Delta variant deadly…but may save GOP lives

Yesterday 51,939 Americans tested positive for covid. 261 died. The 14 day average is up 170% for infections and 20% for deaths.  In its 18 months covid has infected 35,199,465 and killed 626,762 Americans.

Experts attribute the increases to the highly infectious and deadly Delta variant being spread by the 40% of Americans not fully vaccinated. Most new infections and deaths are unvaccinated adults.

As bad as the Delta variant is, what’s worse in the year and a half of pandemic is the Republican Party’s continued use of pandemic for political purposes. Trump’s GOP politicized it from Day One, creating a false and deadly re-election meme that failed to re-elect him but sentenced tens, possibly hundreds of thousands to unnecessary deaths.

Mocking candidate Biden for wearing masks and refusing to wear one himself may have been the single shocking example of this meme. But the litany of denial, obstruction, false hopes and falsehoods are too numerous to explain away as simple, one off malfeasance. They were the roadmap to re-election.

With infections, death and closings winding down, the GOP saw no need to reverse course on the most disease and death causing electoral strategy in history.

But with Delta variant exploding, over the weekend an extraordinary event. Top Republican officials and pundits came out foursquare for vaccination. My reaction? “Where were you folks 18 months ago?” The most outrageous was top rated Sean Hannity who said with a straight face “Take covid seriously. I can’t say this enough.” That was after 18 months of Hannity saying nothing helpful on pandemic.  

But not all Republican dead-enders jumped on board. Former Trump National Security Adviser (National Covid Death Advisor would be more appropriate) Michael Flynn called out Hannity and other Republicans for cowering to the new GOP political correctness.

It’s too early to determine how this GOP pivot on vaccinations will move the needle of fully vaccinated adults from 60% to the needed 70%. But possibly believing their re-election meme was killing off the true believers in their base, this new GOP strategy may simply reflect the reality that it needs fully vaccinated supporters still healthy enough to vote in the November ’22 election.