Collateral damage

The anti-vaxxism that has become the dominant sentiment among Republican elites in various forms does not just pose risks for people for those who refuse the vaccines:

In chronic pain, Mary O’Donnell can’t get around much. At most, she manages to walk for a short time in her kitchen or garden before she has to sit down. “It’s just frustrating at this point,” said Ms. O’Donnell, 80, who lives in Aloha, Ore. “I’m really depressed.”

She had been preparing for back surgery scheduled for Aug. 31, hoping the five-hour procedure would allow her to be more active. But a day before the operation, at OHSU Health Hillsboro Medical Center, she learned it had been canceled.

“Nope, you can’t come, our hospital is filling up,” she said she was told.

Faced with a surge of Covid-19 hospitalizations in Oregon, the hospital has not yet rescheduled her surgery. “I don’t know what is going to happen,” Ms. O’Donnell said, worrying that her ability to walk might be permanently impaired if she is forced to wait too long.

The idea that taking the vaccines should be purely a matter of personal consumer choice is absolutely the dumbest shit ever, which means there is one place on the internet where it must be treated with the utmost Seriousity:

Minimum mileage requirements: helpful environmental measure or first step toward human sacrifice? A three-time doubles tennis champion, the red-ribbon-winning Leghorn chicken from the Maryland State Fair, a literal ambulatory Exxon gas pump, and others weigh in pic.twitter.com/ahpuPMs6om— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) September 22, 2021

I’m not saying that Greenwald’s analogy of vaccine mandates — an utterly banal policy that goes back literally before the founding — to the War on Terror is the very dumbest anti-anti-anti-vaxx argument I’ve heard yet, but I don’t know how else to finish that sentence.