The U.S. topped 37 million cases of COVID-19 several days ago, and the numbers especially in the southern states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas continue to rise. State after state have announced that they aren’t just out of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds — they are out of hospital beds. Period.
The combination of a virulent Delta variant, the politicization of any common-sense pandemic health safety measures, and significant numbers of the stubborn, scared, or hostile unvaccinated populations has created a perfect global pandemic storm. The U.S. is now regularly chalking up 200,000 COVID cases per day, and moving closer to 1,000 deaths a day.
So far, Colorado appears to have avoided the plunge into the chaos being experienced by these southern states. But it could take only two or three weeks for that to shift.
Medical staffs in the overwhelmed states are close to collapse. Some doctors in those states who are being asked to treat the unvaccinated are expressing little sympathy for adults who have closed their minds to the science, and their hearts to their personal responsibility to help protect their fellow human beings by getting vaccinated and wearing a face mask.
The same people who won’t take one of the three vaccine options who are falling sick in Florida are lining up for experimental treatments including monoclonal antibody treatments. So they won’t take a vaccine that 200 million of us have successfully taken — but they’ll try experimental stuff, including some pretty weird concoctions, that could endanger their lives. This is, in the words of Arkansas’s Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson, “knucklehead stuff.”
Courtesy of CCPH and Chaffee’s Got Heart.
Children under 12 — innocent and vulnerable — are targets of this variant virus. Two weeks ago 94,000 U.S. kids got sick with COVID within the space of a week. Last week it was 121,000 kids. This week it’s up four-fold– in just a week.
In fact, there are more kids hospitalized with COVID right now than at the height of the last pandemic surge. As of this morning, more than 1,200 kids a day are being treated at U.S. hospitals for COVID complications.
All along, the American public has been warned: the life-saving COVID-19 vaccines are not yet approved for our kiddos.
The kids we protect with MMR ( Measles Mumps Rubella) shots, Polio shots, Tetanus shots, flu shots — put them in car seats, pad them up for peewee sports, are completely vulnerable in this pandemic. Those ages 12 to 17 can be vaccinated now, but a large swath of conservative parents are resistant.
It is doubtful anyone in this country truly wants to see this pandemic drag on. Everyone wants their lives back. But the rhetoric of so many state governors and the attacks on local school boards fanning the flames of “freedom” while politicizing just about every aspect of this pandemic are endangering the rest of us. This isn’t just a political failure — it is a moral failure.
Not sure about our readers, but as a fully-vaccinated resident, if I get in a car accident, or have a heart attack, or my husband falls off the roof cleaning the gutters — I want to know there are hospital beds for us.
My four small grandchildren are all under the age of four. If they get sick — I will know it is not their careful and fully vaccinated parents’ fault. It will be the fault of those who think they know best — and really know nothing because they are too busy spewing lies about the pandemic, the prevention and the reasons they have a right to do whatever they want, and “the hell with the rest of us”.
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