Despite warnings from the CDC, the self-genocide campaign in the Repugnican-controlled US states is continuing, as they encourage their gullible victims not to get vaccinated and not to wear face-masks, aided in this endeavour by their wack-a-doodle allies in the Evangelical Christian churches and QAnon conspiracy nut jobs.
Having early-on bought into the panicky, knee-jerk response from the acutely narcissistic Donald Trump when, lacking the intellect to grasp the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, and the prtsonal integrity to admit he was out of his depth, he responded by minimising it, blaming it on 'liberals', pretending to be more expert than the experts, and claiming his do-nothing policy was the best one, resistance to any measures to mitigate the pandemic became, for the extreme right, a token of disloyalty to Trump and the right-wing cause in general.
This is now levying a heavy toll on the Repugnicans because they have stupidly created a process where their supporters are victims of a self-inflicted genocide, and from which they can only extract themselves by a politically-damaging climb-down and an abrupt volte-face, admitting they were wrong and so are responsible for the thousands of avoidable infections and deaths in the areas under their control.
According to this Newsweek article, citing the CDC, nearly 40% of all new cases in the USA are from just three states: Florida, Georgia and Louisiana. The latter two states have vaccinated just 38% of their adult population, compared to the US national rate of 49%. Even this is low by the standard of most developed economies. UK is at 88.8% with at least one vaccination and 73.8% fully vaccinated, for example. Most states in New England are at 60%. Estimates vary but most put the figure at between 75% and 90% to achieve effective herd immunity to the coronavirus.
In Florida, governor Ron DeSantis (Repugnican) is blocking attempts to make face masks mandatory in schools, while his state is accounting for 20% of all new COVID-19 cases in the USA and Floridian hospitals have 12,500 COVID-19 patients, seven time the figure for last June and ten times the figure two months ago. These record figures are higher than before vaccines were available, almost certainly due to the increased virulence of the δ variant now quickly becoming the dominant form of the virus.
Incredibly, DeSantis is threatening school district and local governments who make face masks compulsory with financial penalties! He has declared, contrary to the available evidence, that face masks inhibit breathing and so inhibit learning, and that the spike in cases is 'seasonal'.
Meanwhile Louisiana is setting new records with 30,000 new cases in the past week and an increase of 103 hospitalised patients in a single day. Louisiana has the highest per capita rate of daily new cases in America.
Warner Thomas, CEO of the 70 hospital Ochsner Health system, reported a 73% increase in new hospital cases in the last week, 90% of whom were unvaccinated.
A couple of charts from Associated Press show the success of the GOP campaign:
Amazingly, despite evidence such as this, the GOP, after 4 years of Donald Trump, is still seen as a serious political party that the American people can trust to put their voters' interests first, above their own political careers and pandering to minority, self-interested, extreme right groups such as the Talibangelical Christians, insurrectionist white supremacists and Trumpanzee cultists, most of whom subscribe to the secretive pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theorists seeking to undermine American democracy for extreme right-wing political ends.
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