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A COVID-19 patient, in a medically induced coma, is connected to life-sustaining devices at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in Oceanside, New York (Photo by Jeffrey Basinger/Newsday via Getty Images)
Monday brings with it a perfect storm of crises: a disastrous Gulf hurricane, the fog of defeat in Afghanistan, and a pandemic of the resolutely unvaccinated.
āIrwin Bernstein, a University of Georgia professor, made clear he was not willing to make exceptions to his policy that masks were mandatory in his class. āNo mask, no class,ā he wrote on the board. When one student refused to put one on properly, the professor resigned.ā
Bernstein had come out of retirement to teach psychology again, but insisted on the masks because of his age and underlying medical conditions. On the second day of class, a student showed up without a mask. Via Slate:
The student was asked to put on a mask and a fellow student gave her one but she refused to wear it over her nose, claiming she couldnāt breathe. The student proceeded to to ignore Bernstein when he continued to ask her to put on the mask correctly so he could continue teaching the psychology seminar. That is when Bernstein stopped pleading and announced he was resigning and left the class.
āAt that point I said that whereas I had risked my life to defend my country while in the Air Force, I was not willing to risk my life to teach a class with an unmasked student during this pandemic,ā Bernstein said in an email to the Red & Black, the universityās newspaper. āI then resigned my retiree-rehire position.āā¦
āProfessor Bernstein said, āThatās it. Iām retired,ā and we watched him pack all of his papers into his bag and walk out of the classroom,ā a student said.
We are left to wonder whether the maskless student takes pride in her exercise of āFreedom!ā
Youād hope that an incident like this might be a shock to the system; an occasion of shame, and an opportunity for soul-searching. But it wonāt be, since not even the COVID deaths of 637,000 Americans have shaken the walls of invincible ignorance, selfishness, and narcissism.
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This leads to a non-snarky, serious question: Why does this keep happening?
Before he fell ill with the virus, Valentine had spoken out against mask mandates and written a parody of The Beatlesā song āTaxmanā called āVaxmanā mocking the preventative. He sang it on the air.
āLet me tell you how it will be, and I donāt care if you agree, āCause Iām the Vaxman, yeah Iām the Vaxman,ā he sang. āIf you donāt like me coming round, be thankful I donāt hold you down.ā
Dick Farrel, 65, used his local talk show and social media to rail against Dr. Anthony Fauci, who he called a āpower tripping lying freak,ā and say that no one should get the coronavirus vaccine. When COVID-19 sent him to the hospital for three weeks, though, he changed his tune, urging friends to get vaccinated, friends told local station WPTV.
But as recently as July, Farrel wrote, āVaccine Bogus Bull Shid!, Two peeps I know, got vaxed, now have Corona, hospitalized critical. Thank you Moderna, FOR NOTHING!āā
He erroneously told his followers they would not need the vaccine if they had already survived COVID-19. The CDC has advised former coronavirus patients to get vaccinated.
One of his frequent guests, Sam Rohrer, said on DeYoungās show in February that the COVID-19 vaccines had āpotential problemsā and said they wouldnāt deliver on the promises national leaders put forth.
āCould this be another form of government control of the people?ā DeYoung asked Rohrer, to which the guest agreed.
When Roher finished his conversation about the ādeceptivenessā of government officials related to the vaccines, DeYoung called it āvery, very important information.ā
When Bernier was hospitalised with Covid-19, three weeks ago, WNDB operations manager Mark McKinney told local media: āIf youāve listened to his show, youāve heard him talk about how anti-vaccine he is on the air.ā
In December, Bernier told one guest: āIām not taking it ā¦ Are you kidding me? Mr Anti-Vax? Jeepers.ā
The Volusia county sheriff, Mike Chitwood, said the station told him Bernier, 65, died on Saturday night.
One of the last things that conservative talk show host did before he died of COVID was to send out this tweet:
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Forty-five-year-old H. Scott Apley was a member of the Texas Republican Partyās governing board. āI wish I lived in the area!ā he wrote this spring about a āmask burningā party in Cincinnati.
According to the Washington Post, he once replied on Twitter to a doctorās post celebrating the effectiveness of Pfizerās shots against the coronavirus: āYou are an absolute enemy of a free people.ā He remained a skeptic almost to the very end. Via the Wapo:
[On] Friday, the 45-year-old Dickinson City Council member republished a Facebook post implying that vaccines donāt work.
