They Were Expendable

In an earlier blog post I wrote about the unconscionable use of anti-vaccine policies to bolster the Trumpian credentials of Republican governors such as Abbott and DeSantis, and how their incredibly selfish and narcissistic acts were resulting in increased sickness and death in their states. 

It is now mid-October 2021, and what should have been a summer of relief from COVID and a resumption of somewhat normal life has been torpedoed by an anti-vax movement that has been promoted and led by Trump’s sycophants and the craven politicians who see their future in his wake.

I have examined the deaths that have occurred in ten states that represent a cross-section of blue and red states – states that strongly encouraged or even mandated vaccinations for their citizens and those that squandered their opportunity to protect their citizens by attacking vaccine mandates and making idiotic speeches about freedom.

I have calculated the number of deaths per million people (thus normalizing the numbers so that there is an apple to apple comparison) that have occurred from April 1 to Oct 13.  I chose April 1 because vaccines were really starting to have an impact at that point in states that embraced them.  It was also the time when the delta variant began to play a significant role.

It is also important to note that less than 2% of COVID deaths in this time period were vaccinated people.

These statistics dramatically illustrate the difference in deaths between states that embraced the vaccine and those who made it a political issue.  

There have been over 165,000 deaths since April 1.  The excess deaths in red states where governors and republican legislators have fought the vaccine, as well as the collateral damage in all states of conservatives who died embracing the so-called ‘freedom’ that the death cult has espoused, easily exceed 1/3 of those deaths, or about 55,000. 

I guess if you have Trumpian presidential aspirations or are a brainwashed right-winger who somehow cannot acknowledge any societal obligations, then those 55,000 deaths don’t mean much to you.  Either your own grotesque ambition or some toxic mixture of demented myths and lies has hijacked your humanity.  The dead won’t haunt you, because you have no conscience.  The people who died were just a necessary sacrifice. They were expendable.