There is no vaccine for stupid. There is no cure for cruel

Americans think that finding a vaccine is like defeating the final boss in a movie, wherein all the baddies drop dead. It doesn’t work like that. A vaccine needs to be delivered through functioning institutions and taken by a non-insane population, precisely the things they lack.

A country that can’t distribute pieces of plastic to doctors cannot distribute a vaccine. A country that can’t wear a fucking mask will not take a vaccine.

For the same reasons that America is fucked now, they will continue to be fucked even with a vaccine. Their population is simply too arrogant and dumb to hang together, so they will all hang separately. As I have said, America is dead. An American passport will be radioactive for years. Joe Biden won’t save them, and neither will a vaccine.

The science is willing but the body politic is weak. We may well get a vaccine for COVID-19, but there is no vaccine for stupid. I’m afraid that’s terminal.

If you can’t mask, don’t even ask

In one of the many rage strokes that science journalists are having these days, Ed Yong put it this way.

“A country that, 7 months into a pandemic, still cannot ensure that its healthcare workers have enough gowns and gloves and protective equipment is not going to be able to distribute a vaccine in an efficient way. It simply isn’t.” (CNN via)

He gives three predictions

1. A lot of people will resist getting it because they’ve been told for years to distrust experts.
2. The people who’ve been most marginalized (black, poor, elderly) will be last in line.
3. The deployment will be a logistical nightmare.

I will add one point, which is the worst. The vaccine itself will be dodgy. The vaccine itself will be rushed, politicized, and this will damage vaccination in general. You know, vaccinations, The Wall that protects us from pandemics past, which are now stirring like white walkers in their tombs.

Measles and whooping cough are already nibbling dumbass populations in California and New York. Once you defame vaccines in general, they’ll eat you alive. A botched COVID-19 vaccine will not just fail to protect you from the present, it will open you to attack from the past.

And honestly, what do you think is going to happen? This is an administration that has already announced hydroxychloroquine and plasma as cures (they’re not). This is a President who’s promoted drinking bleach. The CDC and FDC have been gelded in front of your eyes. Of course they’re going to announce a bullshit vaccine. This won’t just poison bodies. It will poison minds.

America has gone from a leader in public health to public enemy number one. It’s enough to give you a rage stroke.

Zombie nation

I’m not predicting the future. This has already happened. Expecting Trump to bring a real vaccine is like imagining that a truck — which just ran you over — is reversing to help. No, it’s just running you over again.

Americans are used to movies where they can drop one bomb or push one button and everything goes away. It’s just not like that. Vaccines require science, regulations, bureaucracy and trust to deliver — precisely the things that Republicans have been destroying for decades and Trump has been gleefully incinerating for years.

A vaccine is developed and delivered through the institutions Trump is defiling. It has to be taken by a population that he has already rallied against science in general. This has all happened in front of you. You are a country that can’t pull a 25-cent piece of fabric over your faces. What do you think is going to happen with a vaccine?

It’s not that America is going to die. You’re already dead. Republicans started eating your brains in the 80s and Democrats have merely added garnish in between. Americans let their own children die in schools. Americans sacrifice their grandparents to the stock market. No one else lives like this. It’s not living. America is the walking dead.

If you watch The Walking Dead today there’s a surprising reveal. In that universe, it’s quite possible (indeed likely) that the zombie apocalypse is only happening in America. That every other country figured out how to kill zombies and distribute PPE by Season 1, and that America alone has fallen into an endless dystopian hellscape.

In many ways this is what’s happened with COVID-19. The rest of the world — especially what you call the ‘developing’ world — has already figured this out.

We’ve suppressed COVID-19 in Mongolia, Trinidad & Tobago, Sri Lanka. China has helped a lot. South Korea and Taiwan have led the free world, and African countries have innovated and led. And yes, congratulation, one white woman helped the most remote nation on Earth survive. We’ll give you New Zealand. Literally billions of us are sitting, in cafes, with our kids in school, wonder WTF is wrong with America. The world watches America like anyone watches The Walking Dead.

In horror.

Sorry

A corrupt COVID-19 vaccine will not only not save America, it will make things worse. And let’s be honest. Your President is corrupt. Your institutions are corrupt. Your people are corrupted. You’re getting a corrupt vaccine.

Trump University, Trump Casinos — none of these things work. What do you think is going to happen with a Trump vaccine?

Even the best vaccine needs to be delivered through institutions that you have broken. It has to be taken by a population that has gone collectively insane. I’m sorry, but this just isn’t going to work. America has two major pre-existing conditions — stupidity and cruelty — and for that, I’m afraid, there is no cure.