Why does Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) have to lie to us? This is what he tweeted yesterday, after the state Supreme Court slapped him down:

The image to the left is not the tweet itself, but a screen capture, in case the Governor or his staff delete it. You can click either this link or the picture itself to see the original on Twitter.

Note the comparison dates: March 1 through August 18, 2021. The problem is that, other than for health care workers and people over 70, the vaccines were not available. Virtually every person hospitalized with COVID-19 problems was unvaccinated because they didn’t have the chance to get vaccinated.

The vaccine is a two shot series, with the Pfizer booster dose recommended 21 days after the first, and Moderna 28 days after the first. If the vaccine first became available to you on Monday, March 1, 2021, and you got the booster shot on Monday, March 29^th, since you are not considered ‘fully vaccinated’ until 14 days after the second shot, you wouldn’t be considered fully vaccinated until Monday, April 12^th!

Of course, the Governor was simply retweeting one by Dr Steven Stack, who is Kentucky’s Commissioner for Public Health. Are we supposed to believe that Dr Stack didn’t know those facts, that Dr Stack did not understand that by using statistics from prior to Kentuckians being able to get the vaccines, he was skewing the numbers?

Me? In a small, eastern Kentucky county, I wasn’t able to get the first dose until April Fool’s Day. Instead of 28 days later, I couldn’t get the second dose until Cinco de Mayo, because of whatever problems the county Health Department was having. That meant I wasn’t considered fully vaccinated until May 19^th, which just happened to be our 42^nd wedding anniversary, so at least those dates make it easy for me to remember.

Now, I do not disagree with the Governor that people should get vaccinated; I just see his tweet as wholly dishonest. Then again, I see the Governor as totally dishonest on just about everything.

As Governor Beshear and Dr Stack continue their efforts to persuade more Kentuckians to get vaccinated, perhaps they ought to consider that using rigged statistics does not help their cause, save among those not observant enough or smart enough to spot what they did. But, then again, that says someting as well: it tells us just what those two fine gentlemen think of Kentuckians.