On Vaccination

At what point do we just throw our hands up and say to the anti-vax (or the white-washed "vaccine-hesitant") people, "Fine. Don't get vaccinated. Get sick and die."

Because I've gotten to feeling that way more and more often.

Well, the simple answer is you don't. You go back to protecting the public health.

Because C-19 vaccination is at best only half about personal health.

Remember that COVID-19 (which should've been called SARS-2) is a pandemic and a national emergency. Which is why the other half of vaccination's importance is public health.

Each unvaccinated person is a walking petri dish for the virus and an enabler of its transmission and mutation. As long as the virus transmits, the unvaccinated will get sick and die. If that isn't bad enough, these walking virus hosts will give SARS-CoV-2 the opportunity to mutate. Mutations happen all the time and most are benign but there's always the possibility of something worse than the delta variant, worse in the sense of it being immune to the current vaccines. Which would put us all back at square one.

Not feeling compassion for your fellow citizens? How about the sheer economic cost of closed businesses, the strain on hospitals, the federal expense? Can you be motivated by your wallet?

Sadly, everything about preventing SARS-2 applies to the flu. Get vaccinated, stay home when you're sick, wash your hands. If we all followed those guidelines for the flu, the annual gains in productivity (or decrease in lost productivity) would be enormous. Nothing about remediating SARS-2 is new. It just highlights so many shortcomings in society. (One of which is the abject failure of public education to impart a basic understanding of virology and statistics with which we probably would be in an entirely different situation today.)

Do you have the right to refuse to be vaccinated? Sure. But that doesn't mean society has to accommodate your personal choice. Kids gotta be vaccinated (and prove as much) to attend school. Why should you not have to do the same to return to work or public events? You have freedom of choice but all choices come with consequences.

It's as though half the country is waiting to see World War Z outside their front door before they'll even consider driving over to CVS for a jab. FOR FREE.

To say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement. Surprised? Not so much.

Get vaccinated.