On Saturday morning, Merseyside time, a taxi pulled up to the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, started smoking and then burst into flame.
The passenger in the cab, apparently the bearer of a rather ineffective explosive devise, was killed. The taxi driver jumped out in time to escape with comparatively minor injuries and is being hailed as a hero, having reportedly locked the would-be assassin in the car.
No one else was hurt. Unless you count the emotional damage done to all the new mothers and fathers inside Europe’s largest maternity hospital. Their memories of the day their children were born will be forever scarred by what could have been a major disaster.
The British police and anti-terror squads jumped into action. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the nation’s terror watch index had been moved up from “substantial” to “severe” and pledged that “the British people will never be cowed by terrorism.”
Saturday, Utah time, a bunch of people stood about near the giant Intermountain Medical Center on State Street in Murray to protest current and planned mandates for people in many workplaces, especially healthcare facilities, to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
When you want to protest "medical tyranny" but forgot to proofread.
— Bryan "Pass the stuffing" Schott (@SchottHappens) November 14, 2021
This was the anti-vaxxer protest outside of IHC on Saturday #utpol pic.twitter.com/yTxp8JKHyt
Nothing blew up and no one was obviously hurt. Unless you count the nurses, doctors and other medical staff who were traumatized by the sight of such anti-life, anti-science protests reminding them of just how deadly the pandemic has been, still is and stands to remain. And just how little some people care.
The event was legal and constitutionally protected expression. But the death toll from that protest is almost certain to exceed the single fatality that occurred in Liverpool earlier that same day.
And, unlike the stand-up response from British officials, most holders of public office in Utah are demonstrating they are cowed by this kind of, if not terrorism, then deadly, studied ignorance.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox Tuesday signed a bill that would exempt Utah workers from any federal vaccine mandates if they claim a right to forgo this common sense public health measure due to any “sincerely held personal belief.” Apparently a reference to the mass delusion promoted by Fox News, right-wing radio and social media campaigns that stand up for the right of people to bring a deadly virus into the workplace.
Meanwhile, Cox and legislative leaders are cheerleading Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes as he sues the federal government to kill existing and planned mandates for all health care workers to be vaccinated and all employees of workplaces with more than 100 workers to either be vaccinated or under go weekly coronavirus tests.
Reyes claims forcing health care workers to get the jab will push some of them to leave their jobs, at a time when hospitals, clinics and care homes are already suffering labor shortages. That claim ignores the real reason for such shortages: staff burnout due to the people who refuse the vaccine and then show up in emergency rooms demanding to have their lives saved by the same medical science they so recently thumbed the noses at.
Why health-care workers are quitting in droves — Ed Young | The Atlantic
“... COVID patients are also becoming harder to deal with. Most now are unvaccinated, and while some didn’t have a choice in the matter, those who did are often belligerent and vocal. Even after they’re hospitalized, some resist basic medical procedures like proning or oxygenation, thinking themselves to be fighters, only to become delirious, anxious, and impulsive when their lungs struggle for oxygen. Others have assaulted nurses, thrown trash around their rooms, and yelled for hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, neither of which have any proven benefit for COVID-19. Once, Americans clapped for health-care heroes; now, “we’re at war with a virus and its hosts are at war with us,” [Idaho ICU nurse Cassandra] Werry told me. ...”
Meanwhile, Rep. Chris Stewart was objecting to vaccine mandates for the nation’s security services, arguing that we cannot afford to lose such crucial personnel when some of them quit rather than get the jab.
Which is a bigger national security threat?
— Rep. Chris Stewart (@RepChrisStewart) November 9, 2021
Retaining employees who are unvaccinated, or firing a significant number of intel officers amid growing threats from our foreign adversaries?
The answer is clear. Read my @FoxNews op-ed with @DevinNunes ⬇https://t.co/4SHTfG1xE2
A better way to see it would be to recognize that people who refuse COVID-19 vaccinations now should not be working in anything that has the word “intelligence” attached to it.
Some say they are pro-vaccine but anti-mandate. But that’s like being for safe driving but against a law that requires you to stop at red lights. Unless everyone does it, the effectiveness is vastly reduced.
During a summer reporting internship at a Kansas newspaper many years ago, I was warned by one straight-faced editor that I risked getting fired if I failed to keep up with such important but routine tasks as reading the recording thermometer or emptying the parking lot rain gage every day.
Another editor told me not to worry.
“The only way to get fired around here is if you [poop] on the publisher’s desk,” he said.
If these anti-vaccine Utah politicians have their way, even that won’t get you fired.
George Pyle, reading The New York Times at The Rose Establishment.
George Pyle, opinion editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, is triple-vaxxed, feeling fine and neither microchipped nor magnetic.
gpyle@sltrib.com
Twitter, @debatestate
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