By SEAN QUINTAL
August 2021: The rock singer who called himself Meat Loaf described to an interviewer his unyielding opposition to public health mandate: “If I die, I die, but I’m not going to be controlled.”
January 20, 2022: Meat Loaf dies. From Covid.
October 2021: Washington State Trooper Robert LaMay retires from the force rather than agree to the Covid vaccine mandated for all public safety workers by the state’s Governor, Jay Insley. In dramatic, self-promoting fashion, LaMay recorded himself on video as he signed off on his police radio for the last time. His parting words: “Jay Inslee can kiss my a**.”
January 28, 2022: Robert LaMay dies at age 51. From Covid.
The above instances are tragic, not just because of the grief and loss for those men’s families, but because those deaths were likely preventable. Both the singer and the state trooper are but two public examples of the current state of political tribalism in this country. Most tribes have symbols or totems to mark allegiance or membership. Often members will swear an oath or allegiance, and perhaps wear some sort of uniform. Sometimes these are physical expressions, like tattoos or adornments on the body. In extreme cases, tribes can become ghoulish and demand sacrifice from their members. Now, in 2022, one of the nation’s two major political tribes has chosen to brand itself as a nihilistic death cult.
Originally, Republican opposition to public health mandates was frequently framed in economic terms; understandably, because lockdowns and restrictions on business took an unmistakable toll on the economy. But thereafter, mask-wearing became a sort of symbol for one’s political identity. Despite the incontrovertible fact that masks protect individuals and reduce the spread of airborne disease, the GOP tribe began to assert that masks were an infringement on freedom. Setting aside the fact that masks protect others, and that decent people are happy to take reasonable steps to protect others in their community, these same “freedom lovers,” do not seem to mind being required to wear shirt and shoes into a restaurant, even though bare feet, unlike infected breath, cannot jeopardize the lives of others.
Then, with the advent of vaccines, opponents of public health measures could no longer offer an economic argument, because it is the vaccines that allow us to return to work and that make it possible for our businesses to function fully. The available data demonstrate that nearly half of this winter’s hospitalizations could have been prevented if the US had vaccination rates similar to the leading European countries. So who’s ruining the economy now?
Once the free vaccines became widely available, the cynical “freedom” arguments took on grave, existential import. There is now is no question that Covid vaccines are stunningly effective, and that they save lives. In December 2021, unvaccinated Americans were 97 times more likely to die of Covid than those who are vaccinated and boosted. Further, through November 2021, the Commonwealth Fund estimated Covid vaccines have saved as many as 1.1 million American lives, and have prevented 10.3 million hospitalizations. Yet tens of millions of Americans refuse to take this simple action.
Consequently, because Republican politicians have now embraced opposition to life-saving medicine as a marker of belonging to their tribe, they must now face the reality that their craven political calculations are literally killing their supporters. In January, US News conducted an analysis of Covid data alongside voting results from the 2020 presidential race. These data reveal that the counties where Trump received the most votes by a large margin have a 52% higher death rate than in the counties where President Biden won by a large margin. And the numbers correlate: the larger Trump’s margin of victory in a county, the greater the disparity in the death rate.
To remain popular in their death-cult tribe, Republican politicians now must resort to performative resistance to sensible public health measures. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, whose state is second only to Mississippi in Covid deaths per 100K residents, refuses to give federal public health money to schools that enact disease prevention efforts, instead providing it only to districts that prohibit public health measures. Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis who has threatened to fire school teachers if they take steps to protect their students from Covid, is so cowardly he now refuses to even declare if he has received a vaccine booster or not. DeSantis calculates that he is politically safer in his tribe to distance himself from, and to profess skepticism of, free life-saving medicine. In doing so, he contributes to the death of those very people whose votes he so cynically covets.
Both Meat Loaf and Robert LaMay were celebrated on Fox News, and other right wing media, for their anti-mask, anti-vax public proclamations. Each lent his voice to a movement that literally asks its adherents to put their lives at risk to prove their allegiance. Now both of those voices are forever silent, prematurely and tragically. And those are but two of the hundreds of thousands American voices we will never hear again, many because of a misplaced devotion to some vague, group identity.
All decent people offer sympathy and comfort to those who have lost loved ones. The current version of the Republican Party, however, ceased being decent long ago. Rather than act to protect Americans, they grotesquely exploit their supporters for money and votes, even as body after body of those same supporters are laid to rest. The Republican Party can call itself by many names, but please let us never allow it to shamelessly refer to itself again as “pro life.”
– Sean Quintal writes on behalf of the La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club.