The red covid wave is here

The red covid wave is here

A health-care worker administers a Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine to a person at a drive-through site in Tropical Park in Miami on Dec. 16. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

By Paul Waldman

Columnist

Today at 1:51 p.m. EST

Given the realities of 21st century American politics, it would never have been possible for us to experience a pandemic that existed outside politics. But it’s hard to imagine how this one could have been more political. And it may be about to get worse.

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The omicron variant of covid-19 has begun to spread rapidly through the country, and we will see it everywhere. But this could be the red covid wave, inflicting the most damage on heavily Republican areas.

There will be a great temptation for liberals to say “serves you right” to conservatives. Understandable as that might be, we should all try to resist the urge to take even a moment’s satisfaction in anyone’s suffering.

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There’s no way to know how this wave will proceed, but there has been a clear pattern so far. The initial wave of the pandemic hit hardest in dense, heavily Democratic areas, most notably New York and New Jersey. That helped lock in the politicization of the virus, as conservatives felt like it wasn’t affecting their communities, and Republican politicians and media figures told them it was overblown and public health measures represented liberal tyranny.

By the time the delta wave arrived, we were long past the point where people would see anything about the pandemic in nonpolitical terms. Everything about it was spun through a media system built for turning disagreements into markers of partisan identity, so to approach any issue in a way different from your partisan brethren would be to betray a foundational part of your identity.

And don’t even get me started on Fox News — the beating heart of the conservative universe — which has been an absolute sewer of anti-vaccine propaganda, advocacy for quack cures and conspiracy theorizing.

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Though delta began affecting liberal and conservative areas in equal measure, it quickly became more and more a red-area phenomenon. As health care analyst Charles Gaba documents, in September, the worst month for delta, the rate of covid deaths in the reddest 10 percent of counties (measured by presidential vote in 2020) was nearly seven times higher than the rate in the bluest 10 percent of counties.

In the months since, that ratio has stayed shockingly high; so far in December, it is nearly 6 to 1.

What will happen when omicron reaches every corner of America? First note that Democrats are far more likely to have been vaccinated. In a recent Monmouth University poll, 96 percent of Democrats said they had been vaccinated, compared to 54 percent of Republicans. And 30 percent of Republicans said they will likely never get vaccinated.

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Granting that we don’t yet know exactly how omicron will proceed, it will almost certainly find more purchase where fewer people are vaccinated and take few precautions. Which would mean that the red/blue disparity could intensify. Yet it’s unlikely people in those heavily red areas will suddenly say, “Gee, we really need to take this seriously.”

Instead, we’ll see a continuation of what we’ve seen all along: governments and businesses in blue areas reacting to this outbreak with somewhat aggressive public health measures, while governments and businesses in red areas make a point of doing nothing.

Even now, we’re averaging 1,275 covid deaths a day. If and when it rises to 2,000 or 3,000 — disproportionately from red states and counties — there will inevitably be more of the schadenfreude we’ve already seen on the left.

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Some of this is just the momentary nastiness all of us are prey to. But much of it comes from the feeling among liberals that while we’ve done everything possible to shorten this pandemic, conservatives have almost gleefully endeavored to extend it and ensure that as many people as possible get sick and die.

We’re all angry and fed up. We all wish this was over. Rightly or wrongly, many liberals assign part of the blame for our continued misery to the right, both the cynical elites who discourage vaccination, and the rank and file who want nothing more than to “own the libs,” even if it means putting themselves and their families at risk.

But what is there to gain from giving in to the impulse to shout that if their communities are laid low by omicron, they brought it on themselves?

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To be clear, I’m not offering a “when they go low, we go high” recommendation on what effective political strategy might be. But I can’t help but think about how Donald Trump so often told Americans to cultivate what was worst in them, and to luxuriate in their bigotries, their resentments, their rage and their hate.

It was poison, and it still runs through our bloodstream. But we don’t all have to be that way. We can speak the truth about where we are without wishing death on our political opponents. We can fight for what we believe in without twisting into the ugliest version of ourselves.

So the next time you hear a story about another anti-vax right-wing radio host or televangelist who died from covid, rather than chuckling, think of those they put at risk, the gullible or distracted people more likely to become infected because of them, and the ripples of loss spreading from them.

That’s not to excuse the villains of this pandemic. They deserve our anger and condemnation. But after two years of misery and sorrow, a new wave of death and disease is nothing to feel satisfaction about, no matter whom it hits hardest.