There’s a theme that runs through the Bible that communities can and will suffer catastrophe if they tolerate sin or otherwise ignore the word of the Lord. This shouldn’t surprise us. When floods or famines or pandemics occur, there’s a natural human inclination to assign blame. If God is omnipotent, he must have had some reason for allowing this suffering, and if he’s just, then the victims must have had it coming. But some victims are clearly innocent, especially infants, so it must be that God (at least sometimes) administers punishment on a collective rather than individual basis.
Communal guilt therefore is a public safety principle. If your local governing body tolerates heresy or gambling and brothels or singing and dancing, this could displease God and bring down his holy wrath on everyone. If, on the other hand, you burn heretics and sinners at the stake, God will see that you are administering justice on an individual basis and refrain from punishing on a communal basis.
In the 16th Century, John Calvin used this type of reasoning to forbid an Ottoman ambassador from transiting through his territory. Tolerating a Muslim on his turf, even momentarily, could cause natural disasters. Calvin believed he was protecting his community.
There’s a pandemic ripping through Alabama and Louisiana right now, and the hospitals are filling up with COVID-19 patients who refused to get inoculated against the disease. Local health officials and politicians cannot figure out how to convince folks to get vaccinated. There appears to be two reasons for this. The first is the prevalence of disinformation about the vaccine.
Almost every public health official, local vaccine volunteer and physician in Alabama and Louisiana who spoke to POLITICO pointed to social media and the media as the main reason people in their neighborhoods are still holding out on the vaccine.
The second is based more on mood and ideology:
Many people here and elsewhere in the Southeast are turning down Covid-19 vaccines because they are angry that President Donald Trump lost the election and sick of Democrats in Washington thinking they know what’s best.
When these factors are combined, we get a very distinct result. Because the Deep South is more skeptical about the federal government, they are less inclined to believe its experts and follow their advice. They’re more susceptible to contrary information, including through their social networks online. But because there are more Trump voters in the Deep South than elsewhere, there’s also more spiteful resistance to vaccination. They won’t do it simply as an act of defiance, regardless of whether or not they believe the science. What happens is that the pool of unvaccinated people is larger than average, and it is comprised overwhelmingly of Trump supporters and Republicans.
This means that a heavy majority of people in the Deep South who get sick or die from COVID-19 are Republicans. Since this is totally avoidable and self-inflicted, an outsider might say it’s worthy of a Darwin Award.
The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool by dying or becoming sterilized via their own actions.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey seems to agree:
Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey on Thursday called out “the unvaccinated folks” for the rise in Covid-19 cases in her state, a remarkable plea at a time when many GOP leaders are refusing to urge people to get vaccinated even as Covid-19 cases surge in many parts of the country.
“Folks are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” Ivey told reporters in Birmingham.
The assigned culprit here is a lack of “common sense” among the unvaccinated. In this sense, they get what’s coming to them. But it doesn’t end there. The vaccinated community suffers too. There are no spaces in the emergency rooms. Kids under the age of 12 who cannot be vaccinated are put at risk. Breakthrough cases sicken even the inoculated, and new variants could emerge that reduce the protection the vaccines afford.
This is a form of communal punishment. Someone like John Calvin would look at it and say that God is punishing everyone for the sins of a few. The solution is to go after the unvaccinated and proactively punish them. Maybe then God will be well pleased and relent.
But I don’t anticipate that Alabama’s Republican governor will burn Republicans at the stake. I don’t believe she’ll round them up and forcibly inoculate them. She might, however, make some headway by appealing to the broader community’s Old Testament way of thinking.
Why is there suddenly a disease in the land that targets Republicans? Why is God so angry with Republicans? What sins have they committed? What has stripped them of their common sense?
Have they been led astray by the devil?
If this devil worship is tolerated, will God bring his wrath down with even greater force?
The inoculated Republicans in Alabama could start asking these types of questions. They could point out to their unvaccinated cousins that they’re putting a bullseye on the whole community.
It has to work better than making a scientific argument, right? Trump is the devil.
I keep saying this. Word should get out that The Rapture has already happened. They failed in their faith and this is the result.
