Editor's Note: This piece was co-authored by Piece Roberts.
Covid’s Politicized Pandemic
Most Americans, especially those over 70 with co-morbidities seem to be waiting for vaccine Godot. Recall that the play, Waiting for Godot, written in 1948 by Samuel Beckett, follows a group of people who are waiting for Godot to arrive, with the prospect he never will. He doesn’t.
Newsmax carried a story on December 13, 2020 that “mask wearing workers at a Pfizer factory in Michigan began packing the first shipments of its COVID-19 vaccine in dry ice shortly after 6:30 a.m…Three trucks carrying pallets of boxed, refrigerated vaccines rolled away from the central Michigan facility at 8:29 a.m., escorted by body armor-clad security officers in a pickup truck and a SUV.
Given the long, and as we shall argue here, unnecessary wait, we question why it took so long and the priority to dispensing the Covid vaccine. Some immoderate liberals like Melinda Gates argue that black and indigenous people should get the coronavirus vaccine first. Both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna/Oxford vaccines have completed successfully Phase 3 trials. Pfizer completed its Phase 3 trials with flying colors in late September (yes, late September); Moderna completed Phase 3 trials successfully on November 17rd. Our NIH just crowed that Moderna received approval for immediate distribution in the U.K. with the Queen Mother and her husband will be among the first to receive it. Americans are rightly wondering why the U.K. is already distributing its Covid vaccine while America has continued to incinerate with the pandemic.
Sadly, the answer is that there is a political horse fly in the federal approval ointment. The FDA announced on December 10th that “Pfizer’s vaccine just received approval from FDA advisers as agency decision nears.” The FDA advisory panel voted 17 to 4 for approval, with one abstention, adding that “the benefits of the vaccine from Pfizer Inc. outweigh the risks for use in people ages 16 and older.” We already know from the CDC that young people, under the age of 30 are both the least likely cohort to get Covid and also the least likely to die from it. There is a bearded old guy standing on a street corner near you in his nightshirt with a placard staying, “THE END IS NEAR.” Is he Sleepy Joe out walking his dog in his new fashion footwear? More likely it’s a guy who is related to Dr Anthony Fauci, first cousin of the grim reaper (same mother different father).
On December 4th, the ever-politically malleable Anthony Fauci, head of the partisan NIAID—America’s health Deep State, chimed in chastising the U.K. decision to distribute Moderna’s vaccine because it was “rushing through the authorization process and failing to adequately scrutinize data from drug manufacturers before approving it.” America’s leading pandemic quack-in-Chief then had to walk back his remonstration and apologize for his remarks, adding he had not meant to imply any "sloppiness" on the part of the UK; we guess only sloppiness on his part.
It would seem that the America Left’s selfishly desires for the Covid pathogen to stick around through herd immunity, blaming Trump for the “needless deaths.” In lockstep on December 5th, more than half of New York’s unionized firefighters said they will refuse to take the vaccine when offered it as did governor Cuomo. While they have certainly seen the horrible effects on people over the past nine months, they are drawing a sharp political, not medical, line in the sand. They and their leftist brethren have become as pandemic-pliable as a new can of Play-Doh.
Think of our federal government’s delay in the Covid plague as the lubricant on the glove of leftist government control, using fear of infirmity and death as a way to slide into power while expunging American’s constitutional freedoms, forcing our transformation into masked zombie-like creatures.
America’s health is staring us in the face and there are no do-overs. The Mainstream media (MSM) continue to genuflect to the Left. Blue State dictators stand on their soapboxes demanding that we be socially celibate and not touch anyone with a six-foot pole. We continue to be asked not to acknowledge or frequent our favorite family run businesses, restaurants, bars and places of worship that are hanging on by the puppet strings these dictators’ control, while they eat in the best restaurants, unmasked despite their own diktats. Pliant citizens conform, the defiant contort as their God-given Constitutional rights are sucked away by these political leeches.
