What are we going to do?

 

We are now 100 days into a new Administration. As promised, a pandemic response bill has been passed getting money out to the states and to people who desperately need it. The vaccines that are proving to stop Covid 19 dead in its tracks

 are available to anyone over age 16. (Fact – over 88 million people fully vaccinated and 6,000 cases of Covid among those people and not one death. That’s 99.9932% effective!) President Joe Biden has an approval rating of >59%, something his predecessor never even got close to achieving.

Countries around the world are excited that America is back and are welcoming us back to negotiating tables, looking to us for leadership, and are hopeful again after one of the darkest years in the past 100.

Vaccines save lives!

And yet…

Almost 25% of Americans have stated that they “won’t get the vaccine.” Despite its success and its effectiveness, they’ve decided that having to get it violates their rights. That it will “change their DNA.” That they “don’t know what’s in it.” That it’s a “government project to plant a chip so we can be tracked.” That it “hasn’t been proven to be safe, yet.” That “vaccines take years to create, how could this one be ready in months?” That “the pandemic is a hoax, so I don’t need it.”

I wish I were making these up. I’ve personally heard people say these things.

For the world to rid itself of this virus, we need to reach herd immunity and the percentages I’ve seen for how many people must be vaccinated go from 70%-90%. In other words, we’re likely to be dealing with this virus for years instead of months, because some people believe their rights trump the rights of everyone else. (Pun intended.)

Vaccines work, they’re incredibly safe and remarkably effective. They’re the reason we don’t have polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, and a host of other diseases today. They’re one of the reasons that the life expectancy in the world has doubled in the last century. Doubled as in gone from mid-40s to upper-80s.

I guess we should be thankful that more people are educated than ever before or we’d really have some issues on this, huh? (I wish I had an answer for these people but I struggle to cure stupidity.)

And still…

Police kill, on average, three people per day. An inordinate percentage of them are people of color. Rarely does the officer that fired the shot face any kind of charges as, more frequently, the killing is “justified” in the course of duty.

Stop killing people!

(Yes, I know that Derek Chauvin was found guilty in the killing of George Floyd last week. There was video shot by a bystander showing him kneeling on the dead man’s neck for over nine minutes, even after he’d stopped breathing. When the jury came back with a verdict, the country was holding its collective breath for a conviction. Why? Because that’s what happens, nearly every time! When the ratio flips the other way, come back and talk to me about how police are being unfairly treated.)

I’m not advocating “defunding” the police. I’m advocating better training, money spent on mental health services, and a culture change for those who serve. Think it shouldn’t?

Policing began in this country shortly after slavery stopped, during Jim Crow. Well-armed people were hired to “bring back” workers who had skipped out of their jobs. They were unfairly treated and “tried” and essentially put right back into slavery in many cases. These groups of “arrestors” eventually formed police forces after being “deputized” by the local sheriffs who were unable to keep up with the population growth. To this day, America ensures that its police forces are armed with the best weapons available while most other countries don’t. Google it. France, Germany, England, Australia, Austria, Iceland, Denmark, and Finland are all among the Top 10 police forces in the world and none of them carry guns. (Oddly enough, citizens of those countries have tougher access to guns, too. Wonder if there is a correlation?)

And somehow…

There is a percentage of the population of this country that believes this new administration, with all the things it’s working to bring us – health and healthcare, financial security, improved and repaired infrastructure, a safer climate – is heading in the wrong direction.

This is not a small percentage, either. It’s nearly 50% of the population and far more than that in some states and areas. In other words, it’s large enough to elect some people to positions of power in our country that can have a deleterious impact to all the good that’s being done.

In fact, they elected that last guy President and, to this day, a good many of them think he’s the greatest we’ve ever had and that the election was stolen from him. Why? Because HE said so. There is no science or logic that can change their minds, at least none that I’ve been able to find.

So, what are we going to do to keep our country headed in the right direction?

It's up to all of us!