News From the Home Front
Many of us hoped the virus would be conquered once the vaccines were available, but the pandemic, sometimes referred to now as the pandemic of the unvaccinated, only grows worse.
Not only are people refusing to be vaccinated, but more and more people are refusing to wear masks—and this despite knowing that even those people who do not show any symptoms of covid can actually have it, and can pass it on to others. People who have taken antibody tests are actually surprised to learn those antibodies are in their systems, despite their not having taken the vaccine.
Those people—may we call them the defiantly unclean?—surely realize that if they did have an undiagnosed case of covid, they contracted it because they were not wearing masks. And, by not wearing masks, they likely infected friends, family members, children, even strangers. That’s how the virus works. There is no way to know how many people have died because of the abject, bare-faced, entitled irresponsibility of the defiantly unclean. They will deny this, of course, because to admit to such a thing might make them realize they are neither the victims nor the good guys in this situation.
Lately, more and more of us see them as the enemy.
Hospitals are being forced to let people die, because the defiantly unclean have filled so many hospital beds. Right now this situation exists in only a few states, but other states are making arrangements to deal with the catastrophe, which seems to be worsening as the never-vaxxers stand rooted in proud delusion.
And when the defiantly unclean are given the opportunity to mitigate some of the harm they have caused their country, their world, they whine about “freedoms.” They cling to the self-centered, outrageous claim that their freedom from masks and vaccines trumps everyone else’s right to live.
Just the other day, I saw a news clip in which Trump, perhaps finally realizing the disaster brought about by the uncompromising rejection of all things scientific, told a gathering of his angry proselytes that they actually should be vaccinated. After all, he has been vaccinated. His whole family has been vaccinated. They no longer take chances with their health, although they still encourage their followers, in most cases, to take chances with their own.
The look on his face when those erstwhile sycophants began to boo him was a sight to behold. “Oh! I know. I know,” he blurted. “Your freedoms. Your freedoms.”
I am not usually one to quote the Bible. Trump claims to have read the Bible, but he might not have been so surprised by the sudden hostility from proselytes who once believed his every word, if he had ever read, and paid attention to, Matthew 23:15.
In this passage, Christ is excoriating the scribes and Pharisees for their part in recklessly warping the minds of those who believed the lies of scribes and Pharisees:
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.”
