So, I try not to curse on this blog much. But I'm very frustrated with this. This should not be an issue. Vaccines should be noncontroversial among most of the country. But, due to recent events with COVID, and the republicans exploiting reasonable steps at managing a deadly disease as "big government tyranny", apparently here we are.
Look, the vaccine is safe, and it saves lives. I got it myself. I had some nasty side effects where I was sick for a day, but guess what? That's because it was making my immune system do something, that's how that works. And now, Moderna, the vaccine I took, is looking to be one of the better ones, because it created such a drastic immune response in the first place. That's what vaccines do. Expose you to a weakened version of the virus, or in the case of MRNA vaccines, a protein that mimics the virus's proteins. This causes your immune system to go, "oh, well, that's not right, let's kill that", and because moderna in particular gives you such a huge load of MRNA, it can create a stronger immune response. But that response...leads to more protection against the real thing.
That's how diseases work, that's how the immune system works, this should be something we all learned in high school. And I went to a fundamentalist christian school for high school and even I learned about this stuff (fundie school isnt bad outside of evolution, really), so you guys have no excuse. Why are people so hesitant to get the vaccine? They scream about microchips, which is ridiculous, but even worse, dude, you carry a smartphone around everywhere you go, they're already tracking you! And ironically, while claiming the vaccines are poison, they'll jump on fake cures that arent even intended for this disease like hydroxychloroquine and now ivermectin. Why?! These drugs arent even designed to deal with covid.
Seriously people, use some common sense. This isn't that hard. Anyone with a basic high school education should be more than qualified to know what's what here. I genuinely don't understand how people can be this freaking dumb. More brainwashed, but yeah, same effect.
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Speaking of which, it might be a good idea to lay out a brief timeline for how we got here. So, we all know conservatives, trumpers, they're in their own little world. At the start of the pandemic, Trump downplayed the virus, and knowing that emphasizing it would cause a panic and disrupt the economy, Trump wanted to do the bare minimum to address it, and he did even less than that.
As the pandemic spread, there were two philosophies for how to deal with this. We could either shut stuff down, to stop the spread of the virus and limit its spread, or we could just pretend like nothing was happening. Democrats, being not total psychopaths, opted to shut stuff down. But republicans didn't. Why? I'll tell you why. it comes down to money.
Republicans' big ticket to reelection in 2020 was the economy. Trump had a so called "strong" economy up to this point. Really, it was just a continuation of the lukewarm Obama recovery, but Trump was in charge so he spun it as a wonderful thing, and his party went along with it. He gave them mild tax breaks and everything.
But, COVID threatened to unravel that. if Trump was honest about COVID, it would have caused a panic in the stock market. For someone like Trump, who lives or dies by the economy, that's a bad thing. Shutting down businesses would contract GDP, and cause unprecedented unemployment levels.
It gets even worse, you know how I am with my ideology, where I'm like "gee the solution is to give people money?", okay, say youre a republican. You dont believe in government intervention in the economy. How do you keep America afloat while addressing the virus if you dont do anything? And the answer is, you don't. If you shut everything down to deal with the virus, you sign America's death warrant. Millions would be unemployed. They can't make rent, they can't pay for food, they can't pay for anything. And they have no way to make a living. Shutting down the economy REQUIRES some form of liberalism at the very least. You need to expand unemployment, give people checks. I thought it would've been the perfect time to try a UBI, but obviously the dems suck at political instincts with that, and given the political cycle by the time it took off, Biden was just wrapping up the primary as the moderate, do nothing candidate. So not wanting to upset his constituents, the dems did nothing.
So during 2020, the response to the pandemic from the government was underwhelming, in part because of Trump, but in part because we have feckless dems who barely fight for anything anyway as they try to compromise with the right. So the dem policy ended up being a combination of shut downs to keep people safe, while doing the bare minimum if that to keep people afloat.
Republicans and dems tried to compromise, largely didn't, and yeah. Trump did end up shifting left to do a couple things, but they were wholly inadequate. Now we get to Trump losing.
Trump lost in part because of COVID, his mismanagement, IMO, cost him the election. In downplaying the virus, and insisting everything was fine, he got a lot of people killed, and just enough people wised up to propel Biden to victory. Still, Trump came off a lot stronger than he really should have, showing support for his sociopathic "lets open up everything and pretend everything is fine" strategy. Given the political spectum between "lets close everything down and then not do anything" and "lets get people back to work and if you die you die", I cant blame some for voting for the conservative, but that's kind of the problem with liberalism a la Biden. It just ends up being this unattractive worst of both worlds.
But, enough sane people caused Biden to win. ANd now he's rolling out the vaccines, and while I cant agree on his specific actions toward covid (honestly he shouldve done a lot more, but hey hes the moderate status quo candidate, he aint gonna do much), and now the trumpers...are questioning the vaccines.
Okay, you guys wanna go back to normal right? You wanna go back to work? GET THE VACCINE. if we achieve herd immunity via the vaccine we can go back to normal. And for a while it looked like we were on the trajectory to do so. Through may and june covid started receding and case levels dropped. But now it's getting bad again. Especially down south. Where people are unvaccinated. GET THE FREAKING VACCINE, PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU.
These guys are just so entrenched in trump's denial of the problem they wont wear masks, they wont take vaccines, and they think the very idea of the government mandating such things is tyranny. YOU MOTHER####ERS, WE'RE TRYING TO HELP YOU!
We shouldn't be having this conversation in 2021. We shouldnt be debating vaccines and masks. I can almost, kind of, respect the idea that you wanna go back to work and go back to normal, even at the cost of anyone vulnerable. Okay, respect is a strong word, but I said almost. Taking my own feelings for how disgustingly sociopathic that is, I at least understand the argument. But being so anti reasonable covid measures you wont even take precautions is just, stupid.
These guys would take the kool aid if Jim Jones told them to, I swear. That's how stupid these Trumpers are. Heck, let's be honest, given the hydroychloroquine and ivermectin debables, let's be honest, im pretty sure some morons literally would inject themselves with bleach of their fuhrer told them to. If only he would ask them to get the ####ing vaccine.
But yeah, after ripping this, I just felt like it was necessary for me to take a stab to explain how we got to this point, and that's basically it. Trump didn't want to hit the pause button on the economy so he denied the problem existed and doubled down in discouraging mask use and weird fake alternative treatments. And now his supporters want to deny the virus is a problem to the point they won't take simple measures to protect themselves from it. Which puts us all at risk. Thanks America, y'all are dumb.
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