Murphy Marks a Moment Amid Rising COVID-19 Cases
NEWARK – It’s been precisely one year since the governor journeyed to University Hospital to witness the first New Jersey resident get the COVID vaccine.
So, it made sense for Phil Murphy to be back there today to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the vaccine rollout and to also urge residents to get their booster shot.
The numbers are good for the first set of the vaccine. More than 80 percent of eligible New Jerseyans have gotten the first of two shots and about 75 percent have gotten both, the governor said.
With those numbers in mind, Murphy proclaimed, “Together we have made New Jersey a national leader.” He said most states with higher vaccine rates than New Jersey don’t have nearly as many people.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that COVID numbers are rising again.
Murphy said there were 245 new hospital admissions yesterday and that the most recent positivity rate is 11.5 percent.
One of the problems is that less than half of those eligible have gotten booster shots. That’s a big deal.
According to the hospital, almost half of patients now being admitted with the virus have not been “boosted.”
Clearly, a lot has changed in the last year. but what hasn’t changed is the politics surrounding the virus.
An optimist would have said 12 months ago that easy access to vaccines – and now the booster – would have relegated COVID, more or less, to the history pages.
Not so.
Even some of the most cynical about today’s polarization probably could not have imagined that some on the right would eschew common sense and oppose just about all attempts to keep the majority of residents healthy, themselves included.
We just saw that with the recent demonstration in the Statehouse by some Assembly Republicans over rules mandating proof of vaccine to enter. What was more troubling than the protest itself was that some of the demonstrators were quickly booked on Fox News and treated as conquering heroes. They were fighting “tyranny,” you see.
The governor, who forcefully condemned the protest last week, didn’t mention it today.
But all the happy talk about a celebration and admirable vaccine record has to be tempered by the unsaid realization that a bloc of state residents – and their political leaders – are going to keep fighting COVID regulations and policies.
And it’s hard to see that changing.
Three things:
1) Case rates are a non issue. What’s the death rate. That’s what matters. And for the clown sheep who feels compelled to start gleeking off about ‘long haul illness,’ go on and stick your head back up the communal rear-end where you feel safe. If you’re not worried about ‘long haul injection’ illness, stop worrying about ‘long haul covid’ and get on a protocol.
2) 75% of NJ has been injected twice with the experimental gene therapy, and they’re going to claim numbers are rising because they haven’t been injected enough – when roughly half of the infected have gotten a third injection? Since when is a 50% failure rate a glowing testimonial?
3) at least they’re not still parroting the ‘pandemic of the uninjected,’ canard.