Dispatches from the COVID wars. Dateline: Compiegne.

By Vincent Boom-Batz, M.D.
Medical Editor

The war on COVID is over.

And, with apologies to The Onion, COVID won.

That's right, the pandemic that has claimed more than 1,100,000 American lives and continues to kill over 400 of us every day has vanquished all opposition in America, causing all parts of government to surrender unconditionally to the virulent menace.

Despite the fact that deaths from COVID have soared 65% in the last two weeks (see below)

America has thrown down all mandatory measures to save lives and left the battlefield.

Among the likeliest near term victims: our brave men and women in uniform. Just this week, the Congress and the President accepted a bloated defense spending act that specifically allowed recruits to opt out of receiving the COVID vaccine.  Although the idiotic idea came from pro-insurrection Republicans, Democrats caved like the French Army in 1940:

Democrats were forced to capitulate to GOP demands to curtail the vaccine mandate after a large segment of the party threatened to withhold their support for the legislation otherwise. Republican leaders who cheered the deal to strike the mandate have since pledged to seek retribution for its existence, demanding reinstatement for service members discharged for refusing to take the vaccine, and warning they will investigate President Biden and his advisers for having ever instituted the requirement. 

That's nice. So a proven tool said by the CDC to be vital for all of us will no longer protect either U.S. armed forces or anyone they come in contact with.

In repealing the mandate, Congress also overrode the views of military professionals, who viewed the requirement as an important part of readiness and force protection: 

During a briefing with reporters, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said vaccination is still a military readiness issue, and said a repeal could be harmful to the health of the armed forces.

“What is important to the readiness of the force is getting the vaccine,” she said.

“So, yes, it would impact the readiness of the force. You’re more prone to getting COVID-19 … and we certainly know that the vaccine will save your life.”

By the way, the intolerable intrusion on liberty (or what the f***ever represented by mandatory COVID vaccination) doesn't apply to the other 12 vaccinations the military requires.

Why?  No one knows.  

Check that – the Washington Post's bats**t crazy consulting doctor Leana Wen knows: “ while protection against severe illness appears strong, effectiveness against infection is not.”  So it's OK in her mind to let soldiers and sailors get severely ill with COVID? 

It kinda depends on which piece you read in the Post, whose COVID home page splashed directly contradictory guidance:

 

So reducing military hospitalization rates by 50% isn't worth anything, according to her?  After all the downside to getting the vaccine is – what, Dr. Wen?

Proponents of continuing the vaccine mandates argue that, for the military and schoolchildren, many other vaccines are already required. But other vaccines are nowhere near as polarizing as the coronavirus vaccine. Equating this to others could have an unintended consequence of extending the backlash from covid-19 to other inoculations. 

Or it could be that surrendering to anti-vax extremists re COVID will only encourage these dangerous nuts to extend their campaign from opposition to mandatory vaccination to trying to undercut COVID vaccination efforts among their credulous base.

That couldn't happen, you say.  If you believe that we've a got a pair of white go-go boots for you:

Which has led that well-known wild-eyed radical formerly employed by the American Enterprise Institute to conclude that a slew of Republican vaccine deniers are – let's let him do the honors:

It makes it clear that a slew of Republican governors, from DeSantis to Abbott to Reeves to Stitt, are accessories to mass murder. https://t.co/DPyJj0jK8C

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) December 17, 2022

Whoa, tiger.

The real question is why Republicans so cavalierly disregard the recommendations of the military and civilian professionals tasked with keeping our men and women in uniform fit to fight. To repurpose an old-timey Republican slur, why do Republicans hate our troops?  And why won't they support efforts to keep them safe and healthy?

Republicans: you can't trust them to protect our military.  Of course, that clear and potent political message was obscured by Democratic acquiescence, another in a long series of politically savvy moves by Democrats dating back at least to 2002. It's the old Democratic appeasement two-step: (1) throw away a position that's both correct and politically advantageous in exchange for (2) nothing. And it never, ever works.

But the bipartisan push to endanger our troops is of a piece with a similar effort to sicken all of us, by refusing to consider mask mandates in a time of rising pandemic COVID, flu, and RSV.  

Even Dr. Wen admits that masking in crowded public places, like those buses in the sky, makes good sense:

To Republicans, it's the face mask of tyranny

Instead, consider which situations are highest-risk for virus transmission. I’ve been traveling a lot for work recently, and I’ve been surprised by how few people are wearing masks in the middle of crowded airports and train stations where they’re standing shoulder to shoulder with many other people. Even if you have returned to all pre-pandemic activities and normally don’t wear a mask, consider keeping one in your purse or pocket and deciding, moment to moment, about whether to mask.

You might decide, for example, not to wear a mask in an airport’s empty security lines or while walking through spaces where people are spread out, but then slip one on during boarding, when dozens of people are packed together in an unventilated jet bridge. And you might keep the mask on before takeoff and after landing, when airplane ventilation often hasn’t kicked in, but then take it off during the flight, when ventilation is running.

Maybe you put one on if the people around you are symptomatic. On my last flight, I sat behind a parent with two young kids who both had runny noses and were coughing. This family probably shouldn’t have been traveling, but since they were, and I had no choice but to sit near them, I made sure to mask during the entire flight.

But measures like masks work best when everyone wears one, according to The New York Times:

while masks are most effective at stopping the spread of these viruses when the infected person is wearing one, masking to protect yourself from disease is still beneficial,  

This indisputable scientific fact is known even to Dr. Wen, but she can't bring herself to state the obvious conclusion: for the duration of the pandemic, the best protection is universal masking in crowded indoor spaces. And the only way to get that is to require it, like stopping at red lights.

So why not require masks?  Is it the terrible downsides of masking in indoor public places like – having to wear a mask? Let's ask the mad Dr. Wen:

Masking has become a major source of controversy during covid, but it shouldn’t be. A better approach would be to take mandatory masking out of the equation and empower people to make reasonable decisions based on individual circumstances.  

“No masks.  No vaccines.  D'Accord!”

Now Dr. Wen knows full well that an effective mask strategy depends on everyone wearing them whether they want to or not.  She only claims now that masks are bad because they are controversial. 

And why are they controversial, the worried well may ask.

The answer is short but tragic: because the immediate past President was a corrupt narcissistic heartless grifter who didn't want a mask to smear his greasy orange makeup.  So he invented a story about how Mexico was shipping us their rapists and masks.  (His actual claim was less plausible.)  Next thing you knew, there were fistfights on planes because the freedom of his enraged white base was being assaulted.

And it doesn't end with Trump.  Science denial and the supposed right to refuse low-risk low-downside public health measures like vaccines and masks have become, like needless COVID deaths and moppets mowed down by gunfire as they learned to tell clock time, a central part of American life.

So America has decide to unilaterally disarm against its most lethal adversary, and its allies in the Axis of Respiratory Evil, flu and RSW.  The result will be endless preventable agony and tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

And in exchange we will get nothing.  

Such a deal.  Marechal Petain couldn't have done better.