Sorry to be so crass, but this is a crisis. COVID numbers are once again on the rise, just as we thought we were heading back toward some version of normal life. July has been a bad month for the virus, leaving Dr. Fauci saying “We’re going in the wrong direction.” Even Donald Trump’s surgeon general, Vice Admiral Dr. Jerome Adams, has sounded the alarm: The pandemic is “spiraling out of control again.” Adams attributes the surge to the fact that too few people have been vaccinated.
A few years back, when my now teenage grandsons were cute little preschoolers, one afternoon I took them to the local kiddie pool, where we had gone many times before. This day, we walked up to the gate only to find it locked, with a sign expressing regrets that the pool had to be closed for the rest of the day. We couldn’t imagine why the pool would be closed during normal operating hours on a beautiful summer afternoon. But then, returning to our car, we met a father and son who filled us in. There had been a birthday party just a little earlier during which one of the guests had not only done a little #1 in the pool but had done the dreaded #2 as well. Emergency! Pool closed!
There’s a metaphor developing here. One might ask why the pool staff couldn’t have simply scooped out the offending material and gone on with business. It was, after all, just one small heap in a large body of water. What could possibly go wrong? Or one could ask why they didn’t simply rope off the small area where the accident occurred and allow swimmers to enjoy the rest of the pool. One might just as well ask why pool managers post “Don’t pee in the pool” signs in the first place. Couldn’t they rope off a designated peeing section where swimmers could relieve themselves without contaminating the whole pool? The answers to these questions are too obvious to merit discussion. What happens in Vegas may (or may not) stay in Vegas, but what happens in one part of the pool does not stay in that part of the pool. It contaminates the entire body.
And that brings us to several groups whose reluctance to protect themselves and the “herd” are causing this latest crisis. As of this date, fewer than half of all Americans have been fully vaccinated; even allowing for the millions of children who are not yet eligible, we are still far short of the number needed to achieve the long-hoped-for herd immunity.
According to CNN’s Travis Caldwell, Holly Yan, and Dakin Andone–on Sunday, July 25–in 48 states, the rate of new cases in the past week jumped by at least 10% compared to the previous week; in 34 of those states, the increase was more than 50%. Southern California–including San Diego and Los Angeles–is experiencing the highest numbers they’ve seen since February, and hospitalizations in LA County more than doubled in a two-week period in July, topping 700 for the first time since March.
It’s been well established that this latest surge is caused by the Delta variant of the virus, which is the most transmissible version we’ve seen yet. This phase has been given the label “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated, because at least 83% of new cases and 97% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated people (University of Massachusetts Medical School). There have been a small number of “breakthrough infections” among the fully vaccinated; but the cases have been mild, have not required hospitalization, and have not caused death. Conclusion: The vaccines are working.
Americans are known around the world for our rugged individualism; unlike citizens of other countries, notably Asian cultures, our first concern is rarely for the collective body. We pride ourselves on being hardy, independent, and self-sufficient; and many Americans are far more focused on their “rights” than on the responsibilities associated with those rights.
Then there are the libertarians who, as the name suggests, value liberty above all else and who believe people allowed to choose for themselves can be trusted to do right things and act in the best interest of themselves and their fellow citizens. That deeply misguided notion could be debunked by a quick study of human psychology and world history.
The Cato Institute denies that libertarians, despite their fierce insistence on personal choice, have no concern for the effects of their individual actions on others. Their website offers this description:
“To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government. . . . Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism.”
Although not everyone who advocates limited government and expresses antipathy toward government calls themselves “libertarian,” suspicion and distrust of government has grown exponentially in my lifetime. The dominant argument of the gun slingers who resist even small, common-sense changes in gun legislation is that if the government takes away any portion of the freedom to own firearms, the populace will be left defenseless in the case of attack by the government.
Next in line is the God-will-take-care-of-me group. I’m not disparaging anyone’s faith or religious practice, just saying certain people may need to examine their beliefs a bit more deeply. Those who believe all they need is God to protect them against a deadly virus should ask themselves whether God loves them more than God loved the 650,000 people who have already died. My high school classmate John was a good man and a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather. Does John’s death from COVID mean God didn’t care about him or that John was not worthy of God’s protection? No.
Since diseases don’t recognize social status or personal virtue, even the best and most powerful are as much at risk as the most evil or powerless. President Abraham Lincoln, widely regarded as our best president and a fine example of morality and honor, lost three of his four sons to disease during their childhood and teen years. One son, Willie, died at age 11, during Lincoln’s presidency, of typhoid fever believed to have been contracted from contaminated water that because of the Civil War then supplied the White House. If Honest Abe didn’t earn divine intervention or immunity from suffering, that doesn’t bode well for my chances.
And these days we can never forget the conspiracy theorists. Many who are refusing vaccination are convinced the government is using a public health crisis as a venue for carrying out such nefarious operations as injecting us all with tracking chips, stealing our DNA, and making people magnetic. If that sounds more like the plot for a science fiction movie, welcome to the 21st century!
Evangelicals were a relatively quiet, low-profile group until President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) “put liberal aspects of his Baptist tradition front and center, whether appealing for racial equality, lamenting economic disparity or making human rights concerns integral to American foreign policy” (Clyde Haberman, New York Times, 28 Oct 2018). Mr. Haberman attributes Carter’s replacement by Ronald Reagan in 1980 to Carter’s fellow evangelicals’ displeasure with his liberal agenda. Their disillusionment with President Carter led evangelicals to put their considerable clout behind Ronald Reagan, also a professed Christian, even though Reagan’s lifestyle–“twice-married, alienated from his children, almost never attended church”–“flew counter to much of what they considered elements of an upright life.”
