Children and COVID–How Republicans, Trump, and Evangelicals Are Killing Kids

July 30, 2021 / Posted in  anti-vaxxers, AR Gov., Arkansas Children's Hospital, Babies with COVID, Bill E. Kidd (R-MO), Bill Kidd (R-MO), Black Americans, Blog, Brian Houston, Children with COVID, COVID-19, Delta variant of coronavirus, Donald Trump, Evangelical Christianity, genocide, GOP, Gov Michael Parsons, Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN), Hillsong Church, homophobia, Keith Regier (R-MT), MD, Ohio House Bill 245, Republican Party, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sherri Tenpenny, The Wild summer camp, Trump vaccine, vaccination

Republican legislators in Red states have no problem denying infants and small children the COVID-19 vaccine as they have listened to quack doctors, such as Sherri Tenpenny, harp that COVID is either a fantasy or Democrat-created myth. That is infanticide, but the Republicans go further in supporting Trump’s genocide. This is especially true with the Republican legislators in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.

Children with COVIC.

Hospitals in Arkansas are filling up with coronavirus patients — including children — as the delta variant burns through the state’s unvaccinated population. Just 36.2 percent of the state’s population is fully vaccinated, and children younger than 12 are not yet eligible to get the shots in Arkansas as Republican legislators scoff at “the idea of children” getting COVID.¹

Arkansas children Republicans do not want vaccinated

Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he was especially concerned about the increase in pediatric cases while announcing he was reinstating a public health emergency for the state. With a growing number of children sick, with Arkansas Children’s Hospital this week reporting its largest number of patients with COVID-19. By July 29, 2021, there were 24 children being treated at the hospital and none had been fully immunized. Half of those were under 12-years-old and not eligible to be vaccinated. “This is necessary really for providing local school boards the ability to protect those who are most vulnerable, young people 12 and under as they go to school,” Hutchinson said, calling for members of the Arkansas General Assembly to come together for a special session, possibly as early as next week, to consider rescinding a law passed during this year’s legislative session that prohibits the state, including public school districts, from imposing mask mandates. Arkansas Children’s Hospital Chief Clinical and Academic Officer Dr. Rick Barr noted: “just in the month of July, we’ve committed over 40 children to the children’s hospital with COVID infections and a number of those have ended up in the intensive care unit. I have to emphasize as well that at least half of those children that we’ve admitted are over the age 12, so eligible for a vaccine and none, zero had been fully vaccinated.”²

Trent Garner, Arkansas Senate

Arkansas legislators are panicking that they might not get to kill as many kids as possible with the Delta Variant. The author of an extremely broad and extensive Arkansas law banning government mandated face masks³ is furious GOP Governor Asa Hutchinson is calling the state legislature back into special session to allow schools to require face masks if they determine them necessary. As the Delta Variant grows, Garner said he was considering the lifting of the ban of mask  mandates unless Arkansas experiences a 30% death rate.⁴ The 30% rate is the historical rate with confluent small pox. Garner does not know history or medical facts. At its worst in the plague years, smallpox accounted for about 7.6 percent of deaths. The CDC says it was around 1-2 percent in the early 1900s, which is about where the death rate stands in Arkansas today. Also: If Garner believes in vaccines, why for smallpox, polio and measles but not for  COVID-19. A 30 percent mortality rate against the Arkansas case count of 360,000 would be 120,000. In other words, 6,000 dead and climbing (and this is likely an undercount) is no biggie to Trent Garner.⁵

