“1 in 500 Americans have died of covid-19” reads a story headline in today’s Washington Post—what a Grim milestone.
“My body—My decision. No Covid Vaccination for Me”, many say. One thing we hear a lot is: “If I get sick, I’m the only one affected.”
“Horse pucky!” I reply. “What a stupid selfish thing to say and think!”
Let’s consider the social obligations related to driving a car on public roadways. The law says you have to wear a seat belt. Some seatbelt refusers say, “If I’m injured in a wreck, I’m the one to pay the price so it’s no one’s business but mine whether I belt in or not.” O.K., if you get bumped off perhaps it will just be Darwinian Natural Selection, that is if you have no progeny — then no worry.
The law also says that you can’t drive when you’re drunk, but a drunken wreck can injure multiple innocent victims. It may not be my business whether you’re seat belted, but it is definitely my business if you choose to be an intoxicated menace to anyone near by. Who can argue with that?
Responsibility for Covid vaccination is a lot more like drunk driving laws than it is like seatbelt requirements. Let’s list some of the collateral damage your choice to remain unvaccinated and unmasked can cause and who you put in jeopardy with your personal choice.
- If you get infected, you can easily infect others before you even know you’re sick. You can easily kill off grandparents and sicken grandkids with the virus you pass on. And those you sicken can pass it along to their contacts.
- You can get sick and require hospitalization to save your life, so look at what that costs—besides all the dollars involved. Over-burdened health care systems and workers have diminished capacity to take care of others, whether they be covid patients, accident victims, or an old person with a heart attack. That list goes on and on; including premature births, cancer patients, sport field injuries, home accidents, innocent passersby hit during drive-by shootings, and on, and on, etcetera.
- Unvaccinated people make ideal hosts for covid variants to evolve. This is a fact of science. Even if an unvaccinated person contracts an asymptomatic case where the infected person experiences only slight symptoms, or sometimes none at all, the covid virus finds an ideal host to evolve into new variants. Because the host does not have the antibodies to attack and kill the covid viruses, the virus easily survives and thrives so it can be transmitted to others. There is nothing to prevent these variants from developing the capability to escape the antibodies of the current vaccines and start a new plague.
- We all belong to the community of humans who live on this planet, so the covid virus is a common threat to us all. Universal vaccination is the best defense against this global threat. “Who’s side do you want to be on in this existential battle?” your children might ask.
I ask vaccination resisters to digest this information and decide whether they want to be potential contributors to the “One in five hundred Americans dead” statistic.
Tim Tunks, Santa Monica