The contemporaneous birth of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, with its anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality agenda, according to Mr. Haberman made the late 1970s a pivot point for the evangelical voice in American politics. Since then, they have become the most powerful voting bloc in the Republican Party. Also known for their anti-science point of view, their opposition to vaccines should surprise no one.
The last group is less distinct but among the most powerful: those in whom the tribal mentality is most deeply ingrained. Dr. Zeke Emanuel, speaking to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on July 26, sadly informed viewers that only 9% of U.S. hospitals have fully vaccinated staffs, because according to Dr. Emanuel, health care workers are subject to the same disinformation being promulgated among society at large. The divide between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, according to the doctor, has created an in-group/out-group environment in which either having or not having received one’s inoculation to COVID constitutes a “badge of honor” which identifies people with their respective tribes. Absurd as that sounds, it’s a powerful force not easily overcome by facts and logic.
Here’s the problem with all of those who believe vaccination should be a personal choice: They’re peeing in the pool. Remember the old seating arrangement in restaurants: smoking and non-smoking sections? I do. No matter where one was seated in a large room with no solid dividers, some smoke was bound to reach one’s nostrils, and being seated in the last row of the non-smoking section–directly beside the first row of the smoking section–was the same as sitting in the smoking section. There’s a reason restaurant managers no longer use that system. Everyone within an enclosed space breathes the same air, and everyone in the pool is swimming in the same water, because neither air nor water can create its own barrier.
My fully vaccinated status took effect on April 12. I received my two injections of the Moderna vaccine on March 1 and March 29, so April 12 was the end of the two-week post-injection period. According to the CDC and Washington State guidelines, I can now be with other fully vaccinated people, I can travel, and I can shop or eat at restaurants without wearing a mask. And for several weeks, I enjoyed those freedoms; but now, I’m becoming more wary, am more likely to don the mask even when I’m not required. During a shopping trip on Sunday, July 25, I saw more of my fellow Washingtonians masked up than I had seen in several weeks.
Thanks to the half of Americans who foolishly believe their choice to decline the vaccine affects only themselves, it’s highly likely that I will soon have no choice about whether I go out without a mask, travel, or maybe even go all the way back to quarantine. Although the small number of breakthrough infections for vaccinated people have been mild and have not resulted in hospitalization or death, a vaccinated person infected with COVID is capable of transmitting the virus to others. Breaking news: A headline in today’s New York Times says the CDC is likely to announce later (July 27) today a reversal in its mask guidelines, requiring fully vaccinated people to mask up again. Thanks a lot, vaccine rebels!
I want to be clear that I have no objection to mask mandates; I have willingly worn a mask for the last almost year and a half, and I’ll willingly do it again. I simply resent the fact that uninformed, misinformed, and obstinate people are stopping the progress that would be a benefit to us all.
I respect those who are hesitant to receive a vaccine because they fear medical issues may result, but I encourage those people to pro-actively seek answers to their questions instead of simply holding onto their fears while they impede progress. A family member who was recently diagnosed with fibrosis asked her doctor whether that diagnosis should prohibit her from being vaccinated; the doctor firmly replied: “Well, do you want to have fibrosis AND COVID or just fibrosis?” That family member has now received her first dose and will soon receive the second. She’s smart. She sought professional advice and then followed that advice.
The simple fact is vaccines work. I bear on my left arm the faint remains of the scar left by the smallpox vaccination I received at age 6. At the time, no one was permitted to enter first grade without that scar; it was the “vaccine passport” of the day. U.S. doctors stopped routinely giving smallpox vaccines in 1980 because smallpox had been eradicated from the world. Smallpox went from being “one of history’s deadliest diseases . . . estimated to have killed more than 300 million people since 1900 alone” (American Museum of Natural History) to fully eradicated within a few decades.
The Immunization Action Coalition says, “Eradicating smallpox prevented millions of deaths and—by removing the need to treat and prevent the disease—saves many countries billions of dollars. Perhaps just as important: it showed the world that disease eradication was possible.”
Polio, another dreaded disease responsible for killing and permanently disabling millions of Americans–including one U.S. President–began its decline in 1955 with the introduction of an effective vaccine, and the U.S. has been polio-free since 1979, according to the CDC. Polio cannot be cured, only prevented; so millions of people are able to walk today and millions more lived to become adults because a vaccine prevented them from getting polio.
Parents no longer live in fear of losing their young children to measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough) because vaccinations for those child-killing diseases have been a routine part of infant care for decades. Yellow fever, HPV, Hepatitis, influenza, and Ebola have also been controlled by vaccination.
French president Emmanuel Macron announced on July 12 that he is “putting in restrictions on the non-vaccinated rather than on everyone.” Those restrictions include being denied access to eateries, cinemas, museums, and public transportation without proof of vaccination. The alternative is to show a negative test result, but that test will no longer be free; it will cost 49 euros. Additional mandates include required vaccination for health care workers and others who have close contact with clients.
Talk of vaccine passports has raised eyebrows and tempers, but vaccine mandates are not new. The smallpox vaccine was required for my fellow first graders and me to start school. I had to show vaccination records for my children as part of their kindergarten entrance requirements. To be admitted to Florida Gulf Coast University, my daughter was required to have a vaccination which had not been among the routine shots given when she was a baby and toddler. Yet I can’t recall any examples of those vaccination requirements becoming political issues.
Bottom line is we’re all swimming in the same pool, so those who choose to exercise their freedom by making careless or irresponsible choices contaminate the water for all of us. John Donne may have put it a bit more eloquently when he wrote “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main[land],” but the simple, clear message from vaccinated Americans to vaccination resisters is “Stop peeing in the pool.”