Kylie Rancor
It’s been depressing to watch Republican politicians who repeatedly downplayed the pandemic and insisted people should go out and live their lives regardless of the risk be first in line for the vaccine. These are the people who have put so many Americans’ lives in danger, purely because they made a confounding decision to politicize something that should have united the country in acting for the greater good of everyone.
Somehow, these are the people who get protected from a potentially devastating virus ahead of the people they’ve failed.
But perhaps what’s even worse is when one of those politicians continues to denounce spread misinformation and attempt to turn their constituents against science and scientists even after getting the vaccine.
Marco Rubio is on the receiving end of the people’s ire after doing just that.
The Florida Senator tweeted a photo of him getting the vaccine on December 19th, noting that he’s “so confident that the #Covid19 vaccine is safe & effective,” and then had the audacity to turn around a week later and say this:
It’s been well-documented at this point that the public was advised not to buy up masks at the start of the pandemic because priority needed to go to healthcare workers who were interfacing with COVID-19 patients directly and in dire need of supplies.
Rubio’s claim that Fauci is “distorting” information about herd immunity is baseless, and this idea that “elite bubbles” (which we can assume somehow, magically, doesn’t include wealthy Republican politicians in Rubio’s mind) are “tricking” Americans is an active attempt to encourage distrust in scientists when we need it the most.
The hypocrite himself is getting blasted for this transparent nonsense, as people struggle for the millionth time this year to wrap their heads around how some Republicans would clearly rather let people die than simply be on the same team as Democrats during a worldwide crisis.
And plenty of people were willing to drag Rubio for any number of things over these comments, because pulling something like this when we’re in the process of trying to convince Americans to actually take the vaccine so that COVID-19 will stop dominating our lives is inexcusable.
Sometimes, it almost seems as though some politicians want us to stay in a pandemic indefinitely. If they didn’t, one would think they would actually encourage everyone to do the things and listen to the people that would get us out of it.