Way back, gosh, about a half-century ago, when I was a young teen, I almost became a Texan. I was born and had, up until then, grown up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a very special place and home of the University of Michigan. Now, I could go on and on about what a remarkable school the U of M is, and how my three U of M degrees (BA, MA, Ph.D.) make me one of the cool kids, but instead, I’ll talk about Texas.

My dad was a great scholar and a leading national expert in his area. He was the founding Dean of a school for his specialty at Michigan and chaired the national committee that certified other schools as being up to snuff (for the kids out there, that means being “good”). Not surprisingly, other schools tried to entice him away from Michigan. The one that was nearly successful was the University of Texas, which offered to make him the highest paid person in his discipline and he and my mom made a visit to Austin to see what they thought of moving there. Ultimately, Michigan matched the offer and my dad stayed in Ann Arbor, retiring in the mid-1980s, and he remained a Michigan man the rest of his days. But I came close to moving to Texas.

Which, of course, brings me to the late H. Scott Apley, until recently a proud Texan and rabid right-winger …

I’ve mentioned before my sincere pride in our great state of Colorado, for having hit the high vaccination rates that our remarkable Gov. Jared Polis was aiming for. Why? Because our state leadership gets that science matters, and the virus doesn’t really care why you choose not to be vaccinated.

But in Texas, my almost-kind-of-home state, we see some of the most rabid (almost not a metaphor) pro-Trump anti-science ramblings in the country. It is, of course, not a coincidence that the states that yelped loudest against masks and such are now the ones suffering the greatest rates of illness and death in the country.

A while back, a relatively young (45) Texan, a Republican elected official and a leader of the state GOP, posted on Facebook how much he wished he could have attended a “mask burning” party in another state. And when an actual medical professional posted about being excited that the Pfizer vaccine was still working after six months, Mr. Apley tweeted that the aforementioned scientist was, and I quote, “an absolute enemy of a free people.” 

Of the many, many horrible things a certain former president did, the one with the most profound legacy will likely be his politization of a pandemic. Mr. Apley appears to have fully bought into the idea that vaccines were evil and that there really wasn’t any pandemic. He attacked the effort of a Houston-based clinic to get people vaccinated by offering them prizes, declaring the idea to be “disgusting.” And of course, he made sure that he was never vaccinated, because, you know, freedom.

You know what’s coming next…

Two days after a Facebook post declaring that vaccines don’t work (really? polio? Smallpox?), he was admitted to a Galveston hospital with, you guessed it, “pneumonia-like” symptoms and he tested positive for COVID. He was sedated and put on a ventilator. Two days later he died. His wife and son have also tested positive, because, you know, freedom.

I celebrate no one’s death. But I confess my ability to mourn is reduced when the afflicted actively sought to undercut a vital health protection effort. Donald Trump now has even more blood on his hands; in this recent case, the blood of a true believer. I am sure Apley loved his wife and kid, but he put them at tremendous risk, and he himself ultimately died, for his anti-science foolishness and fervent partisanship.

Recently, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson – hardly a liberal – announced that he regretted signing his state’s anti-mask law. He has asked his state’s lawmakers to consider revising the law so that schools can have mask wearing required, as yet another GOP state descends back into the pandemic surge. I’m glad Hutchinson came to his senses, at least a little bit, but that is far too late for far too many in his state and elsewhere.

I admit, I’m angry now. Willful and arrogant denial of science is literally killing people. The virus cares about as much about one’s science denial as gravitation cares about your theory that you can fly if you leap off a 50-story building. In both cases, the science is clear, and your point of view matters not one whit. And I’m especially angry that those yapping about masks and vaccines being restrictions on freedom are also likely spreading the virus to those who cannot take the vaccine due to medical issues. Somewhere it is very likely that good and decent people who are, say, undergoing chemo for cancer, are being sickened and killed by the foolish and arrogant individuals that think they are taking a stand for freedom.

Not long ago, a doctor in Alabama, also a state of very low vaccination rates, wrote about the large number of relatively young and healthy people she was seeing admitted to hospitals with very significant COVID illness. The doctor wrote, “one of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

It’s one thing to stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and declare your intention to jump, because gravity is just a liberal plot. But it is far worse to grab the hand of an immunocompromised stranger and pull him over the precipice with you. The virus just doesn’t care what you believe.

I truly hope it is not too late.