Opinion: We're becoming two Americas: One healthy, one deliberately at risk.
For many years, it has been fashionable to point out that there are “two Americas” — one blue, one red; one urban, one rural; one evangelical, one non-religious; one college-educated, one not. However, we risk adding a lethal new point of comparison: one America protected from covid-19 and largely back to normal, and one at continued peril.
Red states’ vaccination rates are lagging behind those of blue states, with predictable results.
“Adjusted for population, nearly six times as many people died in South Dakota from covid-19 as in Vermont (230 per 100,000 in South Dakota compared to just 40 per 100,000 in Vermont). In real numbers, while about 250 Vermont residents died from the disease, more than 2,000 South Dakotans died,” Ashish K. Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, wrote in an op-ed for The Post, offering the states as contrasting examples of how vaccines make the pandemic less dangerous. “And as of today, Vermont has a lower unemployment rate, suggesting that there need not be any trade-off between public health and the economy.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has become the poster boy for blocking mask mandates; denigrating Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — DeSantis’s political action committee sells swag emblazoned with the slogan “Don’t Fauci My Florida” — and anemic vaccination programs.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/19/two-americans-one-healthy-one-deliberately-risk/
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Thank you, Jennifer Rubin, for stating the obvious one more time