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As a moderate Democrat for more than five decades, I have seen politicians in both parties act remarkably blind and deaf to the true causes of their defeats when they really dont want to hear the truth.

Most recently, the Democrats had a major defeat at the polls, and they have tried to blame it on their failure to pass infrastructure legislation prior to the election. Although this was possibly a small factor, the major unspoken reason was their imposition of excessive closures and mandates related to the COVID-19 pandemic. I am a retired physician, and yes, COVID-19 is a true pandemic that has killed 750,000 Americans in the last two years. However, for healthy younger people, a COVID-19 infection presents minimal health risks.

To better put the deaths in perspective, 200,000 of them occurred in people aged 85 and older. Another 195,000 deaths occurred in people aged 75 and older. Taken together, more than 50% of all COVID-19 deaths occurred in elderly people at high risk for death due to other causes. Only 18,000 deaths have occurred among the 150 million people in the United States aged 40 or younger. The death rate in this age group is about 1 in 10,000.

Among school-age children, there have been fewer than 600 total deaths among the 80 million children younger than 18 years old, for a death rate of less than 1 out of every 100,000 children. Of the deaths in people who were younger than 40 years old, the vast majority of them occurred in people with impaired immune systems due to chronic disease, cancer, severe obesity, or other high-risk conditions.

Fortunately, vaccination usually reduces the severity of the disease and the risk of death. The elderly and those with risk factors for severe COVID-19 infection should choose to be vaccinated, but no one should be forced to be vaccinated. Even after vaccination, some people with weakened immune systems, either from advanced age or other risk factors, will continue to die from COVID-19. No amount of immunization or miracle drugs can prevent this from happening.

Most importantly, if you follow the science, the numbers above cannot possibly justify the imposition of vaccine mandates in schools or in most businesses. People do not want their healthcare decisions to be made for them by the government.

This has been clearly shown with regard to the issue of cigarette smoking. Everyone knows that smoking is harmful and that long-term smoking significantly reduces life expectancy, yet large numbers of people continue to smoke. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States. Although I would never advocate it, we would save far more lives by making smoking illegal than will ever be saved with vaccine mandates.

Democratic officials have alienated large numbers of moderate Democratic voters, and especially independent voters, by imposing excessive closures, mask requirements, and vaccine mandates. Next November, this will become obvious. By then, both infrastructure bills will have passed, and the Democrats will suffer very large losses at the polls because of their continued overreactions to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mark Donnell is a retired medical doctor in New Mexico.

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Democrats' overreaction to the pandemic is alienating voters - Washington Examiner