From CDC.gov

I was going to whine a bit about how the COVID vaccine has remained political – instead of science based — and because of that we’re starting to dig ourselves deeper into the COVID hole.

But over at Talking Points Memo, a TPM reader wrote in and spelled things out more clearly than I could:

It’s worth pausing every so often to admire (if that’s the right word) the sheer insanity of the pandemic situation in the United States. Specifically: despite the widespread availability of vaccines for Covid; despite the fact that the vaccines are free; despite the fact that they are astonishingly effective at preventing a disease that is frequently fatal and often results in long-term disability; despite the fact that mass vaccination is clearly the only way we’re going to get out of the Covid pandemic that doesn’t involve mass suffering and trauma on an unimaginable scale; nonetheless, the US vaccination campaign is failing.

And it’s failing because of politics (and stupidity, but that’s another entry…).

The same people wailing about how the Covid vaccine is just a way to inject a tracking microchip are probably clutching their smartphones, which are GIANT trackers that collect more information about you than most would be comfortable with.

Vaccines were supposed to be the silver bullet that ended the pandemic, allowed us to take off masks and congregate again. And in areas where people made the effort to get vaccinated, that has become a reality.

Yet in the other, primarily Red areas….

Here’s an idea – As the Republicans tried to scare people about the Affordable Cara Act (ACA) by calling it Obamacare, why not use the same trick for the Covid vaccines: Call them Trump vaccines!

Why not? To be fair, they were developed during his administration, and stroking Trump’s ego would probably get him to repeat the phrase non-stop. Suddenly, the vaccines would be politically acceptable.

Hey, it’ll never happen, but I can dream, can’t I?