Asa Hutchinson, R-AR governor

The author of an extremely broad and extensive Arkansas law banning government mandated face masks is furious GOP Governor Asa Hutchinson is calling the state legislature back into special session to allow schools to require face masks if they determine them necessary.³ Garner, who was dubbed “Sen. Trent ‘Death March’ Garner” by the Arkansas Times’ Max Brantley, wrote his “emergency” law so poorly, so broadly and so extensively it not only bans masks for children in schools but bans any state agency from requiring any face coverings. It prohibits “any required face coverings by any public institution — goggles in chemistry labs; face masks for football players and other athletes, welding masks for those who work for public agencies and who knows what else.”⁴ Jason Rapert, an anti-gay Republican Arkansas state senator who has called face mask mandates “draconian” and shared articles calling COVID-19 a hoax, has tested positive for COVID-19 after speaking at a church service and other recent events without a face mask.⁸ Currently, just 36.2% of all Arkansans have been fully vaccinated. The national average is 49.9%.⁹

Sarah Huckabee Sanders when she “encouraged” Arkansas to get the “Trump Vaccine” (sic)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who wants to be the next governor of Arkansas, initially came out as opposed to  the vaccine, initially claiming people shouldn’t be inconvenienced by pandemic restrictions — Sanders denounced closings, mandates, and bans on large gatherings, but as the situation worsened in Arkansas, she eventually touted what she called the “Trump vaccine” and highlighted “the benefits of getting vaccinated.”¹⁰  Ed Kilgore’s conclusion in his article in the New York Intelligencer, rang true: “…I have never seen anyone on the left or center who can match the cynical contempt Sarah Huckabee Sanders appears to have for her own home-state base. She thinks they can be retroactively convinced to forget the massive hostility¹¹ of Trump supporters for anti-COVID-19 public health measures — including vaccines, public or private vaccine mandates, and the imaginary ‘vaccine passports’ — and embrace the Trump vaccine on grounds that they were unknowingly bamboozled by ‘the left’ to stay unvaccinated.”¹² With the successful roll out of vaccines, Republicans embrace Trump on COVID and the January 6, 2021 treasonous attack on the US Capitol.¹³

The Wilds, a summer church camp, had 75 campers test positive for COVID.

As of July 30, 2021, Arkansas coronavirus cases climbed to 2,544 new cases, and 13 more deaths bringing the total death count to 6,123. New cases in the last 24 hours: They rose by 2,544 from 382,569 to 385,113. There are 398 COVID patients in ICU and 219 on ventilators. Arkansas Republican legislators were not swayed–they are determined not to cut back on the carnage their legislation unleased.¹⁴ Little Rock School Superintendent Michael Poore, risking his career, posted a video asking the School Board on Wednesday to sue to invalidate Act 1002 that prevents school districts from requiring masks. ¹⁵

A Christian summer camp in rural North Carolina, The Wilds, became a coronavirus superspreader. Public health officials have traced at least 76 COVID-19 cases nationwide back to The Wilds.¹⁶ The cases were traced to 17 states, including 47 staff members and 29 campers or chaperones who weren’t working on site. COVID and the Delta variant is finding opportunities to attack people of any age in large religious gathering, as seen in Hillsong Church in California where the pastor Brian Houston has come out against the vaccination and members are dying from  it.¹⁷.

Rep, Bill E. Kidd (R-MO District 20) joked about COVID and then got it.

Republican legislators in Missouri continue to oppose vaccine efforts as the state becomes a COVID hotspot. Representative Bill Kidd joked that he didn’t get a vaccine because he’s a Republican. Now he has COVID.¹⁸ In Tennessee, Republicans legislators threatened to shut down the state health department,¹⁹ saying it was targeting minors for mass vaccinations without the consent of parents.

Sherri Tenpenny warned Ohio legislatures that her god will not approve of anyone who requires vaccinations.

In Ohio, lawmakers allowed a “doctor” (Sherri Tenpenny), who had an account @BusyDrT suspended by Twitter²⁰ as an Anti-vaxx superspreader and claimed that her god will disapprove of lawmakers who support required vaccinations,²¹ to testify at a legislative hearing last month that coronavirus vaccines could leave people magnetized²² (they can’t and don’t²³).

