As of yesterday, Alabama has had 134,555 cases of COVID per million residents, indicating one of the worst pandemics-- per capita-- of any state. But that doesn't tell half the story. 12,000 Alabamans are dead (up 167% over the last 2 weeks!) and just 45.0% of the state is fully vaccinated, making it the only state in worse shape than Mississippi (46.1%), West Virginia (47.3%) and Wyoming (47.4%)-- 4 of the most Trump-supportive states in the union. Alabama has no open ICU beds in the state-- and the states, surrounding it have too few open beds to offer Alabamans much hope.
As we've seen in other states, the more strongly counties voted for Trump the less likely they are to have adequately vaccinated populations. These are the 10 Alabama counties that voted most strongly for Trump-- along with their vaccination percentages. The correlations are startling:
Winston Co.- 90.3% Trump (15% fully vaccinated)
Cleburne Co.- 89.7% Trump (22% fully vaccinated)
Blount Co.- 89.6% Trump (21% fully vaccinated)
Marion Co.- 88.4% Trump (26% fully vaccinated)
Cullman Co.- 88.1% Trump (28% fully vaccinated)
Geneva Co.- 86.5% Trump (27% fully vaccinated)
Cherokee Co.- 86.0% Trump (23% fully vaccinated)
Lamar Co.- 85.8% Trump (32% fully vaccinated)
Covingtion Co.- 83.7% Trump (25% fully vaccinated)
Marshall Co.- 83.7% Trump (31% fully vaccinated)
Last night, Trump and his handpicked goon of a Senate candidate, insurrectionist Mo Brooks, rallied the North Alabama rednecks in Cullman, the county seat of Cullman County, which-- as you can see above-- is just 28% vaccinated and 88.1% Trumpist. What could have been nicer for them to attend a packed hate rally with lots of fellow unvaccinated, unmasked morons? Did I mention that Cullman is 95% white and just 0.8% Black? (The median income for a household in the city is $29,164, with a per capita income of $18,484.) You want to experience what "poor white trash" means? Go to Cullman, like Trump did last night. But be careful; the last 2 weeks have seen a daily COVID case increase of 118%.
Mo Brooks' district is just north of Cullman County but he has every reason to expect to run up huge margins in next year's Senate primary in Cullman-- based on his own extremism and on his intensely promoted and advertised endorsement by Trump. However, the crowd last night did not indicate anything like that. After routines by other Trumpist loons Tommy Tuberville, local congressnut Robert Aderholt, My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell and assorted other imbeciles, Brooks ambled onto the state, right before Señor Trumpanzee. The crowd booed him when he told them to move past the 2020 election and look forward. In fact the boos were so insistent that he was forced to backtrack and eventually gave in to the crowd's screams about "fixing it" now.
“Let’s do it,” Brooks said. “The Arizona recount is coming. The Arizona audit is on the way.”
Brooks then joined the crowd in chants of “fix it now.”
Brooks later addressed the incident tweeting that, “The 2020 election was fraught with voter fraud & election theft on a massive scale. If only legal votes cast by eligible American citizens were counted, Trump won the election.”
And then His Trumpness took the stage... and he was booed too! Why? He encouraged the morons to get vaccinated. They're already immune though-- to reason. They may change when their children start getting sick and dying, although I doubt it; too dumb to connect the dots.
"I believe totally in your freedoms, I do, you gotta do what you gotta do, but I recommend take the vaccines. I did it. It's good," he said, drawing boos from the crowd of supporters.
"That's okay, that's alright," Trump continued, brushing off the disapproval. "But I happen to take the vaccine. If it doesn't work, you'll be the first to know. But it is working. You do have your freedoms, you have to maintain that."
...Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was suspended from Twitter again earlier this month for spreading misinformation about the vaccine. Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama falsely claimed the vaccine was "untested" Saturday, after testing positive for COVID-19 a day earlier.
Conservative personalities, including Fox News hosts, have widened the Red/Blue divide in vaccination rates by extending a platform to vaccine skeptics and criticizing vaccination mandates ordered by businesses as an infringement on individual freedoms.
I doubt many North Alabama MAGA rednecks read the Wall Street Journal much but early this morning, the conservative paper warned that more and more children are being hospitalized with COVID, especially in the South and Midwest where vaccination rates are low. "Children’s hospitals are bracing for even more cases as schools reopen," wrote Sarah Toy and Julie Wernau. "They are hiring more nurses, reworking discharge protocols, speeding up room cleanings, laying contingency plans to expand bed capacity and preparing staff for an uptick in multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C. A rare condition that can occur several weeks after Covid-19 infection, MIS-C can lead to organ damage or even death without the proper diagnosis and management... About half of the kids hospitalized recently didn’t have underlying conditions, he said, whereas before Delta most kids who were hospitalized for Covid-19 had other health issues such as asthma or diabetes. He said he suspects the Delta variant likely does cause more severe disease in children than other variants... Medical staff caring for pediatric Covid-19 patients say they worry that a lack of enforcement of the CDC’s guidance for everyone in schools to wear masks this fall will drive up case loads where Delta is spreading rapidly."