Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration announced its new guidance on the COVID-19 vaccine. Per NPR:
The agency is limiting the updated shots to people who are at risk for serious complications because they are 65 or older or have other health problems. Until now, COVID vaccines had been available to anyone 6 months and older regardless of their health.
(Source.)
This news was not unexpected; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s antipathy towards vaccinations, especially COVID vaccinations, is well established.
This quote from writer Jamelle Bouie came immediately to mind:
Except. In the last six months, the United States has become exactly that kind of regime. Donald Trump has federalized the National Guard twice and ordered the occupation of two cities. (I said of the occupation of Washington, in the style of a newspaper article that would cover this event in an African country: “Regional governors deployed militia units to occupy the nation’s capital this week in support of an unpopular president and paramilitary units aligned with him following the suspension of local government dominated by the opposition party in the city.”) ICE is terrorizing cities and deporting immigrants with no regard to the rule of the law. There’s a concentration camp in the Florida Everglades (though the courts have ordered it closed), and ICE has reopened Fort Bliss, which was used as Japanese internment camp in World War II, as a holding facility for undocumented immigrants before deportation From Garrett Graff‘s recent piece: “The United States, just months before its 250th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism. In the end, faster than I imagined possible, it did happen here. The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed.”
The United States is exactly that kind of regime. RFKjr may not be overseeing mass starvation, but he is certainly working to bring about mass illness and death. People will die because of RFKjr who, under another Cabinet secretary, would have otherwise lived.
For myself, with my heart issues, I believe I should be eligible for a COVID booster, but I don’t know. I have a cardiologist appointment next month, and I will be checking with my doctor then about my eligibility.
I feel like we are watching the slow-motion suicide of the United States as a great power, and 45% of the voting public wants this to happen. I don’t understand why.