If you are pro-gun control, then you can’t be anti-vaccine.
The posts I am seeing are using the same logic as gun nuts. A lot about individual freedom over societal safety. A lot about how it’s your choice to protect yourself from some vague hypothetical enemy (intruders/vaccine side effects), while ignoring the proven threat of a real and present danger (40,000 gun deaths per year/COVID). Even incredibly offensive and utterly nonsensical posts about this being how the Holocaust started – which has long been one of the NRA’s favorite rhetorical tactics.
Why is it that you don’t support people being able to own whatever weapon they want? It’s not generally because they might hurt themselves; because even though that would be sad, they knowingly took that risk.
It’s because they might – and statistically, will – hurt other people.
It’s the same with the vaccines. If the only person impacted by your decision not to vaccinate was you, then I would be sad and scared for you if you didn’t vaccinate, but I would agree that you have the right to do whatever you want.
But you’re not just putting yourself at risk. You’re putting all of us at risk. You are turning a temporary nightmare into a permanent Hellscape, and you are literally bringing about the end of the world as we know it.
This fourth COVID surge is especially devastating, because it’s the only one that is almost completely avoidable. And with all these variants developing so rapidly because of all you readily-available hosts, the fifth, sixth, and hundredth ones might not be avoidable at all.
If you give someone COVID because you didn’t vaccinate and kept going out in public anyway – even if you continue to wear a mask, because that was always just the temporary stopgap measure that was (and is) better than absolutely nothing – if you give someone COVID, and they die, then their death is largely on you. If they have lifelong complications because of the disease you gave them – as tens of millions of people already do, and always will – that’s on you, too. That’s just how responsibility works. Whether that person is your family, your friend, or a stranger sitting next to you that you’ll never even know or talk to. Or the people they go on to infect. Remember: this entire virus, as all viruses do, began with just one person. And look where we are now.
Haven’t we seen enough of that chain reaction over this 17-month nightmare? Do you understand that the only reason it’s still going on at all is because of you, and others like you?
At least with a gun, people know they have a weapon. But with COVID, you are the weapon – and you may not even know you’re in possession before you end the life of a fellow human being. Many of whom can’t get vaccinated, for genuine medical reasons (such as not being normally able to mount an immune response at all). Can you really live with that? Especially when you have watched hundreds of your friends and family get vaccinated, and we are all doing just fine? And knowing that our own vaccines will eventually fail, when just one of you inevitably produces a variant that is able to evade them? Especially for we at-risk people, who spent over a year living in terror praying for the safety and relief of a vaccine. We finally have that safety. I cried the day I became fully vaccinated and didn’t have to live in fear anymore. We all hugged our friends as though it was the first time in our lives that we could, and were so unspeakably grateful that finally, after so much death and sacrifice, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
And now you are taking that away from us.
I know that this is a difficult decision for some of you. I know that there is a plethora of misinformation out there, and that it is incredibly scary and overwhelming. But it is just that – misinformation. Lies told by people who profit from chaos and fear. And it’s literally going to make the last 17 months the new normal forever if you don’t do your part to end it. We will keep watching the people we love get picked off one by one. You could even be one of them.
I have seen COVID death firsthand. It is the most horrible thing I have ever seen. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want that for anyone.
If there is anyone who is on the fence about getting vaccinated, I would like to invite you to write to me to talk about it. I promise you I will listen to your concerns, and direct you to vetted medical resources to allay your fears. I will also admit when your concerns are potentially valid, but will do my best to convince you that the vaccine is still the far, far lesser risk. Both for you personally, and for all humanity.
Please don’t make us do this forever. Please don’t allow your fear and others’ manipulations to cause more people to die. Put down your weapon. It’s not just a personal choice; what you do affects all of us.