Playing with Our Lives
The Covid-19 pandemic has become a social, political, and infectious disease incursion on steroids. It has spread rapidly worldwide, propitiously establishing a stranglehold on immunologically naive populations and attacking hardest, the weak and susceptible. CDC data show that when compared to people in the 18-29 year-old reference group, the 75-84 age group is eight times more likely to be hospitalized from Covid-19 and over two hundred-twenty times more likely to die. For those 85 plus, hospitalization is thirteen times greater and death a staggering six hundred-thirty times greater! Add a co-morbidity condition to this and you’re SOL. Fortunately, as with most pandemics, medical science develops effective vaccines; as time goes on the pathogen burns through its hosts and then either attenuates or becomes rare through virile immune systems responses. The disease will eventually become more dilute as herd immunity establishes, and eventually either disappears or deforms into a less morbific version.
Our Covid recovery-recurrence seesaw and the 2020 election has encouraged political bullies like New York’s Governor Mario “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” Cuomo, Michigan’s Governor “Grinchin” Whitman and California’s Governor Gavin “I’m So Pretty” Nettlesome to scare the bejesus out of their malleable constituents. Ironically, this seems to operate mostly in true-blue states. Their draconian waves of disease decrees dilate a compliant MSM who suck up to these leftists, greasing the skids of their diktats despite Covid’s undulations. Sadly, our compliant democrats and other naive citizens give control of our nation’s freedoms to these pontificating politicians, reciting Hannibal Lecter, “Without death, we’d be at a loss. It’s the prospect of death that drives us to greatness.”
A Brief Intervention History
President Trump announced on September 21st that his Operation Warp Speed initiative would use federal funds to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market and distribute it by the “end of October.” His novel and unprecedented initiative met with strong resistance from Big Pharma, democrats and the MSM. Mario Cuomo responded publicly, unchallenged by the MSM entirety, “it's 'bad news' that a COVID vaccine was produced under the Trump administration; we can't let Trump's Vaccine Distribution Plan go forward.” He followed with rhetorical brilliance, saying that he wouldn’t take the vaccine if it were offered to him.
Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines still await delivery to everyday Americans. What pray tell, has taken this long while elderly co-morbid patients continue to succumb? The Pfizer biologic would clearly have saved many lives since its readiness in early November; it also might have ruined the Democrat-imagined election blue wave. The perpetrators of this timely delay were the politically circumspect federal agencies--CDC, FDA, NIH and its subagency, the NIAID. The NIH, run by Barack Obama appointee Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., spoke for an hour on October 23rd at a National Press Club virtual conference about the latest therapeutics and vaccine developments concerning the “diabolical Covid-19 virus.” Collins proudly projected that by the end of November, conveniently three weeks after the election, Pfizer and Moderna “might” be ready to apply for an emergency use authorization from the FDA, but currently they “don’t know if those vaccines will pan out.” Oh really? Evidence now proves this was a lie our government health “experts” used to buy time since the Pfizer vaccine has successfully completed phase 3 trials in early October and has lingered in the FDA’s emergency use authorization limbo.
A conspiracy tell was Anthony Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg appearing together on a televised lovefest in August with the Zuck fawning all over Fauci. He focused on the marvelous job Fauci was doing and how America should follow the safety guidelines [wait for Godot] that federal and state governments were laying out. Why might you ask was the prince of Big Tech and Faultless Fauci preening in a video kumbaya? It was to create political gain for the Zuck who was on the hot seat before Congress regarding Facebook’s censorship of Right-centric free speech in America and President’s Trump Tweets about Fauci’s foibles in handling the pandemic and the vaccine. Making people love you means you will never have to say you’re sorry.
On the cusp of 2021, a lengthy time frame for emergency vaccine development is no longer technically necessary since virtual proofing replaces standard field trials. Compared with previous vaccine development methods (egg-based), modern vaccines identify specific immune stimulating components of a virus’ RNA, allowing Big Pharma to significantly reduce safe vaccine development and production times.
As we lay dazed and confused over the ever-present threat of the disease while political bureaucrats enjoin us with the necessity for continued regulatory controls. We need a bucket brigade of Patriots ready to douse us with the cold water of history that declares this is the United States of America and we will not stand for purloined freedoms. The Left is self-absorbedly unaware that there is a hard-Right turn coming in 2022 and we hope that some of these more moderate leftist lemmings will join us before our nation falls off the political cliff.
In the meantime, we offer this hope: Cure a pandemic, starve a politician. Which is more dangerous, the persisting pandemic or a perpetually panicked nation?
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