The Ohio House Bill 245 would draconically:²⁴

1. Block employers from mandating vaccinations as a condition of employment.
2. Allow Ohioans to skip any vaccination by making a written or verbal declaration and require health districts, schools or other government agencies to let Ohioans know how they can opt out.
3. Require schools to explicitly tell parents of existing law that allows them to skip childhood vaccinations because of medical, religious or “reasons of conscience.”
4. Prohibit forcing unvaccinated people to wear masks, be relegated to separate areas or face other punishments.
5. Allow for civil lawsuits for violations of the bill.
6. Block health departments, schools or other government agencies from mandating participation in a vaccine registry.
7. Repeal a requirement that college students be vaccinated against hepatitis B and meningitis before being allowed to live in the dorms.

Keith Regier (R-MT) rejects reality of COVID-19

During a hearing in the Montana Senate, State Senator Keith Regier (R-Kalispell) said he had read articles about “putting a chip in the vaccine.”²⁵ (There are no chips in vaccines.) The bill is more fascist than other proposed legislation and follows, slavishly, the unhinged rant  of Donald J. Trump.

Babies with COVID-19

It is not just children who are getting COVID, but also babies. As of July 22, about 4.13 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. After decreases in weekly reported cases over the past couple of months, in July we have seen steady increases in cases added to the cumulative total – over 38,600 child cases were added this week. The age distribution of reported COVID-19 cases was provided on the health department websites of 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Since the pandemic began, children represented 14.2% of total cumulated cases. For the week ending July 22, children were 16.8% of reported weekly COVID-19 cases.²⁶ Now the CDC and all major health professionals are saying the Delta variant may be as contagious as Chickenpox.²⁷ As of July, 22, 2021, the cumulative number of child-COVID-19 cases were

• 4,126,570 total child COVID-19 cases reported, and children represented 14.2% (4,126,570/29,023,908) of all cases
• Overall rate: 5,483 cases per 100,000 children in the population

Children with COVID-19 cases spiking.

As for babies and infants with COVID, According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, in the U.S. children represent about 13% of all COVID-19 cases. Research suggests that children younger than ages 10 to 14 are less likely to become infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 compared to people age 20 and older. However, some children become severely ill with COVID-19. They might need to be hospitalized, treated in the intensive care unit or placed on a ventilator to help them breathe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In addition, children with underlying conditions, such as obesity, diabetes and asthma, might be at higher risk of serious illness with COVID-19.

Arkansas Republicans are against vaccinating children–who get COVID-19

Children who have congenital heart disease, genetic conditions or conditions affecting the nervous system or metabolism also might be at higher risk of serious illness with COVID-19. Research also suggests disproportionately higher rates of COVID-19 in Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black children than in non-Hispanic white children.²⁸ The biggest threat to all children under age 18 is summer/church camps²⁹ where the Delta variant is rising in children.³⁰ Florida and Texas lead the nation, but Louisiana³¹ is not far behind followed by other Red states with Republican governors.³² For parents of unvaccinated children, the Delta Variant brings alarm and questions. Yet the risk of severe illness remains low³³ for those who are vaccinated against COVID-19, and the rate of infections, hospitalizations and deaths are much higher for those without the shots. With the right guidelines and increased vaccinations among those who are eligible, Williamson said, it is still possible to keep young people protected. “Kids are only as safe as who they are around,” Dr. Katherine Williamson, a pediatrician in Orange County said. Children younger than 12 are not yet eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, and those ages 12 to 17 are still lagging when it comes to obtaining the shots.³⁴ On Thursday, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced that all students and employees will be required to take weekly coronavirus tests, whether they are vaccinated or not.³⁵ Republican legislators in Iowa,³⁶ Missouri,³⁷ Texas,³⁸ Tennessee,³⁹ Florida,⁴⁰ Alabama,⁴¹ Indiana where COVID-19 cases rose to 1,461,⁴² North Dakota,⁴³ Wisconsin,⁴⁴ and Georgia, who care nothing about their students refuse this safety measure.³⁹

Delta variant cases