Republican Idiot Brigade Debuts Dumbest COVID Claims Yet
Marjorie Taylor Greene, for one, has suggested cancer is as transmissible
as COVID, while Matt Gaetz wants people to actively contract the virus.

By Bess Levin

omething you�ve probably picked up on over the course of the last 21
months is that Republicans have a lot of extremely stupid things to say
about COVID-19. Unfortunately, since the pandemic has lasted longer than
anyone could have imagined, conservatives have had to up their game re:
the absurd things coming out of their mouths, from just stupid to
historically moronic. And unlike ensuring that women are able to decide
what to do with their own bodies or that democracy lives to see another
day, this is a challenge they have been more than willing to take up,
rolling out an official idiot brigade of commentary that belongs in a
study of people who�ve suffered traumatic head injuries.

Take Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman who needs no introduction,
though, just for yucks, we�ll simply say the words �Jewish space laser.�
Over the weekend she took to Twitter, and in a thread meant to argue
against COVID public health measures, she suggested cancer is similarly
airborne. �Every single year more than 600,000 people in the US die from
cancer. The country has never once shut down. Not a single school has
closed,� the conspiracy theorist wrote. �And every year, over 600,000
people, of all ages and all races will continue to die from cancer.� She
continued: �Since #COVID19 tracking has started, 780,000+ people have died
in 22 mo [months] in the US, but more than 1 million still died of
cancer,� adding, �More have died in 2021 from covid than 2020 in spite of
Gov [government] mandated widespread vaccines, mass public masking, &
trillions spent. It�s time to take a different approach based on the
facts. Covid predominately targets obese & older people. Shutdowns,
masking, and vaccines are not stopping covid, that is just government
control. Ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, & other treatments are saving
lives.�

While vulnerable people like the elderly are at increased risk of a severe
COVID case, the virus does not actually discriminate against whom it
transmits to; as The Independent notes, because the virus exists in
droplets, masking is a proven way to protect oneself, while ivermectin,
often used as a livestock dewormer, is not. While Greene initially claimed
that being asked to reveal her vaccination status was a HIPAA violation,
she later bragged she hadn�t been inoculated because �I�m an American.�
She also relishes the theater of refusing to wear a mask on the job,
having racked up more than $60,000 in fines for not doing so in Congress,
a mandate she has compared to those of the Holocaust. �You know, we can
look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold
star,� she said in May. �And they were definitely treated like second-
class citizens, so much so that they were put on trains and taken to gas
chambers in Nazi Germany, and this is exactly the type of abuse that
[House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi is talking about.�

What other tidbits of COVID advice did Republicans dole out this weekend?
Well, on Saturday, Rep. Matt Gaetz suggested that people would be better
off contracting the virus.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci responded to Senator Ron Johnson�s
claim that he has �overhyped� a disease that has killed more than three
quarters of a million people in the U.S., with Johnson saying that Dr.
Fauci did the �exact same thing with AIDS.� (In fact, the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director was criticized by
activist Larry Kramer, who would later become his friend, for not doing
enough about the early AIDS outbreak.)

In related news, also on Sunday, NPR reported that people living in
counties where votes heavily favored Donald Trump�a guy Greene, Gaetz, and
Johnson would love to see return to the White House in 2024�have been
�nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in
areas that went for now president [Joe] Biden.�

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NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties
across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely
became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for
Trump in November 2020 had 2.78 times the death rates of those that went
for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw
higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were
six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an
independent health care analyst who�s been tracking partisanship trends
during the pandemic and helped to review NPR�s methodology. Those numbers
have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: �It�s back down to
around 5.5 times higher.�

Recent polling shows that partisanship is now this single strongest
identifying predictor of whether someone is vaccinated. Polling also shows
that mistrust in official sources of information and exposure to
misinformation, about both COVID-19 and the vaccines, run high among
Republicans.

Why do these people refuse to get vaccinated? Because the Trumps (and
Greenes, and Johnsons, and Gaetzes) of the world are lying to them, of
course.

Misinformation appears to be a major factor in the lagging vaccination
rates. The Kaiser Family Foundation�s polling shows Republicans are far
more likely to believe false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines. A
full 94% of Republicans think one or more false statements about COVID-19
and vaccines might be true, and 46% believe four or more statements might
be true. By contrast, only 14% of Democrats believe four or more false
statements about the disease.

Perhaps the most pernicious pieces of misinformation have to do with
the perceived severity of COVID-19 itself. The most widely believed false
statement was: �The government is exaggerating the number of COVID-19
deaths.�

Speaking of sources of misinformation, on Sunday, The Washington Post did
a deep dive on the revelation that Trump tested positive for the
coronavirus on September 26 last year, with the White House choosing to
keep the information to itself. Crunching the numbers, the paper
determined he came in contact with, and thus potentially infected, more
than 500 people. Which Greene, Gaetz, and Johnson would presumably claim
was a good thing.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/12/republicans-covid-marjorie-taylor-
greene-matt-gaetz-ron-johnson