Sorry, but that’s what this sort of thing is doing:
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum and House Intelligence Committee Member Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., floated heavily criticized new potential ways to force Americans to submit to the coronavirus vaccine injection, one of which the panel on “The Five” called “despicable.”
Frum, now a writer for “The Atlantic” magazine, wrote a lengthy Twitter thread lamenting the lack of full compliance with vaccine recommendations and edicts, suggesting that one way to force Americans to get the jab would be to send unvaccinated patients to the back of the line if they had to go to the emergency room.
“Seems the best option is 1) Keep encouraging vaccines and boosters; 2) Impose vaccine mandates where it can be done; 3) Otherwise return to normal as fully as we can, especially the schools; and 4) Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last,” Frum wrote over the weekend.
“If, at this point, you are still unvaccinated, you are not a victim. You are a cause of the victimization of vulnerable others,” Frum claimed.
He further described opposition to vaccines as “dumb ass malignity” and lamented the fact that the “malignant minority” is opposed to other potential mandates like “no jab; no fly.”
That idea came in part from Swalwell, who along with Rep. Kai Kahele, D-Hawaii, voiced support for a policy that would essentially ban American citizens from traveling by air if they chose not to get vaccinated, according to Fox Business.
Swalwell pushed the idea of an air travel vaccine requirement on Twitter Sunday, writing a “prediction” that the country “can go from 60% Americans vaxxed to 80% if we require vaccines to fly.”
Kahele’s state has also been home to one of the nation’s strictest coronavirus-era entry requirements. Before the COVID vaccine, travelers from the mainland had to test negative for the coronavirus from a Honolulu-approved test vendor and then file documentation with the state’s “Safe Travels” website.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., furthermore recently introduced a bill co-sponsored by Swalwell, Kahele and Hawaii’s other House member, Ed Case, that would “direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States… is fully vaccinated against COVID–19.”
“Liberals are renewing their push for a forever pandemic,” he said.
“David Frum from ‘The Atlantic’ had a truly despicable idea suggesting treating unvaxxed patients last at hospitals.”
Host Dana Perino further wondered aloud whether Frum and the proponents of the vax-to-fly policy drafted by Torres were paying any attention to the stark message the American people sent them with the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey where Republicans overperformed in part because of voters’ frustration with both socioeconomic lockdown policies and leftist school curricula.
“And you had this other problem where you have fancy people who can go to a big party and mingle around without a mask, [while] anyone who works there had to wear a mask,” she added.
“There’s a huge disconnect … The inequality of this shaming is really big. We’ve never figured out a way to address natural immunity. We never figured out a way to talk about the fact that we do have [other] treatments.
“For an example, David Frum’s idea, like as you said, is despicable, and is also ridiculous because there are easy ways to treat it now with amazing advancements in science.”
This is why we have hospitals filling up. The unvaccinated are listening to lies like this.
But hey, they’ve got some elections to win:
Perino concluded by saying that making the liberal firebrand Swalwell “the face of telling Americans that you aren’t allowed to travel” would be the best way to start a nationwide popular backlash.
Thousands of people a day are still dying of COVID. The US has the worst record in the entire world despite readily available safe, effective and free vaccines. And no, there are no easy ways to treat it now, hence the thousands of deaths every day.
I’m sympathetic to the travel ban although the science suggests that airplanes are actually pretty safe. (Airports, however…) And obviously, we can’t refuse to treat unvaccinated people who are sick with COVID in the hospital. It isn’t how our system is designed and changing it would be a slippery slope we don’t want to experience. Even triage means that you must treat the person who has the best chance of survival, not the person who was most responsible about preventing their illness.
But there is no reason that people who refuse to vaccinate themselves and continue to endanger others shouldn’t face other social and economic sanctions. Nobody is guaranteed a job if they endanger their co-workers. And no business should be required to serve people who endanger their customers. And shaming people who do these things is the least a decent society should do. It may not be criminal but it is certainly immoral.