Deny Congress the Vaccine
By: Chase Griffin
Tags: Congress, Politics, Vaccines, Covid 19

They condemned millions to poverty, sickness, and starvation, then ran to the front of the immunization line.

Image by 1778011 on Pixabay

The COVID-19 pandemic never had to be as nightmarishly devastating as it has been and continues to be. China, the favorite target of Western pundits, demonstrated for the world exactly how to combat the pandemic in its early stages, through the use of aggressive, bold government action, mass testing, and a citizenry who could be trusted to be reasonable enough to acquiesce to temporary disruptions and discomforts in the name of preserving the greater good. Of course, at the onset of the pandemic any American who has suffered and struggled under the gangster capitalist regime which holds the country hostage knew just how ominous the future looked, and how right they were shown to be.

As if following a script, Republicans and Democrats shamefully abdicated their most basic responsibilities in predictable fashion: Donald Trump downplayed, lied, and fumbled his way through a fatally negligent response, Republicans screamed about personal liberty and deficits while refusing substantial financial aid and encouraging their legions of religious fundamentalist dullards to break any COVID-related restrictions in sight, and Democrats offered Thatcher-esque austerity and empty sloganeering while electing a candidate for president who proudly ran on a pro-private insurance platform. Oh, and both parties also happened to find a way to agree to one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history, coupled with a pitiful $1,200 stimulus payment to buy their constituent’s silence.

The entire pandemic has laid bare the depravity of the U.S. Congress; while they watched Donald Trump sentence hundreds of thousands to death, they saw an opportunity to get rich and throw some extra tax money to their friends in the banking and arms industries. The behavior of the federal government during the pandemic has resembled that of a criminal organization, murdering and looting its people while redistributing their stolen wealth to their allies. Seemingly unencumbered with the fate of 300,000,000 Americans, they did less than the absolute bare minimum, patted themselves on the back, and resumed business as usual, displaying little to no concern for even the long-term viability of this scheme that they have disguised as representative government.

Naturally, none of this stopped its members from jumping to the front of the line for a vaccine.

The very same men and women who so giddily condemned scores of Americans to brave the dual attacks of the pandemic and its ensuing economic meltdown alone, who flatly refused to issue any additional aid, who berated desperate workers for violating COVID regulations in a long-shot effort to survive, who left nurses and doctors to treat the victims while wearing trash bags in place of protective equipment, who are perfectly fine with pharmaceutical companies turning the profit of a lifetime off of the government’s crimes against its people so long as they own the requisite stocks, these same men and women found their COVID response so throughly sufficient that they deserve priority immunization from the disease that has been rampaging throughout the United States.

Their contempt for average people and workers is palpable. They’re not misguided or well-intentioned, they fundamentally loathe those people who dare demand of them any tangible improvements in their material conditions. The Congress thinks so highly of its fellow citizens that it quite literally condemned them to death; they would rather a deadly virus rip through the working classes than actually have to pretend that they care.

Congress must own this collective failure. Never has every institution of the federal government so carelessly, publicly, and flagrantly failed its people in such a fashion. There would be no punishment more appropriate or fitting than to deny them the vaccine in the same way that they denied hundreds of millions of people the help they pleaded for, to reward their hard work with the sort of rugged individualism they demand of their constituents. The Congress only responds to self-interest; they did nothing precisely because they knew their salaries were safe, their healthcare provided for, and their dose of the vaccine reserved.

The members of Congress are not extraordinary people by nature, and in fact, not a few are of downright below-average intelligence (see: the House GOP). The thought of turning this unexceptional, decaying gerontocracy loose in the very conditions they created, with no choice but to stand in a queue with the rest of us for a vaccine, would undoubtedly bring them to the table. Perhaps a few of its more elderly members should be forced to enter a nursing home, unprotected by modern medicine and isolated while their children and grandchildren see their wages and health insurance vanish overnight. After all, this was the fate they inflicted upon so many innocent people; clearly, they take no issue with it.

Republicans spent much of the summer decrying “looters and rioters,” all the while they pilfered the public coffers and secured the sorts of private accommodations they so wantonly accuse those in socialist nations of doing; Democrats meanwhile pledged action on racist violence while ignoring the socioeconomic disparities letting the public health crisis turn into a de facto ethnic cleansing; both did so, amongst a host of other hypocritical and loathsome actions, knowing that they would have priority access to a vaccine that the people paid for. Most insultingly (and transparently), the members of Congress which so blatantly embrace religion, anti-intellectualism, and deny scientific facts will almost certainly take the vaccine before once again encouraging their supporters to ignore public health information and guidelines to the detriment of entire communities.

All of Congress must accept their role in creating this generational disaster. Why should they not confront it in the same way they forced the rest of the country to and display the individual mettle they expect of everybody else? Until the people, every last one, receive a vaccine, Congressional immunizations belong squarely at the bottom of the priority list. This ship is sinking because of their inaction- don’t let them steal the lifeboats too.