When asked why they have not been vaccinated against COVID, many people, in all walks of life, from the famous to the person in the street, have been answering “It’s a personal choice.”
The notion that this explains anything is peculiar, to put it nicely.
No Kidding
Everything we do, or don’t do, results from a personal choice.
The choices we make in big decisions and small define who we are and determine the impact we have on all around us. The accumulation of countless personal choices forms the society we become.
Judgment
One implicit argument in the “personal choice” explanation is that a course of action being my choice somehow precludes others from assessing or evaluating my conduct.
Well, no. Given human nature, actually, we can’t help it. We observe, we consider, we judge. If I am such a tough guy that I refuse to wear a seat belt in a car, you are free to consider me foolish.
Not only do we judge our own behavior and each other’s, we should. It’s the only way to learn and to improve. To the extent human beings are at the top of the order of things on the planet, it is largely due to our abilities to observe, to discern what matters, to analyze, to solve problems, and to communicate.
The benefit of judging depends on doing so properly, however. The judging of others that deserves condemnation is the kind that is flawed in numerous ways: invalid assumptions, baseless “facts”, flawed reasoning, missing context. Among the worst assumptions, of course, is not judging at all, but pre-judging: prejudice based on any of the various, odious “isms”. Our insatiable need for Us vs. Them (post of 2/19/19) so often leads us astray.
There’s another big mistake that gives judging a bad name. Attempting to judge a person’s worth, which is incalculable, is simply beyond us. Contrast that with sound judgment of a person’s behavior (including our own), which is advantageous, and sometimes necessary.
Consequences
Similarly, those invoking “personal choice” as a defense of their behavior are seeking refuge from the consequences of choices they’ve made.
Anyone choosing to sky dive without a parachute has made a disastrous personal decision; once outside the plane, the laws of physics determine the consequences.
Stop signs and red lights are impingements on our freedom. Running them is a personal choice. The consequences of doing so are too often tragic. Trying to prevent those tragedies by enforcing stop signs and red lights is a public policy choice.
Whether to order chocolate, vanilla or mocha chip ice cream is a personal choice with consequences that are benign and limited to the person doing the choosing.
Those refusing to be vaccinated (a) put themselves at much greater risk of catching COVID; (b) make severe illness, hospitalization and even death much more likely if they do catch it; (c) put everyone they contact, from strangers to loved ones, at greater risk; and (d) do their part to keep the virus going, and make the desired herd immunity ever more elusive.
As bad choices go, better someone run a red light than refuse the vaccine. Sky diving without a parachute is worse than skipping the vaccine – at least for them, maybe not so much for the rest of us.
As hospital beds and critical care units fill yet again, this time with obviously preventable cases, exhausted health care workers are beside themselves with the most justifiable fury imaginable. Here we go again, and for what? How many patients must they see suffer and die, victims of a supposed hoax? When we finally get out of this, our next health crisis will be PTSD for our health care workers.
Talk about “unfair”.
“Freedom” Only to the Misguided
If vaccine hostility seems reminiscent of people refusing to socially distance themselves or wear face coverings as resisting infringement of personal freedoms, that’s because it is.
So, let me get this straight: The signers of the Declaration of Independence mostly died young so you could have the freedom to deliberately spread a pandemic? You have a Constitutional right to keep a deadly virus going while it develops variants – perhaps one day, a strain for which we have no answer and no defense whatever? Note that former CDC Director Robert Redfield is predicting a worse variant by the fall.
So, yeah, we can do it; we can exercise our freedoms to make things even worse. Too many are. But why?
The Delta is more than bad enough, by the way. Critically ill unvaccinated adults are joined in this new wave of patients by children, lots of them, who have no vaccine to take yet and are getting very sick. Not only is Delta the most contagious virus in memory; it picks on our kids. It’s also producing more severe illness than prior variants.
Leave it to freedom-loving legislators and governors like those in Florida, to pass and sign statutes telling cruise companies that they may not conduct their business in a way that protects their customers. No word on whether sky-dive operators are allowed to require parachutes in Florida. US District Court Judge Kathleen Williams recently issued a preliminary ruling allowing Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings to enforce vaccination requirements when they resume port operations in Miami on August 15.
A Special Case of Hesitance
There is a particular source of vaccine hesitance worth mentioning. Black Americans harkening back to awful healthcare betrayals in the past – the most infamous being the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis – may well have lingering mistrust of any initiative in the realm of health.
At this point – with hundreds of millions successfully protected and virtually everyone in ICU unvaccinated – one can only hope sufficient evidence is in. It’s neither the federal government nor the doctors or health officials doing all the current lying. They’re busy trying to save lives. This post mourns people quoting the current lies with their dying breaths. There’s no need to be among them.
A Moment of Clarity
We can and should have robust discussions, including disagreements, about which personal choices are good ones and bad, and what public policy to adopt in response to various behaviors.
Amid current debate on what should be mandated for our own good, however, certain facts are clear:
This is the deadliest pandemic in a century. It spreads by people breathing on each other.
The outrage here is that we seemingly do need government officials to tell us to keep a safe distance, wear a face covering, and take the vaccine. Why? How is that possible? It should be insulting to our intelligence that they even have to mention such measures. Doing them should be a given for nearly everyone. Yet leaders who “get it” must beg, plead, and bribe, often to no avail? What the hell is wrong with us?
A good friend (who happens to be a staunch conservative) told me a disheartening story about a friend of his. This fellow flatly refused to wear a mask when he learned its main purpose was to protect others, rather than himself. “I don’t care about others,” he said matter-of-factly.
It was a stunning revelation from someone my friend thought he knew fairly well. This man had manifested symptoms of the one ailment ravaging us that is more dangerous than the coronavirus. His self-diagnosis was spot-on.
Ken Bossong
© 2021 Kenneth J. Bossong