Two days later, Apley was admitted to a Galveston hospital with āpneumonia-like symptomsā and tested positive for coronavirus, according to an online fundraising campaign. He was sedated and put on a ventilator.
And just last week, the Texas organizer of an anti-mandate āFreedom Rally,ā also died of COVID. Caleb Wallace was 30 years old.
Wallace helped organize āThe Freedom Rallyā on July 4, 2020 ā a gathering described in a flyer as a peaceful protest by people āsick of the government being in control of our lives,ā the Standard-Times reported.
He also founded āThe San Angelo Freedom Defenders,ā a group āto educate and empower citizens to make informed choices concerning local, statewide, and national policy and to encourage them to actively participate in their duty to secure God-given and constitutionally protected rights,ā the groupās Facebook page stated.
Jessica Wallace said her husband got sick in late July, but āwas so hard-headed.ā
āHe didnāt want to see a doctor, because he didnāt want to be part of the statistics with COVID tests,ā she said.
He then tried unproven ivermectin ā a livestock dewormer that has been denounced by the FDA ā high doses of vitamin C, zinc aspirin and an inhaler, the Standard-Times reported.
Here is Wallace explaining his position on ābasic rights of breathing free air,ā and his opposition to āridiculous restrictions.ā
This is not an occasion for schadenfreude, because each story is a tragedy. Families have been devastated. Children left without parents.
But they raise the nagging question: why has this happened so often? Of course, itās possible these are just random anecdotes, but they feel like a dark and tragic pattern ā almost as if natural selection was trying very hard to make a point.
Are we just seeking an overworked COVID karma, or something more pro-active on the part of Team Virus? Did the hosts start to believe their own bullshit and begin to act accordingly? And have they encouraged others around them to do the same?
The through-line of each of these stories is that the victims were not merely skeptics ā they were active spreaders of disinformation. They also may have been spreaders of something worse.
They were influencers who mocked medical experts, flouted their defiance, and encouraged their listeners and followers ā and the people around them ā to do the same.
And they are not alone. Similar messages continue to broadcast daily on talk radio and broadcast on Fox News.
How many viewers and listeners take them both literally and seriously? And will share the same unpublicized fate? We will probably never know.
Good luck finding a coherent strain of conservative principles behind these GOP moves.
Until about five minutes ago, conservatives opposed centralized, top-down regulations and fiercely defended the right of businesses to make their own decisions. They also understood āpersonal responsibilityā was not a license to recklessly endanger others.
Until the latest war on vaccine passports, Republicans had also prided themselves on their belief in the principle of subsidiarity, which former House Speaker Paul Ryan defined as the belief that āgovernment closest to the people governs best.ā Big government, he argued, crowded out civic society, which was why conservative supported āhaving enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.ā
All of that now feels so last decade.
In its place, conservatives have embraced less an idea than a slogan. Opponents of the vaccine and mask mandates insist they are fighting to protect āFreedom!ā But their opposition to basic public health measures would have seemed bizarre to earlier generations of conservatives.
There has been no shortage of bad takes on the crisis in Afghanistan, from both sides of the political aisle. But one that stood out last Thursday, even as reports came in of a deadly attack in Kabul on U.S. troops and Afghan civilians, was this contribution from Manhattan Institute fellow and anti-wokeness crusader Christopher Rufo blaming the collapse of the American mission on too much woke ideology:
One neednāt be a fan of Robin DiAngelo, the diversity guru and White Fragility author whom even progressives mock these days, or of other āwokeā efforts to be skeptical of Rufoās glib explanation. For one thing, while the Biden administration certainly bears major responsibility for the Afghanistan debacle, it was the unwoke Trump administration that set the withdrawal of American troops in motion and entered peace talks with the Taliban. (Of course, one could always argue that the withdrawal would have been handled much better if Donald Trump were still Presidentāa āperfectā and ābeautifulā exit, no doubt.) For another, there is absolutely no evidence that āwokenessā in the military had anything to do with the American failure in Afghanistan. And, finally, the āgender programsā on which the United States spent close to $800 million between 2002 and 2019 had very little to do with āwokeā feminism or gender studies.
The Bulwark is home to Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Bill Kristol, JVL, Sam Stein, and more. We are the largest pro-democracy bundle on Substack for news and analysis on politics and cultureāsupported by a community built on good-faith.
