Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

[usaf-vet]

Sat 7 Aug 2021

Some of the most powerful conservatives in the United States have, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, chosen to sow disinformation along with mockery and distrust of proven methods of combating the disease, from masks to vaccines to social distancing. Their actions have afflicted the nation as a whole with more disease and death and economic crisis than good leadership aligned with science might have, and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of well-documented deaths and a new surge, they continue. Their malice has become so normal that its real nature is rarely addressed. Call it biological warfare by propaganda.

But just as the right to brandish guns is defended in the face of those gun deaths, so the right to contract and spread a sometimes lethal and often debilitating disease is defended as the antithesis of the responsibility not to do so. It’s safe to assume that the Republican leadership knows better, and that some of their followers do and some don’t. Some have chosen to engage in biological warfare; some are merely tools being used in that warfare.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/07/republicans-treated-covid-like-bioweapon-turned-against-them?

[dchill]

1. And what are the benefits of attempting to kill off your own base?

[usaf-vet]

5. As the article pointed out they thought it would damage the Democrats but the Blue states have.....

..... managed the pandemic with masks and vaccinations. The red states keep telling the followers (see Fox News and Tucker Carlson) no need for masks and vaccination the whole thing is a HOAX.

I bet every one of the Fox talking heads has had their vaccinations.

Look at the maps showing where the hot spots are.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/map

[PortTack]

12. You can't enter fux snooz bldg without proof of vaccination...they've all had the jab

[WarGamer]

26. Interesting

[Warpy]

10. They thought Jebus would save them and that they were too young/healthy/rich/godly

to catch it because they didn't associate with those nasty libruls and foreigners. They really thought they were exempt.

Surprise.

In the beginning, Covid was killing off the old and ill. Now there are alarming statistics out of LA that are giving average ages of the dead variously as 37, 42, and 46. It also doesn't discriminate along party lines, it's killing the GQP base right along with the apolitical or nonreligious. The only common denominator is not getting the vaccine for whatever reason. Sadly, one major reason is being under the age of 12. They can't get the vacciine.

So if any DUers haven't gotten the vaccine, time's up. Make an effort to get it this week.

[catrose]

17. That's why I was so impressed with the Navajo. Their Covid motto was "Protect our elders."

As opposed to the Texas Lt Gov calling for the olds to die for the Dow.

[Warpy]

22. Well, it got real for them really fast

because of their infrastructure problems and social structure. Thank goodness Doctors Without Borders were willing to work within those problems instead of trying to fix things that didn't need fixing, while pointing out the infrastructure problems that did need fixing to the BIA and the media. Maybe some of them will actually be fixed.

It hit them harder than it hit people off the rez. They did a wonderful job at containing and controlling it.

I don't think Abbot and De Satan and Noem and the rest of the heartless assholes were thinking of the Dow as much as they were thinking of tourist and convention dollars while their masters were thinking of cleaning a lot of useless old people off the Medicaid rolls in nursing homes. It worked out that way in the very beginning but it's not working that way now. Unfortunately, cupdity is still triumphing over common sense and nobody seems motivated to deal with reality on any level.

[SergeStorms]

18. Not to mention, it was an urban disease...

all the infected and dying people were from those liberal big cities, not the god-fearing, conservative suburbs and boot-scootin' country farmlands.

Guess what? Those big city liberals - for the most part - got vaccinated ASAP. The suburban and rural conservatives didn't, because the disease would never reach them, right?

Then along came the delta variant. It spread so far and so fast, and the viral loads were up to 1000X that of the alpha COVID-19 virus, it did reach into suburban and rural areas.

Funny thing about viruses (haha), they're ever changing, because they want to take over and infect everyone. Sort of like republicans.

[localroger]

21. This was kind of the middle phase of the denial strategy

At first, it was just TFG holding his fingers in his ears and shouting LALALA I don't think it's real, doing nothing and sabotaging the efforts of anyone who tried to do any of the things themselves that he might have done but wasn't doing. Then when that strategy failed and it became clear the disease was real and deadly on a devastating scale, they noticed that it was mostly affecting places like New York and New Orleans, which are Democratic. So letting those people die was a net positive and the do-nothing policies continued. But then the vaccines appeared, those blue people flocked to get them, and the new Delta variant was virulent enough to spread rapidly even in the more thinly populated rural areas.

But the Republicans did their propaganda job too well and now it's their own people who are refusing treatment that they turn out to need while the blue city dwellers have all vaxxed up and are wearing masks to protect ourselves. The Republican poobahs let over half a million people die so far to pursue an agenda that is now shooting them in the foot.

[WarGamer]

27. Actually according to the CDC the hardest hit communties are communities of color in rural regions

[NullTuples]

19. Sucks to find out "good genes" aren't enough, after all...

And by "good genes" Both and then they mean white, christian, english speaking Republican genes, except I'm using it mockingly.

[orwell]

14. I believe it is a planned strategy...

...to keep the QAnon and MAGAt wings in line.

