There are plenty of heartbreaking—and often exasperating—stories about unvaccinated Americans dying of COVID-19. While these are timely cautionary tales for the unvaxxed, too often, these folks are hurting not just themselves but their communities and loved ones as well. The misery they leave in their wake—the grieving family members they abandon, the beleaguered health care workers they retraumatize, and the sickness they spread among their neighbors—is often monumental.
But while the “freedom” to get sick and die through your own negligence is fairly well enshrined in our culture (the person who adopts an unhealthy diet and dies prematurely is pretty much only hurting himself, after all), when it comes to a communicable disease, those putative freedoms go out the window.
The novel coronavirus could have been all but wiped out in our country by now if more people had done the sensible and, well, Christian thing and gotten vaccinated as soon as they were able. Because they didn’t, at least not in sufficient numbers, the delta variant is burning through our country like a brush fire—leaving hospital systems overstretched and overwhelmed—and it isn’t only COVID patients who are suffering and dying.
CBS This Morning correspondent David Begnaud recently reported on one patient—an Afghanistan war veteran—whose death can be directly tied to the foolish decisions of his fellow Texans—the majority of whom are still not fully vaccinated—as well as the pro-virus policies of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. It’s a tragic story about an awful, lonely death that could have easily been avoided if not for the growing cohort of horse-paste eaters in our midst.
From CBS News:
Transcript:
It's one thing to kill yourself through vaccine and mask refusal. Of course, it’s not recommended, but it’s clearly not the same as negligently killing another human being. Yet somewhere along the line, a significant percentage of our fellow Americans decided it wasn’t enough to drink yourself to death—you needed to drive drunk, too, lest your “freedoms” be snatched away from you in the dead of night.
Dan Wilkinson’s death is a direct result of that bastardization and boneheaded misinterpretation of our sacred freedoms. Hopefully, people will start to understand that the freedoms they hold so dear should include the right to pursue not just liberty and happiness but also life.
It’s not just about one person and their freedoms, after all. It’s about all of us. That's what these people have never understood.
I wonder if they ever will.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
But while the “freedom” to get sick and die through your own negligence is fairly well enshrined in our culture (the person who adopts an unhealthy diet and dies prematurely is pretty much only hurting himself, after all), when it comes to a communicable disease, those putative freedoms go out the window.
The novel coronavirus could have been all but wiped out in our country by now if more people had done the sensible and, well, Christian thing and gotten vaccinated as soon as they were able. Because they didn’t, at least not in sufficient numbers, the delta variant is burning through our country like a brush fire—leaving hospital systems overstretched and overwhelmed—and it isn’t only COVID patients who are suffering and dying.
CBS This Morning correspondent David Begnaud recently reported on one patient—an Afghanistan war veteran—whose death can be directly tied to the foolish decisions of his fellow Texans—the majority of whom are still not fully vaccinated—as well as the pro-virus policies of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. It’s a tragic story about an awful, lonely death that could have easily been avoided if not for the growing cohort of horse-paste eaters in our midst.
From CBS News:
Transcript:
It's one thing to kill yourself through vaccine and mask refusal. Of course, it’s not recommended, but it’s clearly not the same as negligently killing another human being. Yet somewhere along the line, a significant percentage of our fellow Americans decided it wasn’t enough to drink yourself to death—you needed to drive drunk, too, lest your “freedoms” be snatched away from you in the dead of night.
Dan Wilkinson’s death is a direct result of that bastardization and boneheaded misinterpretation of our sacred freedoms. Hopefully, people will start to understand that the freedoms they hold so dear should include the right to pursue not just liberty and happiness but also life.
It’s not just about one person and their freedoms, after all. It’s about all of us. That's what these people have never understood.
I wonder if they ever will.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.