"In red states, where vaccination rates are low, people are four times more likely to catch COVID-19 and five times more likely to die of it, than people living in blue areas where vaccine rates are higher."
The SARS-CoV-2 δ variant is continuing to take out those covidiots who listened to extremist liars like Robert David Steele, a fully signed up subscriber to the QAnon deep state conspiracy theories and a regular guest on the far right-wing program "Infowars", who has just died of... er... COVID-19.
The death from COVID-19 of the former CIA operative and ex-marine who claimed to be one of the first to 'reveal' that the coronavirus pandemic was a hoax, was confirmed by friends yesterday. He was admitted to hospital in Florida, one of the worst-hit states in the current wave due to low vaccine take-up and opposition to social distancing and mask-wearing by the governor. Even then, he was firmly opposed to the vaccine, although he did appear to reluctantly acknowledge the virus was real. In his last post on his blog on 17 August, he said:
Robert David Steel, receiving treatment for what he claimed was a hoax in a Florida Hospital, currently overwhelmed by similar patients who believed him
With love to all of you, I survived! I went in at 77 oxygenation. I’m up to 94. I will not take the vaccination, though I did test positive for whatever they’re calling “COVID” today, but the bottom line is that my lungs are not functioning.His sadly misplaced optimism was accompanied by a photograph of him being treated for what he had been assuring his followers was all a hoax. Even now his friends in the right wing social media, unable to admit they were wrong, are perpetuating his lies and claiming it was being placed on a ventilator that killed him and that his family had been 'shamed' into agreeing to him being treated.
The good news is that I will survive with a few days off. I should be back up and at least functional soon. This is been a near death experience, very much like a new death experience the whole country is going through right now. We will never be the same because now we know that we’ve all been lied to about everything. But, now we also know that we can trust each other. I’m alive today because I had a network that put me into a good hospital in Florida.
In a nauseating display of the callous indifference that characterises people like Steele who are or were pursuing naked political ambitions regardless of the effects their lies might have on those credulous enough to believe them, Steele's avoidable death is being seized upon as evidence that 'they' are trying to wreck the presidential ambitions of Repugnican Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis has been trying to outlaw the compulsory wearing of face-masks by employers and local governments in the state, himself having bought into the conspiracy theories and former president Trump's, panic-driven dismissal of the developing pandemic as a Democrat hoax and nothing to be concerned about - the Repugnican Party's official response to their bungled handling of the pandemic, to which they are now wedded for fear of the political consequences of admitting they were wrong and tens of thousands of Americans died needlessly as a result.
And now, tens of thousands more are likely to die as a result of the low vaccine take-up in red states where people were also fooled by Repugnican, pro-Trump QAnon conspiracists and their allies in the white supremacist evangelical Christian churches, into believing the vaccines are harmful and/or ineffective and even part of some 'deep state' plot to control people with microchips on behalf of Microsoft founder, Bill Gates!
According to this report in The Independent, Steele is just the latest of several right-wing antivaxxer conspiracy nut to die of COVID-19 very recently.
- Talkshow host, Phil Valentine, died last week. Last December he told his listeners that the chances of him getting COVID-19 were 'pretty low' and the chances of him dying if he did catch it were 'probably way less than one percent. From his brother Mark's comments, it seems Phil Valentine had a sudden conversion to supporting the vaccine. Mark claimed, "I know if he were able to tell you this, he would tell you, 'Go get vaccinated. Quit worrying about the politics. Quit worrying about all the conspiracy theories,'. Alas, too late.
- Right-wing shock jock, Dick Farrel, again from Florida, died on August 4. He had compared the vaccination efforts to Nazi Germany.
- Fellow right-wing shock jock from Florida, Marc Bernier, who had been spreading similar false information and anti-vaccine scare stories, died just over a week ago.
We are saddened to report that our host and friend Phil Valentine has passed away. Please keep the Valentine family in your thoughts and prayers. pic.twitter.com/vhXpE7x0oX
— SuperTalk 99.7 WTN (@997wtn) August 21, 2021
- Meanwhile, in Texas, 30-year-old anti-vaccine activist, Caleb Wallace, died of COVID-19 over last weekend, leaving behind a pregnant wife and three children.
What they won't ever admit is that it is they who are directly responsible for this selective genocide of their own supporters as their campaign of lies and disinformation, which can be traced back to former president Trump's initial reaction and then inept and iresponsible handling of the pandemic, has resulted in a low take-up of the vaccines which could have greatly reduced the chances of becoming seriously sick and prevented the deaths of those unfortunate enough to still catch the virus.
As Skylar Baker-Jordan, writing in The Independent, put it:
@hellips;there is no getting around the Republican elephant in the room. By far the most immediate cause for vaccine hesitancy is conservative talking heads. From Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity to Valentine, Farrel, and Bernier, rightwing media has consistently turned public health into the frontline of their asinine culture war.Their success at misinforming their followers and encouraging them to mistrust those in authority can be gauged from the bizarre spectacle of Donald Trump's own supporters booing him early in August when he encourage a crowd at a rally to get vaccinated, having taken his lead, as always, from Fox News, which, noticing how its viewers were dying of the disease, performed a volte face and began recommending the vaccines, having spent the previous year spreading lies and disinformation about them.
After spending decades propagating a perverted version of rugged individualism which posits that individuals have no collective responsibility and acting selfishly should be rewarded, these pundits capitalized on the pandemic by politicizing every aspect of it. Masks became a sign of weakness and government overreach, and vaccines were viewed with an almost medieval skepticism.
What we are witnessing in the USA at the moment is a huge, accidental experiment, showing the effects of libertarian, right-wing neo-fascism when left to go unchecked. The marked contrast in the public health and welfare of the people and the indifference to their suffering by those who caused it, between red, libertarian, ultra-religious, conservative extremist states, and the liberal, socially responsible blue states, is a stark reminder of why this brand of antisocial, right-wing political extremism should be resisted and consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Just maybe, though the signs are not encouraging, this hugely differential death rate between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, and the deaths of the frauds who sell vaccine scepticiem for political gain, will eventually get through to the addled brains of Trump-supporting Republican voters and their leaders that the vaccines save lives and what minuscule risks they carry are nothing compared to the massive risks from catching the virus with no immunity to it.
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