At this point, it’s a self-inflicted pandemic

Way back when the pandemic was first gathering steam, The Federalist ran a bizarre article by a doctor (a non-practicing, currently unlicensed dermatologist, as I recall) advocating the recruitment of young, healthy adults to voluntarily become infected with COVID-19 so as to defeat the virus via natural herd immunity– i.e., by getting a large enough percentage of the population infected, recovered, and theoretically immune that that virus couldn’t retain a footload in the population. The headline went further and actually advocated “chicken pox parties” such as parents often schedule to get their kids exposed to that harmless childhood disease! Clearly, the staff at The Federalist had no idea what they were talking about when addressing the subject of COVID-19! And they still don’t.

Neither, it seems obvious, does the Republican Party or the far right in general.

The article was so outrageous that Twitter temporarily suspended The Federalist’s account.While I suppose the guy who wrote it deserves points for thinking outside the box, it was a ridiculous idea because it overlooked three things.

First, while the death rate for COVID-19 isn’t huge (currently 1.8% in the United States, largely though not entirely restricted to the elderly, the obese, and those with underlying health conditions such as heart disease or diabetes), it was already one of the most contagious viruses we’d encountered from its very first iteration. It has become significantly more contagious with each mutation; the currently endemic Delta variant is about 50% more contagious than the Alpha varient, which in turn was about 50% more contagious than the original. The contageon of the Delta variant of the virus is approximately the same as that of chicken pox. In that sense, if in no other, the article in The Federalist corresponds to reality.

Fewer than two deaths out of a hundred doesn’t sound like much. But while the COVID minimizers have been so fixated on the mortality rate that they haven’t noticed it, COVID-19 has infected 34,672,690 Americans at last count, and killed more Americans than died in both world wars in only two years. The COVID pandemic (613,223 American deaths) is closing in on the 1918 Spanish Flu (675,000 American deaths) and perhaps even the the Civil War (likely 750,000, though only 620,000 are documented) as the deadliest event in American history, and in half the time it took the Civil War to get there!

BTW, the same system is used in computing deaths due to COVID as has always been used in gathering such statistics. Only where a person who had multiple causes of death would probably not have died except for their having COVID is it given as a “cause of death.” The lie to the contrary has been spread very widely and continues to be widely repeated.

But still, the radical right doesn’t see the problem. It’s still ignoring- and slandering- the CDC and people like Dr. Fauci. It points out that their advice keeps changing, apparently unable to follow the rather obvious point that the best available advice changes as we learn more about this new virus.

Only a few months ago, we seemed to be on the verge of having COVID on the run, at least in the United States. But human stupidity- and yes, sometimes simply a lack of information, or the bad habit many of us have formed of listening to crackpots rather than the experts- has torpedoed that. We spent all that time and effort “flattening the curve” until a vaccine was available. With the original virus, if we got to the point where 70% of the population had either been vaccinated or had the disease, we might well have reached herd immunity- the point at which there were not enough vulnerable people left for the virus to survive.

But that’s water under the bridge. With the emergence of the Delta variant and its vastly increased contageon, it would probably take 80%-90%. And that would be doable- if we could get 80% to 90% of the population vaccinated.

But after an initially positive response, the rate at which Americans are being vaccinated has hit a brick wall. The Biden Administration had hoped to have 80% of the country vaccinated by this point, effectively ending the pandemic at least in the United States. Instead, 49.8% of us are fully vaccinated, and 57.7% have had even one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

There is some good news. 77.8% of those over 75 have been vaccinated, as have 81.8% of those aged 65-74. 67.3 of those 50-64% are protected. But only 57.8% of those in their 40s have had both shots, but only 48.7% of those 25-39 have gotten the vaccine, as have only 48.3% of those 18-24.

Those most at risk of death because of age are mostly protected, though a significant minority remains vulnerable. We have no statistics to tell us how many of those suffering from health conditions ranging from obesity through diabetes through heart disease and compromised immune systems remain unvaccinated. We know that age and underlying medical conditions generally- though by no means always- are contributing factors in COVID deaths, so it isn’t surprising that immunization rates drop with age.

But that brings us to the second fatal flaw in the argument made by The Federalist article, one that seemingly has yet to sink in on the radical right: it is not only impossible but simply absurd to think of isolating either the unvaccinated elderly or the unvaccinated younger population from each other. It simply can’t be done. As long as fewer than 80-90% have either natural immunity or have been vaccinated, the virus will continue to circulate in the unvaccinated population and will continue to mutate into still more contageous forms.

The current outbreak of the Delta variant, which is more deadly as well as significantly more contageous, is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. I can’t quite bring myself to adopt the attitude many people with an otherwise rational attitude toward the virus have embraced that because it is almost exclusively the unvaccinated who are going to die, the next phase of the pandemic is “natural seletion in action,” killing only those whose own foolishness has left them vulnerable. For one thing, that isn’t true; there are many people who haven’t been vaccinated for logistical reasons, and a huge percentage of the unvaccinated publication has been confused by the propaganda and misinformation being spread by irresponsible people and media like The Federalist, Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, OAN, and the far-right blogosphere. Vaccine hesitancy is my no means the exclusive domain of the willfully ignorant. People who have been deceived by extremists do not deserve to die for it, or even to get sick.

