A nation divided by pandemic, or splintered?

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, it was easy to write off as stupid the folks who touted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as go-to Covid-19 treatments. Easy because the efficacy of those drugs was refuted by the best virologists in the world.
It seemed obvious that people who denied the science of vaccine protection and masking were coming from a place of ignorance. They didn’t know better.
As hundreds of thousands got sick and died, and the virus spread, many of us hoped people would change their minds and take the vaccine — not just for themselves, but also for the common good.
But over these two years, there hasn’t been much of a learning curve. The anti-vaxxers stood firm. Many of them got Covid. An unthinkable number died. And still, people refuse to believe the simple scientific fact that vaccines keep people safer.
When thousands of folks who were double-vaccinated and boosted started getting breakthrough cases of the Omicron variant, that only reinforced the resistance among anti-vaxxers.

Over time, some of us liberal-minded opinion writers tried to be less judgmental and more empathic. Maybe we could understand where the doubters were coming from. Many people had justifiable grievances: The rollouts were uneven, or the messaging was sometimes confusing. Fringe groups offered comfort in troubling times.
Many of us engaged in intellectual gymnastics, trying to understand, to be patient and more tolerant of the resistance to vaccines and masks. Maybe we could bring the doubters along in time, we thought.
We were wrong. We are now more than two years in, with more than 900,000 dead. This is what I know: What we are suffering in America today isn’t a break, it’s a compound fracture. There aren’t two opposing groups tugging at one another. It isn’t just people who get vaccinated and those who won’t. There are multiple splinters in this gaping wound — some sharp, some violent, some groups out for power, and some out for blood.
Some people are ignorant: They don’t — or can’t — read the research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And they have lost faith in our government.
Another splinter is people who are not only ignorant about science, but put their faith in a former president and his acolytes. In their reality, the political supersedes all other considerations.
MAGA folks think the Biden administration is out to get them. At one point, people were posting notes online urging relatives to go into hospitals and remove their family members who were being treated for Covid. “They are trying to kill us,” one post said.
Sadly, many GOP officeholders are willing to traffic in lies to keep power.
Then there is the splinter of smart, highly educated people who are shamelessly harnessing the suspicion among millions of our citizens to their own political ends. They know the vaccines work. They know masking protects against infection. But they challenge the necessary mandates.
Think Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. They are among the most reprehensible of the lot because they know better.
Someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, an anti-masker and a general nut case, is a splinter unto herself. In a recent infamous speech, Greene said that Nancy Pelosi was using secret police in Congress, like the “gazpacho.” She meant “Gestapo,” of course, because she can never resist a Holocaust reference in her crazy accusations. If Donald Trump was and is a cancer in our American culture, then she is his metastasis.
There are also splinters of responsible people who understand and support the coronavirus science, but still have reservations about boosters or inoculating little kids. Many are impatient with the slow progress toward even more targeted vaccines and better therapeutics. We forget that the development of the vaccines was an astonishing medical achievement. Everyone is fatigued after two years of isolation and stress.
These varied splinters unite to one end: to challenge vaccines and protective masks. The resistance crosses social, educational and cultural lines.
The saddest group, I think, is those who are uninformed and vulnerable. They reject the science and the advice of the experts because they are caught in a paralyzing spasm of paranoia and anger. They are being cruelly used by the most heartless group, the super-smart members of the Republican Party who are stepping over dead bodies in a rush toward 2024.

Copyright 2022 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.