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I never thought I would agree with Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on anything, but I do today.

Ivey, a staunch Trump-loving Republican, on Thursday took to task those citizens who have yet to receive a COVID vaccine.

That’s right. It shocked me, too.

An interviewer asked her what it would take to convince people the vaccination is safe and they should take it in order to help bring an end to the pandemic.

“I don’t know. You tell me. Folks are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time for us to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” Ivey said.

Bravo. Excellent. If Alabama’s Kay Ivey gets it, everyone should get it.

The politics that divide us are actually killing us. No one trusts anyone any longer, people are denying sound science in favor of straight-up lies being spread by people paid to do so on social media. Good grief. As Ivey said, people are supposed to have common sense. It seems these days common sense is in short supply.

Just think about this: Fox’s Tucker Carlson has been vaccinated. Sean Hannity has been vaccinated. Laura Ingraham has been vaccinated. Nonetheless, they and the network they work for continue to spread misinformation and skew facts about the virus and the vaccine. Have you thought about why they do that? Why they don’t practice what they preach?

It’s because Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham and so many others at that network are not reporters or journalists. They are ACTORS in the ENTERTAINMENT industry. They are well paid to play a role, one that all comes down to big money for corporations who support them and put millions into the campaigns of politicians who do their bidding.

It’s not only Fox News doing this, of course. It’s many, many companies whose names you will never hear who have been hired to plant these conspiracy theories and other misdirection on the behalf of greedy corporations and politicians.

It is to those big-money politicians’ benefit to keep their base riled up and fearful.

Instead of us thinking, ‘what can we do to protect each other,’ like Americans did during World War II and other times of need, we read, listen to and swallow these nut-job theories without even questioning sources or claims.

Dr. Kenneth Stubbs is about as far from liberal or a Democrat as you can get. He is a scientist. He has common sense. Dr. Stubbs is on the front line of the COVID crisis in Natchez. If we take advice from anyone, it should be Dr. Stubbs.

What does he advise? Get vaccinated.

“The data is extremely strong that (vaccination) does prevent disease and reduces the severity of illness if you do happen to get it. Does it prevent COVID 100 percent? Of course not. No one ever said it did. I can’t tell you what the side effects will be in four to five years, but I can tell you what the side effects of COVID are. The risk of dying from COVID is worse,” Stubbs said in an interview with Sabrina Robertson earlier this week.

This Delta variant is highly contagious. While children seemed to seldom contract the first waves of the virus, it seems the Delta variant does not discriminate according to age. Stubbs said a child as young as five years old as well as adolescents have been diagnosed with COVID here in the last week.

If this fourth wave disrupts our economy and kills our children, as Kay Ivey said, we know where to look to place blame.

Jan Griffey is editor and general manager of The Natchez Democrat. You may reach her at 601-445-3627 or jan.griffey@natchezdemocrat.com. Readers are invited to submit their opinions for publication.