Penalties for the unvaccinated – A few dissentient murmurs from Trump followers – Evening statistics
Those who remain unvaccinated by choice are certainly suffering for their convictions, and not only in this country. The government of Singapore has announced that it will not cover medical expenses for people who are “unvaccinated by choice” after December 8th. Austria is contemplating a lockdown that extends to the unvaccinated only. In the Australian state of New South Wales, unvaccinated people over the age of 16 are not permitted to visit another person’s residence, go to public gyms or recreation facilities, dine in restaurants (they may still order food for take-out), attend wedding or funeral services, or travel outside of the local government area in which they live. Various German states have likewise barred the voluntarily unvaccinated for public indoor settings such as restaurants and bars. Travel, of course, is providing a great incentive to accept the vaccine as inevitable. I know at least one person who resisted taking the vaccine as long as he could until he found that international travel imposed many more restrictions on unvaccinated travelers than on vaccinated ones – mandatory quarantine times, for instance.
About 40% of the world’s population is vaccinated at this point. In the U.S. about 68.5% of the population 12 years or older is fully vaccinated, which is reasonably close to the figure of 70% that some have claimed will confer herd immunity. Indeed the U.S. has been criticized for promoting boosters instead of exporting vaccines to other nations in need of them. I see nothing wrong, however, with any nation attending to the needs of its own population first before attempting to rush to the aid of others.
There appears to be a scintilla of dissention among the Trump ranks. Herman Cain, who co-chaired a coalition called Black Voices for Trump, died of COVID one month after attending the Trump rally in Tulsa last year, where, like the majority of the other attendees, he wore no mask and made no attempt to practice social distancing. It is not clear whether he caught the virus at this event, but he was hospitalized nine days afterwards and died just one month later. Some of the staffers are now confiding to journalists about the guilt they feel over his death: “we killed Herman Cain,” in their words. It is not surprising that staffers have turned on Trump, for eight of them contracted the disease at the rally and then were forced afterwards to drive 1,200 miles back to DC. One car contained three staffers who had tested positive and they were all riding together in what other staffers afterwards referred to as a “COVID mobile.” So perhaps if more people who have been maltreated during the course of their employment by Trump – not an insignificant number – begin to vent their grievances in public, cracks will appear on the hard, glazed surface of this graven image and reverse the course of idol worship that has tarnished the nation for four years and more.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 252,620,968; # of deaths worldwide: 5,094,933; # of cases U.S.: 47,693,516; # of deaths; U.S.: 780,775.