Vaccination provides best path out of pandemic

Editor:

Whether or not to get the vaccination jab is not a factual choice for those who are misinformed and afraid. But it also not freedom. It’s a moral decision.

The facts in favor the vaccine are endless if you do not get all you news from watching an admitted provocateur and dissembler like Tucker Carlson. But in addition the choice has a major moral – actually biblical – aspect that no one addresses.

Unlike the Spanish Flu which killed 50,000,000 and went away, Covid is developing variants that will stay. Covid, therefore will eventually turn from a an uncontrolled “pandemic” killing people worldwide into a persistent, but more manageable, “epidemic” since a portion will always die. It probably can not be wiped out like all the things I was vaccinated for standing in line as the school nurses administered the required shot each time science beat a new disease.

For vaccinated people (and all the unvaccinated people who survive) the quickest way to get our lives back is 1) for all to be quickly vaccinated or 2) for the unvaccinated to contract it and those who are going to die, die. The fact that the sooner the unvaccinated (but susceptible) die is one way to demonstrate that taking the jab has a moral dimension.

The other way of proving that taking the jab is a moral choice is to realize the plain fact that Covid’s spread is outpacing vaccine production worldwide. (The fact that this means as we so often hear that more variants will come back to try to get us as second time is not the point.) The point is that decision to not vaccinate when it’s there to take is immoral because it means the virus will spread faster and infect more people who are waiting and wanting the vaccine will die as they wait.

Till there is vaccine for all those that want it and die are victims due to the lack of morality and risk tolerance of the anti-vax people who justify endangering others as an exercise of independence.

The plain fact is that if the issue is independence and not death of other people, the time to exercise independence is when it’s time for a booster or treatment. Refuse either or both then.

Right now helping to slow this monster down is the only moral choice. For some it means overcoming fear. For some it means that just like not running a red light, they do what is safe for all. Either way, all ways, it’s time to take the jab.

Conrad F. Cropsey

Albion