What is this madness?

Why haven't we treated COVID like 9/11?

It was as if the world came to a stop after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.  Nothing was the same after that.  Three thousand people lost their lives, and our lives as Americans changed forever, or so it has seemed.

Every single one of us is still living with the results of what 19 terrorists did on a single day 20 years ago, especially when it comes to travel by airplane.  We’re all familiar with the way TSA inspections have changed air travel.  There are the long lines at the security gates at airports.  Unless you have TSA “precheck” or have been lucky enough to get a boarding pass that lets you pass through a special line, you have to take off your jacket, belt, and shoes for screening.  You must remove your laptop and put it in a separate bin from your carry-on luggage.  You cannot travel with anything that the TSA thinks might be used as a weapon, including wine bottle corkscrews, fingernail files and clippers and scissors, screwdrivers…essentially anything sharp and pointed.  You can’t travel with any liquids in containers larger than 3 ounces, and you’re limited to only a few of those.  You have to pass through a scanner, and if you have any kind of surgical devices in your body, you have to have your body physically patted down to be allowed on an airplane.

Beginning in May of 2023, we will have to carry “Real ID” compliant identification to get on a federally regulated airplane – in effect, every commercial flight.  There will be no exceptions. 

And since the onslaught of the COVID pandemic, you are required to wear a mask in the airport and on the plane.

But I have a question:  with all the other requirements we have to endure, why aren’t we required to be vaccinated against COVID to travel on airplanes?  Think of it.  You’re locked into the familiar aluminum tube with a hundred or more other people.  You have no way of knowing if the person seated next to you or across the aisle has been recently exposed to a COVID positive person.  There’s no way to “socially distance” on an airplane and move away from other people.  As far as masks go, medical experts are constantly telling us that wearing a mask is “to protect others,” because even KN-95 masks can’t be relied upon to protect you.

So why doesn’t the FAA, or the Transportation Security Administration, or the Department of Homeland Security, or somebody in authority anyway, issue a requirement that we are vaccinated?  If we have to give up all these other “freedoms,” like the freedom to travel with an 8-ounce container of hair conditioner or a pair of fingernail clippers, why shouldn’t we be required to give up the “freedom” of traveling without protecting ourselves and others from this deadly disease by being vaccinated?

It’s madness.  Three thousand people died on 9/11.  But an average of 3,000 people have died from COVID every three days since the pandemic hit in January of 2020. 

More than 660,000 people have died.  That is nearly 100,000 people more than the population of the state of Wyoming! 

What do you think would happen if terrorists flew an airplane, or even two airplanes, filled with some sort of deadly gas and crashed into a field in Wyoming and everyone in that state was killed?

That is essentially what has happened to this country over the last 18 months.  An airplane filled with a deadly virus crashed into the United States of America killing 660,000 people. 

Everything changed after 9/11:  we started two shooting wars and launched a so-called “war on terror”; we formed an entirely new department of our government, the Department of Homeland Security, on which we spend $50 billion a year; we began a program of torture in questioning terrorist suspects; we built a special prison in Cuba to house suspected terrorists; we instituted a program of “rendition” to grab suspected terrorists off the streets and spirit them away to special “black site” interrogation centers where they were tortured and even killed; we allowed one of our intelligence agencies to sweep up billions of our electronic communications and examine them for “terrorist contacts”; we put the aforementioned requirements on air travelers; and we spent approximately 7 trillion dollars spinning our wheels in multiple foreign countries trying to insure that “the homeland” is not hit by another terrorist attack.

All of this because 3,000 people lost their lives. 

With 660,000 dead, what have we done?  Why, we’ve done what we usually do these days.  We started a culture war.

After President Biden announced his plans for vaccine mandates that will apply to government employees and contractors and companies with more than 100 employees, Republican governors and attorneys general across the country lined up to sue to stop these new federal mandates.  Today we read that certain labor unions have expressed opposition to mandated vaccines.

And they’re not even real mandates!

You can opt out of getting a vaccination by producing a test once a week proving you are not COVID positive. 

What is this madness?  With 660,000 dead, why don’t we have a whole new department of the federal government, “The Department of Pandemic Prevention and Treatment” or something like it? 

With 660,000 dead, why aren’t we spending $50 billion a year on COVID?  Why aren’t we dedicating another $50 billion a year to prevent the next pandemic?

With 660,000 dead, what are we doing arguing over masks?  With 660,000 dead, why are we arguing over vaccines mandates?  In the state of Texas alone – where the culture war over this disease thrives – 9,000 people have lost their lives from COVID since February.

All but 43 of them were unvaccinated. 

Since April of 2020, there have been 5 million children infected with COVID.  That is about 15 percent of all cases.  In the last month – August – 22.4 percent of COVID cases were among children.  In the week ending August 26 alone, 204,000 children were diagnosed with this terrible, deadly disease.  As of September 8, the CDC reported a total of 486 deaths among children under 18.  The rate children are dying from COVID is up 110 percent between July and September.

Children, who rely on us for protection from this disease, are getting sick and dying in record numbers.

What is this madness?  Why isn’t the Republican Party out there demanding that masks be mandated in schools and businesses and other closed public spaces?  Why don’t Republicans support a mandatory country-wide federal program to vaccinate every human being over the age of 12?

Don’t Republican governors care that their citizens and their children are dying from this horrible disease?

We pulled together after 9/11 and agreed to subject ourselves to all kinds of new mandates and requirements.  Why haven’t we pulled together since this pandemic hit and took 660,000 American lives? 

We know how to keep people from getting sick and dying.  We know how to keep red states from having to back up trucks to be used as mobile morgues outside hospitals.  After 18 months of experience with this disease, we know what works.

What is this madness?