What’s scary is the rate of spread among the vaccinated. It’s much higher than anticipated and the virus appears to be easily spread by those who have been vaccinated, even if they show no symptoms. Absent this, one could argue the unvaccinated have brought wrath down upon themselves. Unfortunately, as Martin points out, they’re bringing it down upon all of us.
If a vaccinated person gets COVID and has no observable symptoms or bad healthcare outcomes, did COVID make them sick?
Darwin Awards. Darwin Awards everywhere.
Get vaccinated. Get your child vaccinated. At this point there’s essentially hundreds of millions -to- billions of anecdotal pieces of evidence that MRNA vaccines are almost 100% safe for everyone. Big fucking deal if you get the sniffles, body aches, and a fever. It isn’t fucking pneumonia.
Get vaccinated. Let COVID sort ’em out.
I’m just about fucking done. I work in an ED as a RN and have to deal with these relatively young morons getting hospitalized because they’re too fucking stupid to get vaccinated during a worldwide pandemic.
Had a 30+ year old female and 50+ year old male both with COVID yesterday, getting hospitalized because they’re hypoxic and have COVID pneumonia. COVID pneumonia in god damn July 2021 when a vaccine has been available for close to half a year. Of course, neither are vaccinated, and both were just out there spreading COVID like fucking morons for a week or so before coming in.
30+ year old female was busy on her phone and having Law and Order SVU in the background all day, mostly concerned about getting a phone charger so she could stare at her phone. 50+ year old man made a point to say that he had played it safe for months but still got it, and that we really have to beat COVID. Yeah, no shit dude, why didn’t you get the fucking vaccine 4 months ago?
Another year of this and there won’t be any more nurses to take care of people. Bet on that shit. Staff nurses are looking for ways out, and travel nurses are making bank and then will buy their house/car and fund their retirement and get out. I almost feel like a moron for not doing travel nursing the past year and making $150,000+ in that year.
The reason every ED is filled is because every Tele/Med Surge/ICU is short staffed and so we’re just Boarding patients until they get a room, sometimes 2-3 days after being admitted. And, to be clear, the ED is also dangerously understaffed, as in, literally, dangerously understaffed. This is not the time to have any kind of cardiac arrest or massive trauma, as there’s barely going to be enough staff to run the code, so stay safe, eat right, and get healthy.
Seriously, the best way to prepare for the coming collapse is to get heathy. Also, stop screaming about banning guns, it’s an own goal at this point to disarm yourself. Safely own and be able to operate a firearm. I know AR-15s look scary or whatever, but they’re just a piece of metal unless you’re a lunatic or negligent.
/rant
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Great post, Martin. I love to hear an argument I had not heard or considered before and this one is a dandy.
We – Canadians – got off to an awful start in vaccinations because we could not get delivery on the doses we had purchased, but we have more than made up for it. In British Columbia more than 81% of the eligible population (12+) have had at least one shot, and nearly 60% are fully vaccinated.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I thought that it would be a true rest of leadership. There are many things I do not like about Justin Trudeau and even more things about John Horgan (the premier of my province) but I have to say that both men have risen to the challenge.
To date, we have suffered 708 deaths per million while 1,856 Americans per million have died. Unfortunately we can’t expect anything resembling normal as long as our friends to the south can’t stop the fucking bleeding.
Help from anyone – even John Calvin – is welcome.
Just trying to makes folks think, Tom. Not a lot of that going around.
Booman it is obvious that god is angry at Republicans for letting Trump’s election be stolen.
LOL, this won’t work. The Great Orange God or his trinity (FOX, OAN, Newsmax) will condemn the heretic.
As it happened, she tried to split the difference. Instead of bringing up their former God, she appealed to the new God: Trump, of course!
“The good news is we have something that has proved helpful — safe and effective vaccines, which were developed in record time, and we can thank former president Donald Trump and all of those involved in Operation Warp Speed for making this medical miracle happen.
This time last year, people were praying that a vaccine would come to market in time to help slow the surge of deaths and people getting sick. With a lot of hard work, our prayers were answered. In fact, President Trump, who got the shot in January, later called it a “true miracle.”
It still won’t work.
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Trump’s got the answer. Folks are not getting vaccinated because they don’t like or trust the President. Now there’s something original amirite? Dumkoffs should all die.
If the devil could be defeated so easily, he wouldn’t exist.