We wish the ravages of illness on no one, not even a man whose full-time job for the past month has been undermining the legitimacy of the presidential election. So we hope former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 76, recovers speedily from the nasty virus that has put him in a hospital bed, where he is among the 101,487 Americans now being so treated for COVID.
It would be negligent, however, not to note the way Giuliani wound up infected. On his whirlwind election-conspiracy-weaving tour of the nation, from Pennsylvania to Michigan to Arizona to Georgia, he was rarely seen wearing a mask, and the many maskless men and women who gathered around him will now seed potent COVID clusters of their own. The capitol in Phoenix is now closed for a week after a dozen current and future state legislators huddled with Giuliani, indoors, their uncovered smiling mugs turned toward the cameras.
Anyone can be laid low by COVID, but those who flaunt their contempt for basic public health safeguards — especially those among this new resistance who know better and, by virtue of being in the spotlight, model behavior for millions — tempt fate and strain natural human sympathy.
The test is now about to be repeated as vaccines roll out across the nation, with priority populations first in line. Even as former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama volunteer to roll up their sleeves, just 58% of Americans say they’re willing to take the lifesaving injections developed in record time. In an internal survey of FDNY firefighters, who are at toward the top of the inoculation pecking order, 55% say they’ll take a pass.
Everyone should wear a mask. Everyone without a small subset of underlying medical conditions should get vaccinated. This killer attacks indiscriminately, but it thrives on ignorance and delusions of invincibility.
— New York Daily News
