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Phil Valentine is the third outspoken anti-vaxxer and anti-masker to die in recent weeks.  Gov. Abbott of Texas went through a Regeneron treatment, which he is now actively promoting, with the first whiff of COVID, indicating he was scared shitless.  He was vaccinated so in all likelihood would have pulled through just fine without the $6000 treatement.  It makes you wonder why conservative pundits and politicians continue to defy basic safety precautions.

Yet they do, even to the point of legislating anti-vax and anti-mask laws that have come under fire at the local level.  In both Texas and Florida, where Gov. Tweedledee and Tweedledum have threatened to withhold pay of teachers, local school districts have issued mask mandates anyway.  Recently, the Texas Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision that enforced the anti-mask mandate, but only temporarily.  You would think the safety of students would be of prime concern if not the teachers, but Abbott and DeSantis refuse to budge, even with Abbott having now seen COVID face to face.  They seem to think it is more important to appeal to their political base than it is to exercise the least bit of prudence in states where the number of COVID cases has skyrocketed.

None of it makes any sense.  This fanatical refusal to accept CDC guidelines and continue to insist that somehow this coronavirus will go away on its own accord if only we close down the border with Mexico is just too stupid for words.  Unfortunately, these defiant conservative lawmakers have enacted legislation throughout the South, Midwest and Southwest that makes it illegal to issue any kind of mask or vaccine mandates.  This leaves local school boards in the precarious position of having to defy their state governors and legislators by issuing mask mandates, the most simple precaution of them all.  Woe be it for them to try to mandate vaccines.

All this because twenty-some-odd years ago, a faux doctor tried to establish a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.  It was quickly debunked by the scientific community, but like so many of these bogus stories it has been allow to persist, and the discredited Andrew Wakefield became a hero of the anti-vax movement.  Exasperated, Dr. Fauci recently said that if we had this kind of vaccine resistance in the 1950s and 60s, we would still be battling small pox and polio.

No amount of coaxing and free handouts seem to get these anti-vax warriors to give in on their positions, and when one of their loudmouth spokesmen succumbs to the coronavirus they just shrug their shoulders.  It's only when they have to battle COVID themselves that they wish they had taken the vaccine, but by then it is too late.  

The vast number of ICU beds given over to COVID are filled with unvaccinated patients.  Even if you do contract this coronavirus after you have been vaccinated, you are far less likely to have to be hospitalized, much less put on a ventilator.  The vast majority of vaccinated persons who contract COVID get over it in a few days with basic medications.  They don't need to go through a costly Regeneron treatment like Gov. Abbott did.  Nearly all COVID deaths are persons who are unvaccinated. 

So, Phil Valentine becomes the latest martyr to the anti-vax movement, which refuses to yield in the face of so many needless deaths.


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