begun to rise more rapidly in communities with lower vaccination rates…Missouri offers the clearest example. Over the past week, it has reported more new Covid cases per capita than any other state, and they are concentrated in rural areas that have low vaccination rates… In the parts of the state with high vaccination rates — like the metro areas of Kansas City, St. Louis and Columbia — the number of new cases remains very low.
The places with the lowest vaccination rates tend to be heavily Republican. In an average U.S. county that voted for Donald Trump, only 34 percent of people are fully vaccinated, according to New York Times data. In an average county that voted for Joe Biden, the share is 45 percent (and the share that has received at least one shot is higher).
No wonder, then, that the number of new cases keeps falling in Biden counties, while it has begun to rise in Trump counties.”
Henry Cordes of the Omaha World Herald made similar findings in a recent article: “Vaccination rates in rural Nebraska badly lag those in urban parts of the state. In fact, Nebraska’s rural rates are among the lowest in the region, according to a World-Herald analysis of county vaccination data.
Roughly 40% of Nebraska adults living in rural areas are fully vaccinated, compared with more than 60% of those living in the state’s metro areas.
The survey also found higher reluctance based on political affiliation. Thirteen percent of those identifying as Republicans said they did not intend to get vaccinated, compared with just 2% of Democrats.
We did find a big difference between Republicans and Democrats.”
One has to ask, what would account for this stark difference? The sad reality is that the right wing media and some elected Republican officials are pushing out false anti-vaccine narratives. The likes of U.S. Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul have cast doubt on the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines. What’s more, they both have refused to get vaccinated.
We’ve seen similar harmful disinformation from the right wing media. I’ve personally heard Rush Limbaugh’s successors on his highly rated show discouraging their listeners from getting vaccinated. Moreover, Fox’s most highly rated prime time entertainer — Tucker Carlson — has been doing the same thing. I wonder if these highly compensated entertainers have been vaccinated? They won’t tell us.
Closer to home, Pete Ricketts has been touring the state lying about President Biden’s policies with a 2024 presidential run in mind. Instead of touring the state to lie about President Biden’s policies, Pete Ricketts should be traveling and encouraging vaccinations instead. After all, those are his supporters.
“We could be crushing COVID-19 completely. We have the technology. The main thing stopping us is vaccine skepticism, primarily among conservatives, which conservative politicians and conservative media refuse to do anything about. The contempt they’re showing for their own constituents is almost beyond belief.” Progressive blogger Kevin Drum.
It is a shame with our known US Medical science, that not every politician, in all 50 states, is speaking out to emphatically encourage all our citizens to be COVID-19 vaccinated at this time.
President Biden has set the goal of having 70% of adults to get at least one vaccine shot by July 4. Currently, 64% of adults in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine dose. We’re on pace for around 67% of adults to get at least one jab by July 4.
I fully expect the Republicans and their willing accomplices in the right wing media to attack Biden for failing to reach this goal. The reality is that we’re going to fall short due to anti-vaxxer views mainly among Republicans.
The D.C. Republicans have opposed this progress because they want Biden to fail. They see the failure of the country as their path back to power. The D.C. Republicans did the same thing during the Clinton and Obama presidencies. As Mitch McConnell candidly said: “100% of my focus is standing up to this administration. What we have is total unity, from Collins to Cruz, in opposition to what the new administration is trying to do to this country.”
Already, the D.C. Republicans are scheming to shutdown the government again and default on the national debt in an attempt to bully President Biden into cutting Social Security and Medicare. We need to make that kind of GOP extremism the centerpiece of the 2022 campaign.
The Democrats are the party of the people, prosperity, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA. We must never let the voters forget that.
The Republicans are the party of the rich, sabotage, mass unemployment, mass illness, mass death and violence.
The Republicans will always be the party of Donald Trump. We must never let the voters forget that. History matters. Now let’s get it done! We can do it!