United States of Mexico

June 23, 2021

Let’s take a closer look at out neighbours to the south, where the overall single-jab vaccination rate is around 54% and stagnating…

The top-10 most vaccinated states are: Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire & New Mexico.

Vermont tops the list with a vaccination percentage of 73.1%, while New Mexico rounds out the top-10 with 60.8%.

The bottom 10 looks like this…

North Dakota, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, Louisiana & Mississippi.

The best of those worst-10 is North Dakota at 43.4%. The worst is Mississippi at 36.0%

That’s quite a divide… where the top state more than doubles the worst one.

Here’s another interesting stat about all of those states…

In the last presidential election, of the top-10, all of them voted Democrat.

Of the bottom-10, 9 of them voted Republican. The one that didn’t, Georgia, is so inwardly-horrified at the result that their Republican-controlled government recently disenfranchised more than 100,000 potential voters, striking them from the rolls… and this was after enacting a number of laws that can only be called “Voter Suppression”. Take a guess which voters are most affected.

None of this is much of a surprise, though the blatant starkness of it is a little eye-opening… but what’s the deal? The blue state/red state divisions largely precede the pandemic, so how does it necessarily follow that raving, unrelenting Trump supporters would also be the anti-mask/anti-vax crowd?

The answer is a bit more complicated than “They’re just a bunch of ignorant rednecks”. The answer, in fact, has a lot to do with distrust of the government. When you’re poor and/or uneducated and/or sick and tired of hearing lies about how the government is going to do so much for you (and then doesn’t), you end up jumping ship to the guy you can relate to… he’s one of us, loud, abrasive, calls it like he sees it, etc. He’s not cut from government cloth.

Which makes Trump all the worse. If anybody could’ve convinced that group about masks and vaccines, it would’ve been him. It could’ve and it should’ve been him. Notwithstanding the shitshow it took to get him elected, it’s like the universe said “Hmm… there’s going to be this pandemic, and a lot of Americans will lose their lives. At least, who could we put in power in the U.S. to mitigate that? Someone that people who’d generally ignore government advice actually listen to?”

Without a doubt, his handling of this pandemic will be what history judges him on, and it’ll be appropriately brutal. When all is said and done, countless American deaths that could’ve been prevented… a figure officially set at over 600,000 at the moment, but the real figure is already a two-comma number.

Trump likes to make shit up as he goes along, depending who he’s talking to. We know he quietly got vaccinated while at the same time telling everyone it’s unnecessary. And then, a couple of months ago, this magnificent quote: ““In a certain way, I’m the father of the vaccine because I was the one that pushed it.”

At least we can end this relatively sad commentary with a good laugh.

March 21, 2021

Two wrongs don’t always make a right… but three rights make a left! – a good rule to remember when it’s between 3pm and 6pm and you really need to turn left… but all the signs prohibit it. Skip ahead a block, turn right a few times… and you’re set.

But… back to two wrongs… first, there was a lot of misguided bullshit about the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots. Then, secondly, as a result of that, the European Union halted it “till further notice, out of an abundance of caution”…. caution of what? Caution of exercising critical thinking? Caution of not overreacting? Caution of not undermining a global initiative?

That all lasted a few days until some clearer thinkers came along and said, “Wait… wtf are we actually doing here…” but, by then, it was a little too late. A lot of time, and a lot of confidence, was lost.

The EU did the expected 180 and AZ vaccinations are ramping up. In fact, now, the EU chief is threatening to ban exports of AZ vaccine until Europeans can first get their hands on what they need. You know, the stuff that a week ago was considered toxic.

But, it’s a little late… not just because some of their vaccine rollouts have been significantly affected, but because a lot of that vaccine has already been shipped out, and it’s been sitting on U.S. shelves… and the U.S. has yet to approve the AZ vaccine… and so, rather than let it expire, they’re sending it off to be used… to Mexico, and… to Canada. We are getting one point five million doses of AZ vaccine, and that will most certainly accelerate things on this side of the border.

I said two wrongs… but reading back on all that, it took more than just a couple.

The result of all of that is now the EU’s problem, and it’s to our benefit. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes an abundance of caution is called for… but this entire episode (whose consequences, here in Canada, we’ll gratefully accept) could’ve and should’ve been avoided. A little bigger-picture thinking is called for, especially when the stakes are so high. It’s not a question of breaking rules; it’s a question of understanding when to apply them.

Like, for example… you want to turn left and it’s 4:30pm and the little red-slashed-circle says no, don’t do it… but there’s nobody coming and there’s no cop behind you. I’ll be honest… sometimes… temporarily banning myself from making that left turn makes as much sense as temporarily banning the AZ vaccine.

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