Lies Beget Tragedy
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Dan Rather, Elliot Kirschner, and Steady Team |
It is impossible to
predict the future, but I can say one thing with utter certainty. Many
Americans who are alive today — people who are breathing, laughing, loving —
will die in the months ahead from a horrific disease for which there now is
remarkably effective protection. In other words, their deaths are, right now,
largely preventable. This roll call of the deceased will likely total in the
thousands upon thousands, to say nothing of the countless more who will suffer needlessly,
perhaps for years to come
Many of these people who will soon be gasping for air in intensive care units are currently boasting of their health, mocking COVID fears as overblown, and flaunting their refusal to get the vaccine. Their proud hubris will not make their deaths less tragic. Families will be torn apart, communities broken, pain and suffering will ripple across generations. Knowing this awaiting tragedy breaks my heart. We can already see it coming.
I find myself thinking
often about those who will soon turn from health, to illness, and for some,
sadly death. We cannot assign names or faces yet to these looming fates. We do
not know who will be struck. Like armies massing for battle we can look around
and know many who are among us today will not survive this moment. But unlike
war where death strikes with cruel randomness, we can already see that this
battle for the health of our country is proceeding like public health
professionals had feared. And it all comes back to that vaccine.
The national
inoculation rate, while pretty impressive, is stalling. And it masks incredible
variation, not only at the state level, but county by county. There are many
reasons for vaccine hesitancy. Young adults, who even in normal times tend to
feel invincible, have gotten the wrong message that COVID isn’t dangerous for
them. And they can be a reservoir for it spreading to others. Marginalized
communities, who don’t have access to reliable health care and are fearful of a
legacy of medical exploitation, also have lower rates. But a particularly
fraught vaccine crisis is breaking along our political divide. Supporters of
the former president tend to dismiss both the seriousness of the pandemic and
the utility of the vaccine.
In all these cases, misinformation about the vaccine is crowding out the message from doctors and public health officials. Science is being undermined by lies and these lies are deadly. Already we are seeing case rates rising in places of low vaccination rates, just as you would expect. And the danger is only being exacerbated by the new, and very concerning, Delta Variant. It is causing huge spikes in infections around the world, and now in the United States. It has epidemiologists very worried. We all need to pay heed to the experts.
Sadly, lies spreading
online are difficult to counteract. But In the case of Republican voters, the
source of a lot of the misinformation around the disease and the vaccine is
readily apparent. All one has to do is watch or listen to rightwing media and
the politicians who seek to curry favor, votes, and money by shamelessly
basking in dangerous ignorance. This is not some shadow disinformation
campaign. It is a cult of thinking that permeates one of the two major
political parties of the country. Not all Republicans, to be sure, feel this
way. A lot of local officials in particular are trying to advocate for
vaccines. But the chest thumping, proud dismissal of experts, the “COVID
precautions are tyranny on par with the Nazis” crowd isn’t listening. They have
been basking in this toxic insanity now for years.
We are living in a moment of surreal societal chasms. We are being split into factions, where objectively superficial differences are exploited by those who seek power and wealth by dividing us. These cynical men and women use lies and fear-mongering to rile up their base. In truth, they see these masses as pawns for them and their cronies to play with and sacrifice. How many of the executives or on-air hosts at Fox News do you think haven’t been vaccinated?
The pull of
disinformation, rising in its volume and ubiquity in the echo chambers of our
current media landscape, is too strong for many to resist. History teaches us
that we humans are susceptible to lies, and often the bigger the lies the more
indelible is their impact. We are drawn to seek protection in the familiar, to
see “others” as threats. Our socialization, education, and governmental
structure has provided a counterbalance at times to our baser and more destructive
instincts. But the danger always lurks for our unity to falter, especially when
it is assaulted from within our national ranks.
Republican elected
officials have realized that they can win in the short term by absolving
themselves of any responsibility for planning for the future. We can see this
in the tax cuts that never pay for themselves, the dismissal of our climate
crisis, the forgoing of desperate infrastructure needs, the wars of choice that
are started but not finished, the assault on education funding, and any other
host of issues. This is not only a partisan problem. Democrats have faltered
many times in planning for the future. There is something particularly human it
seems that elevates the immediate crises over those that loom over the horizon.
But the Republicans have weaponized this instinct to wage war on their
political opponents, and on the truth.
The toll of this assault can be measured in many ways, and the bill for inaction is coming due. Like the horrific tragedy of the building collapse in Florida, we know that waiting to address our structural problems — both the literal and the figurative — is a prelude to calamity. It is how we have hundreds of thousands of needless deaths from COVID, and the many more that will come. It is how we have the continued deterioration of our climate. It is how we have entrenched racial injustice. As I mentioned above, so much of the pain we are now feeling can be avoided. That we aren’t doing so on a wide host of issues only compounds the scale of tragedy.
But I want to end this
essay with a countervailing observation that was also in the news recently. The
Supreme Court decided not to hear a case around transgender bathrooms, thus
leaving in place a lower court ruling that allowed a Virginia student to use
the bathroom of his choice, overruling a local school board. Now this is likely
not the final say in this matter, but it is progress nonetheless. In my
book What Unites Us, I wrote about how far we as a nation (and me
personally) have come on LGBTQ rights, even though there is still a long way to
go. And I hold this up as not only worthy of celebration on its own merits, but
a sign that progress even against seemingly impossible odds, is possible.
We are likely in for
many difficult challenges ahead. This pandemic is not over. Our democracy is under
attack. We have a long way to go for racial justice. All this is true. But
there can also be victories. We can also change the fate of the future. We can
see hope, particularly in younger generations. What we need is to not give up.
To not lose our own humanity.
The cult around the
former president is strong, and it is dangerous. It is literally a matter of
life and death — fueled by lies. But the fact that it is built upon lies can
also be its undoing. Ultimately, none of us can dismiss reality in the long
term. The vaccine is proof of that. The virus doesn’t care what Tucker Carlson
says. It will exploit weakness and be repelled by strength. Science is
strength. The truth is strength. And I cannot help but think that these
strengths will ultimately win out.
So I come to you with
both sadness, and hope. Reality is here and it will teach its lessons. We can,
and I suspect we will, adapt and build resilience. But we will have done so on
a foundation of a delaying of action that was unnecessary. And this will leave
unnecessary pain and suffering in its wake.