Viruses mutate to survive. Generally speaking, so do politicians.
With omicron, the new, highly mutated COVID-19 “variant of concern” alarming the markets and the epidemiologists, it shouldn’t be impossible to imagine that Republicans could make one more shift.
In recent years, they’ve abandoned their long-standing support for free trade and NATO, smiling on as Donald Trump repeatedly sided with Vladimir Putin over our own intelligence community.
Now the previously pro-business party is telling Mom and Pop that they can’t fire people who pose a health risk to their co-workers and customers.
With that kind of flexibility about what they believe, the GOP could easily do another 180 and stop siding with COVID-19.
Why they have at every turn made it harder for us to end this pandemic will be studied for some time. If they stay on the path they’re on, some future Timothy Snyder will publish “Injecting Bleach and Bathing in Borax: How ‘Freedom’ Prolonged a Pandemic and Hastened the Demise of American Democracy.”
But that’s not how it has to go. Republican radicals — no way does what they’re doing qualify as “conservative” — can change course again. They can stop abetting the contagion.
In Kansas, a new law will prohibit businesses from dismissing unvaccinated employees if the worker provides a written excuse from a doctor — we hear Sen. Roger Marshall is available — or claims a “sincere” religious belief. It’s unclear what religion says you should put yourself and others in danger, and then lament your persecution when others mind.
The bill, from the party that used to hate unnecessary regulation and lawsuits, requires the Kansas Department of Labor to investigate allegations of businesses not following the law. It authorizes the state attorney general’s office to go to court to enforce compliance.
Apparently, as Democratic state Sen. David Haley said, “people don’t avoid the plague anymore.”
Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson brags that under the new bill, “families don’t have to face the holidays with the uncertainty that they could lose their livelihoods.” Lives, yes, but livelihoods — oh, also yes.
“There are people that do not want to take this vaccine, even at the expense of their own lives. So we’re here defending that liberty,” said Republican Sen. Dennis Pyle.
Remember when Republicans opposed “right to die” legislation?
That Gov. Laura Kelly signed this law, which almost all of her fellow Democrats voted against, is not just disappointing but downright craven. Because this law, and others like it, limits our ability to fight the pandemic with the best tool we’ve got, which is vaccination.
The longer we take to get everyone vaccinated — only 48.8 percent of Kansans are fully vaccinated — the more time the virus has to mutate in ways that make the shots less effective. No one knows yet whether the highly safe, highly effective vaccines we’ve got now are effective against the new variant, omicron.