A great deal of vaccine hesitency seems to be based on the fact that the CDC has only granted emergency authorization to the vaccines. For some inexplicable reason it has not yet permanently and definitively certified them as safe. That fact is hard to understand. At this point the evidence that the vaccines are safe is overwhelming. Not only have huge clinical trials been conducted with favorable results (contrary to the propaganda of #TeamVirus), but close to half of the American people have received them, almost entirely without ill-effects and with overwhelming evidence of their extreme effectiveness. Experts estimate that the Pfizer vaccine, for example, while over 90% effective against previous iterations of the virus, is still 88% effective against the Delta variant. But in actual practice, the “breakthrough cases” in which fully vaccinated people come down with even mild cases of COVID represent fewer than one-tenth of one percent of the vaccinated population. And even among those cases, death or serious illness is vanishingly rare. Clearly full approval of the vaccines is being held up by bureaucratic red tape, not by actual concerns about their safety or effectiveness. Up to a third of the unvaccinated population says that it would consider being vaccinated in full approval was given. There is no excuse for the delay. The CDC needs to get its case together and issue that approval. It is a public health necessity, and again, there is no reasonable doubt that it would be justified.

And while children rarely die from COVID, some do. Fewer than 15% of those under 18 have been fully vaccinated. Of course, the CDC has yet to approve the vaccination of children, either, although that approval is supposed to be close.

As long as we remain below the 90% threshold required for herd immunity, the pandemic will continue, even though its worst ravages will be restricted to those who have voluntarily refused the vaccine. They are correct in saying that they have every right to continue to refuse. But as the saying goes, one person’s right to swing his fist ends at the point of another person’s nose. There is no right to spread a deadly disease, or to put others at risk.

The third thing The Federalist article missed is that there is precedent for the sensible steps the government has taken to protect us from COVID, and that unlike “chickenpox parties,” they are actually known to work. Ever since George Washington ordered the compulsory vaccination of the Continental Army against smallpox, the armed forces have required their members to receive mandatory vaccinations against a range of diseases. And every school child has to be vaccinated against a great many viruses already. The same is true of private employers. There is nothing new about vaccine mandates, and it’s not only silly but intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise. There is no constitutional issue here; the matter is one of long-established precedent.

Quarrantines and lockdowns have a long history in America and other Western nations. They are reasonable and necssary public health measures which violate nobody’s rights. The ignorant may question their necessity, but when the evidence justifies them the government’s only responsible course is to issue them. And by the same logic, the government has every right and even the duty to require that people who can transmit a potentially deadly virus- and we now know that even vaccinated people who have mild break-through cases, as rare as they are, can do that- wear masks in close quarters indoors.

The CDC has recommended that due to the Delta variant outbreak spurred by the large percentage of Americans who have remained unvaccinated and made possible by their prevention of herd immunity, we all go back to wearing masks in such circumstances. We are mostly ignoring that advice. That is a tragic blunder that will cost lives. We are all sick and tired of this pandemic. But precisely for that reason, wouldn’t it make sense to engage in behavior that will get it over and done with rather than ignoring reasonable precautions and keeping it going?

For the same reason that quarantines and lockdowns are both constitutional and reasonable, so are “vaccine passports.” In my view, the government would be remiss in not making proof of vaccination mandatory for especially large gatherings of people, and especially for those who chose not to wear a mask. Again, there simply is no right to endanger somebody else’s life or health.

Finally, I recently came across a proposal that I think deserves serious consideration. It will, of course, be opposed by isolationists and “America First” types. Yet it is a perfect example of why that philosophy is not only misguided and foolish but hopelessly out of date. In the modern era, those two oceans no longer protect us from the rest of the world. Decry globalization as loudly as you want, but it’s an unavoidable consequence of modern technology.

The Third World is almost completely unvaccinated. There has been an outcry over the way the developed nations are “hogging” the vaccine for their own use. Certainly, any government has the health and safety of its own population as its first responsibility. But although I recognize that it would be hugely expensive and that we really can’t afford it, a strong case can be made that the United States should pay for vaccinating the world’s underdeveloped nations. I would argue that this is in our best interest for two reasons.

First, from a purely selfish point of view, as long as this virus is spreading and mutating unchecked anywhere in the world, it will continue to grow more deadly and more contageous. It doesn’t take much in the way of imagination to see the distinct possibility that a strain might develop against which our vacines are ineffective. In that case, only a fool would imagine that despite any and all precautions we might take, sooner or later it will manage to get into the United States. We will not be completely safe from this virus as long as it continues to spread and mutate anywhere,

Secondly, the international prestige of the United States s close to being at an all-time low. Though it increased somewhat with the election of President Biden, the damage to it done by his predecessor was massive and well-nigh incalculable. Though the Cold War is behind us, we remain in a struggle for world leadership and for the future of the planet with China, and to a lesser extent with Russia and with radical Islam.

I can think of nothing that would restore American prestige and strike a greater blow against the international influence of our enemies than saving the underdeveloped world from COVID. I don’t know whether do ing so would be practical and I do know that there are powerful economic arguments against it. But I also wonder how many aircraft carriers, sixth-generation fighters, and missiles we’d have to build at how great a cost to add as much to our national safety and security.

Good-will can be as powerful a weapon as the most advanced weaponry. We knew that once. Maybe it’s time to create some, if only because it’s in our own best interest.