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Trust me, it is not what you think
We have settled into our camps: The vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
The vaccinated are likely still wearing masks when required and enjoying the freedom of the breeze when they aren’t, though they still give that coughing person a suspicious eye. This group is simple.
The unvaccinated camp is…not. One subset simply can’t get vaccinated, due to either a lack of available vaccines or pre-existing conditions that make the vaccine too risky (even though it is proven safe and effective for most people).
Another subset still follows most of the rules. They mask up when asked. They shrug off notices from the school that their children will be required to wear masks on campus. They wag their head with indecision at the most heated of vaccine v. non-vaccine arguments. Their laissez-faire approach to COVID probably sounds like understandable skepticism about the vaccine, its side effects, and the authorities that can demand it be administered.
And then, there is the most extreme of the unvaccinated, the anti-vaccine crowd that posts memes mocking government institutions and science, shares unresearched conspiracy-fueled home remedies, and perhaps even dares Mr. Coronavirus himself to show his wicked Demon-crat like face around these parts so he can be shown once and for all what’s what.
And yet, regardless of these camps and their subsets, the pandemic has claimed 4,514,285 people at the time of writing this (feel free to see how that number has grown). That number will only continue to increase, especially in communities where the vaccine message hasn’t really taken hold. You have probably seen the headlines: “Nearly all COVID deaths in the US are now among the unvaccinated.”
One of those deaths happened in 2020, long before the vaccines were ready, to a man who gained national attention as a controversial presidential candidate. Herman Cain, a Tea Party activist and devout Republican, was outspoken about all things, but especially mask mandates.
Soon after his COVID-19 diagnosis, Cain tweeted about an upcoming Mount Rushmore Event scheduled by Donald Trump. He wrote, “Masks will not be mandatory for the event…
