Age of hysteria, the sequel

You can find some amazing stuff cruising the interwhatsis these days, and by "amazing" I mean "completely batshite crazy." Examples abound.

Here's one: It seems in certain precincts, certain media foofs (Hi, Clay Travis!) are now declaring anti-vaxxer athletes the spiritual descendants of Muhammad Ali and others who protested the Vietnam War back in the 1960s.

No, really. I'm not making that up.

Here, for instance, is a recent Magic Twitter Thingy gem from the aforementioned Mr. Travis, one of the leading disseminators of misinformation about the Evil Jab: "Covid is our modern era Vietnam. And those who refused shots are like those who refused the draft, both defied the government."

Aye-yi-yi. Where do you even begin with that?

The analogy is absurd to anyone who was awake and alert during Vietnam, and who also has even a nodding acquaintance with history. Why, yes, Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving and all the other athletes who refused to be vaccinated are JUST like Ali and the others who stood against a war that was lost before it began. Why, certainly, defying what amounted to a work rule makes them all CIVIL RIGHTS HEROES, same as Ali and Tommie Smith and John Carlos and all the others.

Lord. Give me strength.

The foofs and anti-vaxxers are saying now that because the CDC has relaxed its COVID-19 rules, Dr. Fauci lied to us all along and should be in prison. And that Rodgers 'n' them were unfairly persecuted.  Besides, the vaccines don't work because the vaccinated are still getting the Bastard Plague, and also the vaccines themselves are killing more people than the disease itself.

Um, no. There's absolutely zero evidence of the latter that isn't whole-cloth bullstuff. And the former betrays ignorance of how vaccines work; getting vaccinated doesn't mean you won't get sick, it just means you aren't nearly as likely to wind up on a ventilator in some ICU.

Which is what we're seeing happening. The mutation of the disease into a less deadly if more contagious form, and the fact more people are vaccinated now, means we're seeing an uptick in cases, but not nearly as many clogging ICUs and overwhelming the medical system. 

The latter has been the primary marker for official response since all this began; if  some of that response now looks like overreaction, well, we all know what they say about hindsight. It looked a bit different at the time, when the death toll in the U.S. was zooming toward a million and hospital morgues were using freezer trucks to stash the overflow of bodies. 

Fact is, viruses, and the pandemics that sometimes arise from them, do not remain static, so neither does the response to them. That the death rate has slowed is not a vindication of the Rodgerses and Irvings who refused to be vaccinated. Nor is it a vindication of those (including a certain dunderheaded ex-president) who said during the worst of it that it wasn't as bad as people were saying. 

Those bodies stacked up in freezer trucks tended to refute that. If simple common sense didn't. 

Meanwhile, according to the people who keep track of such things, 89 percent of those still landing in the hospital with the Bastard Plague are unvaccinated. 

But, yeah, they're the Alis of their time, standing against a biological Vietnam War. Something I'll be sure to keep in mind the next time I visit the Wall in D.C., and scout around for a nice spot to place the newest monument to American greatness

The Vietnam Memorial ... 58,000 names on polished black granite ... and a statue of Aaron  Rodgers or Kyrie Irving, bravely standing against the tyranny of vaccination. 

Ah, yes.