Many years ago, when I was eased out of a position, essentially dehired, my soon-to-be previous employer made a comment along the lines that he didn’t mind so much my calling a spade a spade, but he drew the line at my calling it a “God-damned shovel.”
Well, it’s shovel time. I’m sick and tired of the anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers, the apologists for those who endanger everyone else by refusing to follow tried and effective public health practices. Those practices work, and they work not just for COVID-19. Last year, because of masking and social distancing, the number of flu cases dropped by roughly 95%.
There hasn’t been much recognition of that fact, especially by the anti-maskers and the “I want my personal freedom” crowd.
Vaccines work. Just look at who’s in the hospital and dying — and at the vast majority who aren’t.
But too many people are saying words to the effect of “protect yourself and let the stupid ones die.” The problem with that approach is that millions of people are still vulnerable, either because they can’t be vaccinated, because they’re stupid or ignorant, or because those who control their health decisions are. My wife the professor has college students who are afraid to get vaccinated because their parents oppose vaccinations. Small children can’t be vaccinated. Older people who are immuno-compromised and vaccinated can still get COVID, and some small percentage will die despite taking every preventive step they could. Even those who recover from COVID may face lifelong negative health consequences.
And the “freedom” crowd persists in saying that people should have the right to make an informed decision. Vaccinations have a minuscule negative effect, but when a large group of people fails to get vaccinated, the impact on the rest of the population is significant – witness the continuing death toll. So a decision not to get vaccinated isn’t just a personal decision; it has a significant adverse public impact. Even if “you” escape the consequences of COVID, “Your” freedom can and will kill other people, even if you don’t know them.
One real problem is that too many policy-makers and politicians refuse to admit that a great number of people are in fact stupid or ill-informed, and their ignorance results in too many innocents dying. Public health measures are called “public” because they affect everyone. School systems require vaccination for something like ten diseases, and most of them aren’t as deadly as COVID, but idiot legislators across the U.S. are forbidding COVID vaccine mandates, either because they’re afraid they’ll lose votes, or because they have no understanding of public health requirements, or because they’re idiots, possibly well-meaning, but still idiots who don’t want to admit, either publicly or privately, that a significant fraction of any population isn’t that well informed or intelligent.
But this shouldn’t be a great surprise. Too many Americans have been ignoring reality for years, coddling their children, turning their eyes from ongoing economic and educational dysfunction, supporting political philosophies and decisions that cannot work over time, and extolling freedoms that, in actuality, don’t exist for everyone. And now they’re insisting that everyone is rational and can make an “informed” decision and that everything will be fine if we let them make that decision.
Can I interest you in buying a large used bridge in California?