Thanks, Spreadnecks, for our COVID miseries | Mann Overboard

Posted

Living Amidst The Boneheads: Please excuse a disabled guy’s shaky ascent onto the soapbox.

I generally keep things light here, but now it’s time we raised the rant.

I’ve had it with the boneheads. So have many of you. 

I speak of the clueless anti-vaxxers who have devastated hospitals, schools, the population at large, and politics. 

Author and former GOP operative Rick Wilson, cofounder of the Lincoln Project, has a perfect name for these clueless ones: Spreadnecks. 

My pal Mark Thompson invited me on his popular KGO Radio show in San Francisco the other day to talk about these MAGA-centric, maskless, unvaccinated brainiacs, given my personal experience with a pandemic.

I contracted polio in 1952 — just before a vaccine became available. I spent years with crutches and braces because there hadn’t been a vaccine. It could easily have killed me, as it did many others. The Army even flew my Dad home from the Korean War to be at my bedside. 

But I was lucky. I survived this pandemic and had a relatively normal life only after two surgeries. But 12 years ago, my polio returned — as it has for 60 percent of polio survivors. It’s called Post Polio Syndrome. Google it. It has rendered me disabled again. 

Now, we have to wear masks again because of the boneheads. These dolts should be considered pariahs because of ignorance and intransigence. They should not work in offices or schools, should not be allowed in public places without proof of vaccination, and certainly should not work in hospitals. Employers, including the state, have the legal right to fire these Typhoid Marys and Harrys. And they should. 

Why is it taking so long to completely shut these knuckle-draggers out of civilized society? They are enabling a public health disaster. Ignorance of the laws of nature is no excuse. 

A caller after my appearance told Thompson that his wife was recently hospitalized because of complications of breast cancer. The medical staff wanted to keep her a couple of days more to complete her treatment, but couldn’t. They needed her bed for — quelle surprise — the unvaccinated and clueless ones who’d contracted COVID.

Not being vaccinated isn’t about individual rights. The COVID virus doesn’t care about rights. Not being vaxxed is not a political statement. It’s an IQ test. Over 99 percent of current COVID cases are unvaxxed.

It may not be the easiest thing to say or hear, but I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for the unvaxxed who take ill.  Bad enough they’re getting deathly ill, but their obstinance and willful ignorance is also making innocent people sick, especially children. 

I’d have a battle of wits with the antivax crowd, but I never fight an unarmed opponent. 

— The Wise Y: The PT City Council did the right thing in completely turning operations of our currently closed Mountain View Pool over to the capable and experienced Peninsula YMCA to run it. The Y staff has been invaluable in helping our badly needed pool, as has capable city Public Works Director Steve King, who was handed a big job in getting and keeping the pool up and running. A big thanks to both of them. Now, YMCA, let’s get a pool supervisor in place and the pool reopened. It’s this polio guy’s only exercise. 

Aquatic Trivia: Fellow board members of the Jefferson County Aquatic Coalition smiled when I passed along this oddball fact: SWIMS reads the same upside down. Try it. 

— By Popular Reader Demand: So many of you liked the punderful entries here last time from the closing credits of NPR’s “Car Talk,” I’ve dug up a few more of them. 

Staff Sommelier: Avery Goodyear; Director of Firestone Tire Recalls: Ivana Michelin; Drug Trials Specialist: Placebo Domingo; EBay Specialist: Selma Junkoff; Fleet Manager: Oscar De La Rental; French Folk Music Historian: John T. Alouetta; Gospel Choir Director: Colin Response; Graduation Coordinators: Val and Dick Torian; Rental Property Manager: Ulysses Up; Rock and Roll Historian: Bruce Wade Hughes; Overseer of Arizona Voting Practices: Emmanuel Recount; Photographer: F. Stop Fitzgerald. 

(Columnist Bill Mann is at Newsmann9@gmail.com.)