I want folks to be absolutely clear about this. We, as a country, haven’t turned a real corner on COVID, because the Republicans have chosen to support the spread of COVID and the Prolonging of this pandemic in over to score political points against President Biden.

There is absolutely nothing that the Republican Party has done that hasn’t contributed to the prolonging of this pandemic.

Godspeed, Missouri.

2/ –"to order disease-control measures."
So "Laclede Co Hlth Dept made a #Facebook post that it was suspending 'all #COVID19 related work.' Will no longer investigate cases, contact-trace, issue directives to quarantine or [release] case numbrs & deaths."https://t.co/yMuiSq4jCd

— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) December 10, 2021

Thread

In this thread, I will be discussing the behavior of Donald Trump’s base throughout the viral pandemic—everything from their disdain towards wearing masks to their reluctance to getting vaccinated—but I will be doing it through a very specific lens: caste.

— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) December 11, 2021

Nothing in this thread will be news to people of color. And the views posted in this thread are not original. Isabel Wilkerson, who wrote the book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent”, greatly informed my understanding of caste.

— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) December 11, 2021

The moment that it was understood that COVID-19 disproportionately affects communities of color, the immunocompromised, and other vulnerable populations, Donald Trump’s base decided that the viral pandemic was acceptable.

— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) December 11, 2021

Donald Trump did not see himself as being under an obligation to act as a President for all Americans, and his base was with him that regard. In him, they saw their own desire to ignore the issue if they perceived it was just Democrats being significantly impacted.

— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) December 11, 2021

The reality: Donald Trump’s base has a sense of occupying the dominant caste, they want to think of COVID-19 as a lower caste issue, and the dominant caste being forced to go out of its way to protect people perceived as lower in caste is a supreme violation of caste rules.

— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) December 11, 2021

Should be expanded to every state.

And I can attest that it works.

My two brothers live in Colorado and have signed up, ordered them, and @AbbottNews BinaxNOW are delivered via @FedEx

I’m so happy to see Smart public Health being rolled out before the holidays.

2/

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) December 11, 2021

Thread on Cousin Omicron

What are the facts on Omicron? The picture is getting clearer: Omicron spreads faster and is better able to escape immunity than other variants. Severity is still unknown, although it's likely vaccination reduces severe disease. The virus has adapted; we must as well. 1/thread

— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) December 11, 2021

CDC's vaccination data may overestimate 1st vaccine doses & underestimate boosters. State & county data, which CDC relies on for stats, don't always link records of people’s boosters & initial shots. A booster may be recorded as if it were a 1st dose https://t.co/Do8VP5Bz73

— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) December 11, 2021

Go Ghana!

All adult arrivals to Ghana must be vaccinated against Covid from midnight on 12 December

Ghanaians who are unvaccinated have been given an extra two weeks to return home – and will be given a jab at the airport https://t.co/Vs1lhBpsM4

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 10, 2021

I have long thought that this pandemic is going to devastate the medical field. In the beginning, we were losing healthcare workers because they were catching COVID. Now, we are losing them because they cannot take the continued working on people who shouldn’t even be in the hospital and wouldn’t be if they had taken a FREE VACCINE.

Here is the story of one such doctor:

My career of treating patients has ended

Heavy Content Warning

After more than three decades as a physician, the Q maniacs have succeeded in driving me out of providing care to patients. I, like many of my colleagues, am moving into medically-adjacent work, where we can continue to apply our training and decades off knowledge without ever having to come in contact with sick people.

I’ve been able to deal with the years of patients who attended Google Medical School, and the hours wasted explaining things such as why cinnamon cannot be used to treat diabetes, or that garlic and beetroot can’t treat HIV. And Lord save me from essential oils.

COVID and Q finally proved to be the one of amateur “experts” that was too much for me. The horrific deaths are beyond what you might imagine. They emerge almost unrecognizable to their families. Since June, I have never seen a horrible case of someone who was vaccinated. I have seen people struggling to breathe through lungs that have hardened to near uselessness, begging us in their ignorance to give them the vaccine now. We can tell, almost without fail, which ones will die when they come through the door of the ICU, but we do everything in our power to keep them alive – BIPAP, ECMO, ventilator – knowing we are stretching out the inevitable. We use paralytics with ECMO and ventilators, then ease them off to see if they can function. And as the drugs wane, the look of terror emerges, the tears. We try to calm them, to swallow our desire to scream at them: This is your fault! This didn’t have to happen! Often, their spouse or their uncle or neighbor is nearby, dying along with them. And we work hard for those rare cases where we can pull them back from the edge.

I could deal with all of that. What I can no longer handle is the screaming, not from the patients, but from the families. They are not screaming in anguish, or in recognition of how their foolishness has led them to this point. No, they are screaming at me. Because, you see, I am part of the global conspiracy to commit genocide. If only I would give 10,000 mg of Vitamin C – even though the body can only absorb a maximum of 100 mg a day, with the rest creating the world’s most expensive urine – they would be saved. Or hydroxychloroquine. Or ivermectin. Those have never been studied, they assure me, and when I tell them they have been, they snap that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I want, oh god I want, to tell them that if we are the ones responsible for killing their loved ones, then why the hell have they brought them to the hospital? Why throw them into our clutches? I know the answer: They know it is all lies. But their egos are so huge they cant bring themselves to admit it.

My breaking point came three weeks ago. I dealt with a particularly horrible case. This was a husband and father, 38 years old. A wife, two daughters, one son. All of age to get vaccinated, none vaccinated. If you could have seen his face, and the ravages left by both COVID and the time he spent prone on his stomach. An enormous clot kept reforming in his leg, and we had been forced to amputate his foot in hopes of keeping him alive. When he was awake, the look of terror in his eyes, the crying, the pain. It was nothing new. But the begging, over and over, “Don’t let me die.” And “Give me the vaccine.” All I could tell him is “We won’t let you” – although I never said we might not have any choice in the matter. And I told him, repeatedly, it was too late for the vaccine.

He begged me to bring in his family. A nurse called them, because they had never come to the hospital. They refused to wear masks, and so would not be admitted. The nurse told the wife that her husband was likely dying, and was begging to see them. All she cared about was masks. She would only come if she and her daughters didn’t have to wear any.

Go read the rest of it. It ends horribly. The selfishness of not being willing to wear a mask to say goodbye to a loved one.