Selfishness over selfless citizenship will sustain the pandemic and create further mutations
The Covid-19 coronavirus will continue to spread around the nation and mutate so long as there are selfish citizens who continue to disregard public health officials, the medical research community, and the president of the United States. As long as there are individuals who refuse to understand the seriousness of Covid-19 and its various mutations:
• alpha (or B.1.1.7 variant first detected in Britain)
• beta or B.1.351 first appearing in South Africa)
• gamma (P.1 first detected in South Africa)
• delta (the highly contagious variant also known as B.1.671.2 that first appeared in India and which is now sweeping the world)
• iota (or B.1.526 that was first detected in the U.S.)
• kappa (or B.1.617.1 that first appeared in India
• lambda (or C.37, which first appeared in Peru and is more contagious and harmful than all of its predecessors)
the virus will continue to mutate until there are no longer any viable hosts for it to infect. It should also be noted that three additional Covid-19 mutations - epsilon, zeta, and theta -- have gone dormant but there is always the possibility that they could reappear and spread given the lack of vaccinated individuals who either refuse the inoculation for purely selfish reasons that are either political or religious or live in countries where vaccines have not been administered due to lack of availability.
During the 1918 so-called Spanish flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza, few people disregarded public health authorities and the Red Cross when it came to wearing masks, quarantining, or engaging in good hygienic practices. That was because those Americans, our grandparents and great grandparents, exercised better judgement and displayed selflessness as good citizens. The same does not hold true today. Selfishness and irresponsibility now rule the day.
Unfortunately, for the people of 1918 to 1920, there were no vaccinations yet developed to combat the Spanish flu. It ran its course until some 500 million people around the world were infected and as many as 100 million of them died from the virus. The crying shame is that these victims, who were largely responsible enough to heed the medical science of their day, were more valuable members of society than the selfish miscreants of today who disregard wearing masks in public, refuse to be vaccinated, spread shameful conspiracy theories, cite medical fraudsters as experts, tout dangerous treatments and placebos, and combine a disregard for public health with support for Donald Trump.
Those who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid are ensuring the survival and further mutation of the virus. There are nearly 200 million cases of Covid in the world with some 4,252,000 deaths globally. Thanks to the incompetence and politicization of the virus by the Trump administration and Republican governors in Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, and other states, the United States leads the world in both infections and deaths.
And here is some news for all those right-wing religious schmucks who are always yammering on about the "rights of the unborn." Today, throughout the United States, there are Covid prenatal intensive care units popping up in hospitals to treat pregnant mothers who have the delta variant of the virus. That is coupled with the recent appearance of Covid delta pediatric ICUs across the country. During the 1918 influenza pandemic and successive polio and measles epidemics, responsible Americans at least had the responsibility and common decency to look out for their own and other Americans' children, including the unborn, by obeying public health advisories. That is not the case today with the large population of malcontents who care more about their guns, private golf courses, and pick-up trucks than the children and pregnant moms here in America and abroad. Because of the incompetent decisions made by Trump and his cohorts the United States remains the world's largest super-spreader nation, proving that being "number" one is not always welcomed.
When important decisions and plans were made by our Navy command concerning evacuations of key personnel and safeguarding important activities and equipment, we did not seek the advice of that time period's version of today's Internet surfers. Our advice came from actual experts in the fields of disaster and contingency planning, risk assessment, computer science, telecommunications and electronic engineering, meteorology, nuclear weapons effects, seismology, public health, physical security, and other disciplines.
During World War II, the government expected citizens to adhere to nightly blackout regulations issued by the Office of Civilian Defense. During the Cold War, motorists were required to pull their vehicles off to the shoulders of major highways during periodic civil defense drills -- the intention being to clear the road for military and other emergency vehicles. School teachers were responsible for their students conducting 'duck and cover" nuclear attack drills. Public health authorities expected citizens to, at the very least, have their children inoculated against various diseases as a prerequisite for school attendance. That generation, which survived the Great Depression and World War II, understood that with citizenship came responsibility. That ethic has been lost on large sectors of today's citizenry. They should do something their parents or guardians likely never told them: grow up!
In the meantime, I will stick with Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison, not with Trump, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Taylor Greene, Gohmert, or Gaetz. Whose side you are on says more about you than me.
