Selfishness over selfless citizenship will sustain the pandemic and create further mutations

The COVID-19 coronavirus will continue to spread around the nation and mutate so long as there are selfish citizens who continue to disregard public health officials, the medical research community, and the president of the United States. As long as there are individuals who refuse to understand the seriousness of COVID-19 and its various mutations:

alpha (or B.1.1.7 variant first detected in Britain)

beta or B.1.351 first appearing in South Africa)

gamma (P.1 first detected in South Africa)

delta (the highly contagious variant also known as B.1.671.2 that first appeared in India and which is now sweeping the world)

iota (or B.1.526 that was first detected in the U.S.)

kappa (or B.1.617.1 that first appeared in India

lambda (or C.37, which first appeared in Peru and is more contagious and harmful than all of its predecessors).

The virus will continue to mutate until there are no longer any viable hosts for it to infect. It should also be noted that three additional COVID-19 mutationsepsilon, zeta, and thetahave gone dormant but there is always the possibility that they could reappear and spread given the lack of vaccinated individuals who either refuse the inoculation for purely selfish reasons that are either political or religious or live in countries where vaccines have not been administered due to lack of availability.

During the 1918 so-called Spanish flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza, few people disregarded public health authorities and the Red Cross when it came to wearing masks, quarantining, or engaging in good hygienic practices. That was because those Americans, our grandparents and great grandparents, exercised better judgment and displayed selflessness as good citizens. The same does not hold true today. Selfishness and irresponsibility now rule the day.

Unfortunately, for the people of 1918 to 1920, there were no vaccinations yet developed to combat the Spanish flu. It ran its course until some 500 million people around the world were infected and as many as 100 million of them died from the virus. The crying shame is that these victims, who were largely responsible enough to heed the medical science of their day, were more valuable members of society than the selfish miscreants of today who disregard wearing masks in public, refuse to be vaccinated, spread shameful conspiracy theories, cite medical fraudsters as experts, tout dangerous treatments and placebos, and combine a disregard for public health with support for Donald Trump.

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