Tucker’s blood sacrifices

As a follow-up to Paul’s post about the deadly lies of the Republican death cult, this article about a pregnant woman who survived a particularly horrible case of COVID (“139 days at the hospital, 101 on a ventilator, 51 of those also on ECMO. She was still attached to an oxygen tank and had three tubes in her lungs to keep them inflated that were pretty painful”) and her family generated some discussion yesterday, some of it critical. And although most WaPo readers will know as soon as her dire situation is described that it is enormously unlikely that she had a breakthrough infection, it does take 13 grafs to get to this rather critical information:

When the vaccines came along, Chris became outspoken against them, espousing views that were common in his workplace and much of Texas but that put him at odds with his mother, sister and the close friends he had grown up with in the Heights, a liberal bastion in Houston. Despite his family’s pleading, Chris and Diana were adamant they did not need to be vaccinated. They did wear masks, but only when required.

Chris felt that vaccine mandates infringed on personal liberties, a perspective promoted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other prominent Republicans. And Chris and Diana alsoworried that the shots had been developed too quickly. As he liked to say, “God gave us our immune system and we can fight the viruses with our own immune system.” Diana, meanwhile, was leery of anything that might hurt the developing baby she carried. She knew that early stories linking the vaccines to miscarriage and infertility were false, but thought avoiding them was the prudent thing to do, like skipping wine, raw fish and unpasteurized cheese — especially given some of the medical community’s early hesitation. The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommend that all pregnant people get vaccinated.

Still, I remain some sympathy for the marks (as opposed to the grifters) of the Tucker/Rogan Anti-Vaxx Industrial Complex, and it’s striking how Abbott doesn’t deny that his anti-vaxxism was just pure identity politics:

Chris had never lost anyone close to him. And as he stared at his wife and saw her suffering, he couldn’t shake the question that kept popping into his head: “Was this my fault?”

During those long hours alone, he struggled with how strongly he had held to beliefs about the vaccines without really examining them. Increasingly, he felt a responsibility to warn others about his mistakes, so he began writing to friends, family and even strangers on Facebook, urging them to get the shots. Somewhere along the way, he got vaccinated himself.

“When you sit there and you see your wife on life support because of covid, you throw out politics,” he said later. “None of that matters anymore.”

Anti-vaxx Republican elites have an incomprehensible amount of blood on their hands, and while at least some of the people who experience unnecessary illness and death see the light it’s striking that the cons are completely incapable of overcoming their nihilism.

And some people you just can’t reach:

Doctors are optimistic that, physically, Diana will make a full recovery, but it will take time, and she’s still weak on her left side because of the strokes. Emotionally, she’s struggling. She has anxiety about seeing people and leaving her home for fear that she and loved ones will be infected with the virus.

“Things I used to do before, I can’t do anymore. … And so it’s hard for the kids and it’s hard for me, because you want to do so much more. And they want you to do so much more,” she said.

Most of their extended family who had resisted vaccines have now gotten them after learning of Diana’s ordeal, but a few remained reluctant. In January, they got word that Gilbert, one of Diana’s favorite relatives on Chris’s side who was also unvaccinated, had covid. He was one of the first people Chris had told about his feelings for Diana, and he was always joking to Chris that he had done well for himself in finding her.

Shortly before Gilbert was put on a ventilator, he sent a video to relatives describing his condition. Diana texted encouraging messages. “God is going to hug you very tight,” she typed into her phone, and sent a video of Miranda saying they were praying for him.

He died in late January, and Diana cried all night.

I will frankly never understand people who put so little value on their own lives.