![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm not, I hope, a cruel or vindictive man. I generally try not to wish pain or suffering on my enemies and not when those "enemies" are a mass of people I find I myself in general political opposition to. I would not, I hope, wish a preventable and potentially deadly disease on someone just because I disagreed with them politically.
But I am finding myself watching the anti-vaxxer anti-lockdown movement in the US in much the same way I think I would watch carpet-bombing during World War Two.
It's clear from various data that COVID cases are more frequent and more often serious in Trump voting counties. There is a strong correlation between Trump voters and anti-vaxxer / anti-lockdown supporters. People who voted for Trump are disproportionately not getting vaccinated and ignoring public health guidance and therefore disproportionately getting sick and dying. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that being a not-Trump voter does not mean you won't catch COVID you are more likely to catch COVID if you move in the Trump supporting circles. This does include many many more or less "innocent" people. People who did what I think is the right thing but got sick because they were physically close to people who did not do the right thing. Like the allied carpet-bombing of Germany in the 1940's. I'm sure a great many people were killed, injured, made homeless, lost loved ones who were not die hard Nazis or were opposed to the Nazis but just happened to be living in a large German city during the war by an accident of birth. People like my mother-in-law. Covid, like British bombs, won't distinguish between people I disagree with politically or not - but it will disproportionately impact them.
I don't wish ill or illness on these people but, Lord help me, they won't help themselves.
I have often remarked that perception is 9/10th of everything but that last tenth part of reality will get you in the end if you ignore it. Most things are a matter of opinion. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. However, reality will out. You can disagree about whether vaccine passports are a proportionate measure to COVID. You can take the view that COVID vaccines are worse than the disease. You can be of the opinion that the whole thing is a damned hoax gotten up by a government intent on controlling the population through fair means or foul. I don't think COVID cares. If your opinions lead you to behaviour that makes it more like that the coronavirus will prosper in your community or in your body, then prosper it will. The dead hand of Darwin will push it in to every nook and cranny that it can make a living in.
And the end result, whether I wish it or wish it not, is that more people in Trump voting parts of the US will die. Will this change their mind about how science works, whether public health measures are appropriate, whether there is a massive conspiracy between Big Pharma, Joe Biden and Bill Gates? I don't know, and as, to a certain extent they have brought this upon themselves I shrug my shoulders and I suppose I wash my hands of them.
And given that their political coalition was in a minority in the United States already having fewer voters is unlikely to do much good for their politics. Which I am not sad about but can not be happy about under the circumstances.
But I am finding myself watching the anti-vaxxer anti-lockdown movement in the US in much the same way I think I would watch carpet-bombing during World War Two.
It's clear from various data that COVID cases are more frequent and more often serious in Trump voting counties. There is a strong correlation between Trump voters and anti-vaxxer / anti-lockdown supporters. People who voted for Trump are disproportionately not getting vaccinated and ignoring public health guidance and therefore disproportionately getting sick and dying. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that being a not-Trump voter does not mean you won't catch COVID you are more likely to catch COVID if you move in the Trump supporting circles. This does include many many more or less "innocent" people. People who did what I think is the right thing but got sick because they were physically close to people who did not do the right thing. Like the allied carpet-bombing of Germany in the 1940's. I'm sure a great many people were killed, injured, made homeless, lost loved ones who were not die hard Nazis or were opposed to the Nazis but just happened to be living in a large German city during the war by an accident of birth. People like my mother-in-law. Covid, like British bombs, won't distinguish between people I disagree with politically or not - but it will disproportionately impact them.
I don't wish ill or illness on these people but, Lord help me, they won't help themselves.
I have often remarked that perception is 9/10th of everything but that last tenth part of reality will get you in the end if you ignore it. Most things are a matter of opinion. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. However, reality will out. You can disagree about whether vaccine passports are a proportionate measure to COVID. You can take the view that COVID vaccines are worse than the disease. You can be of the opinion that the whole thing is a damned hoax gotten up by a government intent on controlling the population through fair means or foul. I don't think COVID cares. If your opinions lead you to behaviour that makes it more like that the coronavirus will prosper in your community or in your body, then prosper it will. The dead hand of Darwin will push it in to every nook and cranny that it can make a living in.
And the end result, whether I wish it or wish it not, is that more people in Trump voting parts of the US will die. Will this change their mind about how science works, whether public health measures are appropriate, whether there is a massive conspiracy between Big Pharma, Joe Biden and Bill Gates? I don't know, and as, to a certain extent they have brought this upon themselves I shrug my shoulders and I suppose I wash my hands of them.
And given that their political coalition was in a minority in the United States already having fewer voters is unlikely to do much good for their politics. Which I am not sad about but can not be happy about under the circumstances.
