Not Even To Save Their Own

Keith
2 min readJul 29, 2021

On January 6th Republican Representative Ron Wright, after evacuating the House Chamber, sheltered with many other members of Congress and staff in a large room in the Capitol Complex that law enforcement hope would remain secure. It did. But nothing could secure it against the Covid virus and fellow Republicans being stupid.

On January 21st Representative Wright was diagnosed with Covid. He died from Covid on February 7th. Wright had a history that placed him at increased risk, to include lung cancer treatment over the prior two years.

While in the large “bunker” on January 6th numerous Republicans refused to wear masks. There are videos of staffers offering masks, and pleading with them to wear one, but they refuse. We don’t know if Wright contracted Covid while in that room, but the timing is certainly consistent with that. It’s possible that Republican Representative Ron Wright was a sixth fatality from January 6th.

Wright is not the only Republican elected to the House to die of Covid. Republican Luke Letlow was elected in 2020 from Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District. He too was a mask resister, campaigned with large crowds without a mask, and spoke against mask mandates.

On December 18th Letlow tested positive for Covid. His condition quickly deteriorated and he was in the ICU by December 23d. He died from Covid on December 29th, five days before he would have been sworn into Congress. He was 41 and he had no underlying conditions.

I raise this because in response to the Delta Variant Nancy Pelosi is reinstating mask rules in the House. One factor to be considered is that nearly half of the Republicans in the House refuse to state whether they have been vaccinated. All the Democrats have confirmed that they have been vaccinated.

The Republicans are throwing a fit about the masks, some refusing to wear them, and threatening to sue over it. Mask resistance might be responsible for the Covid deaths of two of their own, and they simply don’t care. These are fundamentally uncaring people. They seem almost soulless at times.

Today’s GQP tells us that Covid is a deliberate foreign invasion, the “Chinese Virus.” Yet they refuse to defend this nation against that foreign threat. The weapons of defense in this case are vaccines and masks, they treat both with contempt.

They won’t defend this nation even to save their own.

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Keith

Retired lawyer & Army vet in The Villages of Florida. Lifelong: Republican (pre-Trump), Constitution buff, science nerd & dog lover. Twitter: @KeithDB80