I went a few rounds with TPM Reader EG over the last couple days over whether President Biden’s vaccine and test mandate will be the precipitating event leading to the breakdown of civil order in the US which now seems perpetually just around the bend. That’s not at all what I see coming. I’m all for the mandate. If anything I think Biden should be more aggressive. But I was curious that EG did see it unfolding this way.
In his view, the reports of an upstate New York hospital having to shutter its maternity ward because a group of health care workers had quit their jobs rather than be vaccinated is the leading edge of a coming wave. He sees hospitals having to reduce capacity just as COVID is filling ICUs in the fall. Then there are police, one of the least vaccinated of professions. He sees waves of police quitting their jobs, putting more pressure on efforts to tamp down on COVID-era crime surges and creating a pool of out of work LEOs ready to provide the muscle for future insurrections.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is re-upping his main and, seemingly, only defense against those in his state who dare to buck his rules against COVID-19 mitigation measures: He’s threatening more of the little guys with fines again.
The Washington Post has written up this story of an Alabama man who needed an ICU bed to treat a cardiac issue and none could be found for him in his home state. His home town hospital in Cullman, Alabama contacted 43 other hospitals in the state but none had room for him. He was eventually airlifted to a hospital in neighboring Mississippi where he died. The story garnered attention because his family included a plea for people to get vaccinated in Ray DeMonia’s obituary.
But there’s one detail about this story – or at least arguable tied to the story – that the Post doesn’t mention. Cullman, Alabama was the site of what the Alabama state GOP billed as the largest political rally in Alabama history just a couple days before DeMonia went to the hospital. The state GOP claimed 50,000 turned out for the rally in Cullman. Few if any seemed to be masked.