Not in Kabul.
In Texas, a far deadlier place for Americans than Afghanistan ever was, or ever will be.
According to Johns Hopkins University’s Covid Tracker data base (here), Covid-19 has infected over 3.5 million Texans, and killed 56,577 of them. That’s approaching, and likely will soon surpass, the U.S. combat losses in the Vietnam War.
Caleb Wallace, 30, died for freedom from masks, vaccines, and testing.
His wife said he refused to get tested or see a doctor “because he didn’t want to be part of the statistics.” Well, he’s now a Covid statistic.
Wallace was the leader of the West Texas Minutemen, a rightwing militia group. He also spearheaded a group calling itself Freedom Defenders that “organized a boycott of local pro-mask businesses.” He leaves behind three broken-hearted young children (photo here) and a tearful pregnant wife (photo above), who welcomes donations for her family’s bills (here) as he’s no longer paying them.
What shall we say about such people? What can anyone say? Ryan Cooper, writing in The Week on August 27, 2021, had a lot to say (here). Excerpts below:
“Nine months after several highly effective coronavirus vaccines started to become available in America, and three to five months after they became available in pharmacies across the country, the pandemic is now as bad as it’s ever been in many states. In Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, and South Carolina, daily hospitalizations and deaths are at or near the March 2020 peak, while in Florida the previous records have been far surpassed.
“At the same time, conservative elites are doing their level best to spread the virus as much as possible, even as COVID-19 is killing conservatives by the thousands. It’s willful, malign negligence on a mind-boggling scale. I can barely keep up with the number of minor conservative figures who have died of COVID after refusing to take the vaccine.
“The radio host Phil Valentine is dead after having mocked the vaccine, and so is Newsmax host Dick Farell. The same is true of Texas Republican official Scott Apley. South Carolina party official Pressley Stutts continued to post anti-vaccine conspiracy theories from his COVID ICU bed until he died. And among the voting base, it’s total carnage.”
Caleb Wallace was still alive when Cooper wrote this, although he was on his last legs and soon would take his last shallow, labored, painful breaths. On August 27, his wife wrote, “Caleb won’t make it much longer. He will be moved to comfort care tomorrow.” He was. And he’s no more.
She also wrote, “He was an imperfect man but he loved his family and his little girls more than anything. To those who wished him death, I’m sorry his views and opinions hurt you. I prayed he’d come out of this with a new perspective and more appreciation for life. I can’t say much more than that because I can’t speak for him.” I’m not sure anyone wished him dead, I certainly hope not, but in any case she sounds like an awfully good woman. And more sensible than him, too.
We are not, after all, clones of the people we marry. She had her reasons. I don’t question them, and you shouldn’t either.
Returning to Mr. Cooper’s The Week opinion piece,
“The story that might have fully broken my brain for good is the recent plague of conservatives poisoning themselves with veterinary deworming paste. The idea is to get a drug called ivermectin, which has been promoted as yet another coronavirus miracle cure by various fringe quacks.”
You may recall that before horse de-wormer, people who believe vaccines are “poison” ingested bleach and fish tank cleaner. Cooper continues,
“The core behavior here is muleheaded, selfish spitefulness, adhered to even at great personal risk.”
But it doesn’t stop at risking their own lives.
“‘Freedom’ for movement conservatives is entirely one-directional: They get to spray virus fog whenever and wherever they want, and they also get to force you or your kids to not wear a mask.”
And,
“Because that behavior is so monstrous, there is a large incentive to make up comforting lies about how the pandemic is exaggerated or fake, or the vaccines don’t work — much facilitated by the fact that consuming right-wing media for very long tends to turn your brain into horse paste. Some right-wing voices pushing this line actually believe it, as shown by the lamented dead above.”
Then there are the cynical politicians — all Republicans, of course — who exploit the ignorance and stupidity of “the base.” For example, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “recently came down with COVID, but it turns out he had not only been vaccinated but also had already gotten a booster shot, and was getting daily tests.” Which you can’t get, but he’s better-connected than you, although not necessarily more valuable to our species.
Finally, Cooper says,
“Yet another wave of completely pointless death seems to be motivating a lot of people to finally get vaccinated — but thus far the procrastinators, not the ideological, hard core antivaxxers”
are getting vaccinated.
Or thinking about it. But sometimes they wait too long. Last month, Dr. Brytny Cobia, who works in a Birmingham, Alabama, hospital said, “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late. A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.” (See story here.)
What about the hard-core holdouts, such as the late Mr. Wallace, and others like him? Such as this Georgia sheriff’s captain who debunked vaccines and promoted horse pills, and, like Mr. Wallace, is now on the other side of the river. Cooper thinks “the pandemic will keep burning out of control until just about every conservative vaccine refusenik has gotten COVID. Another few months ought to do it.”
If you ask me, death isn’t freedom, except maybe from taxes. Maybe, for them, that alone makes dying worth it.