December 29th – The Washington Post recently published a commentary entitled “No vaccine can end America’s ignorance and irrationality”.
The article said that the United States has developed a coronavirus vaccine in less than a year, but the coronavirus vaccine may save Americans from the coronavirus pandemic, but it will not cure the “ignor and irrational pandemic” of the United States. The full text is excerpted as follows:
In less than a year after the coronavirus pandemic, two vaccines in the United States have been approved. Scientific progress heralds the arrival of a new time, in which pioneering technology brings infinite possibilities, including the eradication of many diseases.
But let’s not be happy too early, because while making progress in the field of science, people’s irrational behavior has reached almost incredible levels.
Modern America has both admirable wisdom and dangerous stupidity. Benjamin Disraeli, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, created the concept of “two countries” in his 1845 novel Sybil, or The Two Nations.
They have no contact, no sympathy, and their habits, thoughts and feelings for each other. Love knows nothing, as if they are residents living in different regions, or residents of different planets. Disraeli implied at that time “the rich and the poor.” The construction of “two countries” was later applied to racial division and more recently to the political division between red and blue in the United States.
The biggest difference between rationality and irrationality in modern America is the difference between rationality and irrationality. About two-thirds of the nation live in “land of facts”, where information comes from mainstream media, while at least one-third live in places full of “alternative facts” and “fake news”, which are sourced from Fox News and Facebook, or right-wing media full of conspiracy theories.
There must be a lot of irrationality on the left, but irrationality seems to be more common on the right.
Those who are ignorant either believe that Bill Gates designed to profit from vaccinations is a biological weapon created by other countries that does not exist in fact, or that the novel coronavirus is transmitted through 5G signal towers, the danger is greatly exaggerated, and that masks are useless or harmful to stop the spread of the disease.
The existence of the “misinformation pandemic” can explain why the United States has advanced medical technology, but it has one of the highest COVID-19 deaths in the world.
Now, an anti-vaccine campaign is emerging in the United States. It falsely claims that childhood vaccines such as measles, mumps and rubella vaccines can cause autism. The supporters are mainly right-wingers who hold the deceptive banner of “freedom of health”.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 27 percent of respondents said they might not or at all be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus. This figure is frustratingly high.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, estimates that 75 to 80 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated to stop the spread of the disease, achieve “herd immunity” and allow people to return to normal lives.
Even if we reach this threshold and leave the coronavirus behind us, the resistance of reason in about one-third of the population will continue to pose a long-term danger to the United States.
As a doctor, Sanjay Gupta said on CNN, “Vaccines can take us from The disease is rescued, but it cannot save ourselves. We must save ourselves.”
