Responding to an expert’s statement that “about 3.2 million” American lives have been saved by vaccines against Covid, with “over 14 million lives” saved globally, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “I’m not a doctor, but I have a PhD in recognising bullshit when I hear it.”
On Capitol Hill on Thursday, Greene attended a hearing staged by the House oversight select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic.
The expert Greene responded to, Dr Peter Marks, the director of biologics evaluation and research at the Food and Drug Administration, also described how at the height of the pandemic in the US, “about 3,300 [people], about a World Trade Center disaster a day”, were dying of Covid-19, contributing to a death toll of more than 1.1m.
Marks later apologised to viewers, after Greene claimed children should not be given Covid vaccines.
Greene, from Georgia, is a former CrossFit gym owner, conspiracy theorist and controversialist who entered Congress in 2021 and has assumed an influential position in a House Republican caucus controlled by the far right.
Our system is so bad at removing evil actors who managed to weasel into it, the fantasy of those evil shits getting struck by lightning or having a fatal stroke or some other spontaneous death, feels more and more like the best case scenario that carries even a hint of possibility of actually happening.
The folks wishfully thinking about that aren’t necessarily cheering at the possibility of her dying; but rather the possibility of evil being removed from the system that shapes how we live our lives.
Less extreme methods are ideal, but also disappointingly absent from the reality we’re stuck in.