The number of far right voters is shrinking so rapidly that even with gerrymandering, court stacking, and the right wing propaganda media saturation, they need the whacky fringe to survive.

Some of these people never voted before Trump. We'll call them the Sturgis/Duck Dynasty wing. They now come out in force, flying their Gadsden flags and Trump 2020/24 banners. These are the same whack jobs that attempted the coup. What they lose in numbers they make up in passion.

This is the sign that the Cons are desperate to turn back the reality of their demise demographically.

Authoritarianism is the final tactic of the desperate failure to provide real solutions to real problems that affect everyone and everything on the planet. In the end, bullshit walks. Reality wins. All the propaganda in the world can't change it.

Witness this truism in the current pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Darwin was right.

[NCDem47]

2. They're just taking orders from Putin.

Lord knows what he's doing in his country to kill off the undesireables.

[SergeStorms]

20. No kidding.

The model for the right-wing insurectionists didn't come from the minds of republicans, it came from the Kremlin.

All those one-on-one meetings between MF45 and Putin weren't about golf tips.

[Claire Oh Nette]

3. This...

Once the media reported, in April, 2020, I think, that Black and Latinos were twice+ as likely to be hospitalized, die from COVID, the push to open up began. Kushner was convinced COVID was an Urban democratic city problem, since COVID was in Seattle, Los Angeles and SF, and New York and Chicago and Detroit. Major metropolises with international airports.

They really believed that a virus cared about political parties, and TFG planned to do nothing and let Black and Brown people die. If some old white folks who lived in big cities died, too, so be it, since they were likely democrats. Like those who see the world in terms of good and evil, or black and white, or any other false dilemma dichotomy, they ignored shades of gray, and they were wrong.

Chris Hayes laid out the effect today of systemic racism in health care. TFG's administration actively encouraged more systemic racism by ignoring COVID.

I'd feel bad about all the white republicans dying off, except what goes around comes around, and Karma has a way of leveling the playing field.

While not all vaccine rejecters are GOP, the bulk of them are--so called conservatives who are really just middle aged white guys who go to church for the social aspect, who inherited or took over their dad's businesses, and have benefitted from white privilege their whole lives all while denying their racist tendencies.

We see you. We've always seen you. You are who we thought you were, but worse.

They wanted COVID to kill off the Other, and now it's laying them low. Turn about is fair play.

Meanwhile, mask up and go back to curbside.

[Dream Girl]

6. Yep. The moment I heard that it disproportionately kille$ black and Hispanics, I knew it would be

A-OK with them and they would be more than happy to let us die. In far, I believe that is behind the “Natural Herd” immunity. Another way of saying kill off the undesirables.problem is black, Hispanics and poor whites have similar health profiles, particularly in the South. Same comoribidities like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, asthma…make a tad less COPD. I would be willing to bet the bullet eye of 45’s base is just as likely to die from Covid as POC. It hit the cities first which created that narrative. It took longer to hit the base and with Delta, it’s hitting them hard now.

[calimary]

9. I don't feel bad about it.

There’s a wee bit of guilt in there, but not much.

Hey, I was raised Catholic. We ate guilt for breakfast.

[gulliver]

4. Yep, a bunch of the Trumpie base were undoubtedly Ok with it disproportionately affecting POCs...

...and city folks. Once we get those folks all completely covered by vaccination a bunch of Republicans will no longer see keeping COVID circulating as a good way to dish out harm to people they want to harm.

Hopefully, "deeply troubled Trumpies" are starting to see that their COVID bioweapon is backfiring. They can nurture the virus and help it grow and evolve (using their own bodies as its food), but they're only hurting themselves. The people they hate are beating them by getting the vaccine.

[bucolic_frolic]

7. April 2020 they believed they didn't have to do anything about it because it was in blue states only

The entitlement, hubris, arrogance is blinding

[IronLionZion]

8. You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbors

and you can't be spreading around a disease expecting it to only hurt people you don't like, especially when liberals have been following the official guidance on masks and social distance and vaccines. Liberals are not the ones being owned here.

[bronxiteforever]

11. Kick and recommend.

[Irish_Dem]

13. The GOP weaponized public health in their war against America.

They don't care about civilian casualties. They will kill as many Americans as it takes to gain power and wealth.

[KS Toronado]

15. The words "biological warfare"

with a picture of a mask might make good T-shirts or bumper stickers.
Maybe with a circle & slash line over the mask?

[gordianot]

16. In terms of WMD it seems that poison gas and nuclear weapons scare everyone.

From the outset bio weapons have not been tried on a mass scale they are too unpredictable. I agree what Republicans have done is try first to use the Pandemic as a political weapon. To date that has not gone well. Case in point the climate catastrophe promises similar results.

[traitorsgalore]

24. Yep, germ warfare purposely waged against their fellow Americans

Carl Bernstein suggested that Trump be charged with war crimes for exactly that.