The world’s most preventable pandemic continues to generate headlines that belong to 17th-century medicine. From NPR:
At one local hospital in upstate New York, dozens of staff members walked away from their jobs after refusing to get vaccinated. The move has seriously disrupted care in the process. Lewis County General Hospital in Lowville, N.Y., announced Friday that it is pausing maternity services later this month because dozens of staff members quit rather than get COVID-19 vaccines.
Find new careers, all of you.
As of Friday, 30 employees had resigned from Lewis County General Hospital. At least 464 people in the Lewis County Health System have been vaccinated — a 73% immunization rate among employees. Separately, there are 165 workers who haven't been vaccinated and haven't shared yet what their plans are as the state's Sept. 27 deadline for a first shot approaches.
Then there’s this unfortunate woman who lived free…and died. However, her beatification by the horse-paste crowd is well underway. From the Chicago Tribune:
For more than a week, her supporters had besieged Resurrection with demands that Wolski be given ivermectin. The medication is typically used to treat diseases caused by parasitic worms, but has been hailed as a COVID-19 cure by some despite a lack of definitive scientific proof or government authorization…Over the weekend, some of Wolski’s supporters tried to get the hospital to discharge her.
A video posted Sunday night to the Telegram channel of right-wing attorney Lin Wood shows him demanding over the phone that the hospital release Wolski to a person holding her medical power of attorney. “There’s an ambulance waiting for her outside, there’s a medical doctor waiting for her to treat her,” he said. “If you do not release her, you’re going to be guilty of murder. Do you understand what murder is?”
If you think you may be seeing the birth of the next Terri Schiavo phenomenon, trust that feeling as we go forward.
And, finally, there is this truly awful story from AL.com. Remember the wankfest that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago held almost a month ago in the city of Cullman, Alabama? Well, Cullman is back in the news, and in an even more tragic way.
In his obituary, DeMonia’s family says hospitals across the South swelled with COVID-19 patients meant that medical staff at Cullman Regional Medical Center had to look elsewhere. “In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non COVID related emergencies,” the obituary reads. “Due to COVID 19, CRMC emergency staff contacted 43 hospitals in 3 states in search of a Cardiac ICU bed and finally located one in Meridian, MS. He would not want any other family to go through what his did.”
Finally, via the Washington Post, we find that the horse-paste lobby has found a kind of ally in the woo-woo health-cult community.
For many, the term “misinformation” conjures up images of conspiracy-theory chat forums and Russian bots. But an alarming amount of it is reaching audiences in the health and wellness realms. Many social media influencers who focus on natural remedies, holistic health and new age spirituality have been sharing posts and videos questioning the wisdom of vaccinating against the coronavirus. Public health experts say widespread vaccine hesitancy increases the threat of the virus mutating and helps keep the pandemic raging.
As the Post takes pains to point out, the wellness industry had a major role in the original anti-vax movement back when it first took off in the Jenny McCarthy days. That part of the movement never died. It just became less of a news story. But it lived on in Facebook groups and elsewhere in the virtual crowdspace. Now, it seems, this universe of followers has found its way back to the main chance.
There’s a whole genre of accounts on social media that mix in vaccine skepticism with general healthy living posts. Evie Kevish, a CrossFitter and “certified juice therapist,” who frequently posts on Instagram about which vegetables and fruits she’s juicing, wore a shirt emblazoned with “VACCINES ARE POISON” in a video she posted on June 27. Tania Khazaal, known online as “Tania the Herbalist,” often posts self-portraits with long captions about eating non-GMO foods and refusing any ingestible products that contain fluoride, alcohol and aluminum. She encourages her nearly 50,000 followers to “eliminate pills and introduce plants.” She’s also been posting vaccine-skeptical content since April 2020. In an email, Khazaal said she wasn’t against vaccines, but believed that skeptical voices were being silenced. “I’m not anti anything. I’m pro-choice and pro-freedom,” she said. Kevish did not respond to requests for comment.
In a lovely detail, the Cullman Times describes Ray DeMonia, who died of a heart ailment largely because they couldn’t find him an ICU bed anywhere within 200 miles of Cullman, as a second-generation antique dealer and auctioneer with a great affection for his craft.
A 2011 profile of DeMonia in The Times described his style: “His showmanship makes for a fun day, watching him encourage, cajole and entice his audience is a thing of beauty. He knows his customers, and plays to them, eliciting moans and bursts of laughter at his antics. Often, during the course of the auction, he will stop and educate his buyers. ‘Look folks, this is genuine, period Chippendale, in perfect condition,’ he says, pointing out the attributes of the piece, turning it over to show how carefully crafted it is, or unique details such as the maker’s signature.”…
…Along with his antique business and auctioneering, he managed estate sales and appraised pieces for insurance coverage. He once found a painting by Claude Monet in an estate sale. It sold at auction to a buyer in Huntsville. “Not many people can say they’ve held a Monet,” he told The Times.
And now, because of coddled and empowered ignorance, there’s one fewer. As a country, we should be ashamed of that.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
