I received my second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on March 2 and am now considered fully protected from the more serious effects of this dreaded disease. Despite this, I’m still wearing a mask when I go out in public—which I still don’t do all that much—and I’m practicing social distancing, especially with people I don’t know.
As hard as it might be to believe, particularly with many states here in the US lifting all restrictions and basically encouraging people to go out and act normal, meaning irresponsibly, there are still people who say they won’t get the vaccine. Some of them are from the anti-vaccine crowd who refuse ALL vaccines. They’re the ones who contributed to outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases a few years back and still haven’t learned from it.
Others believe the vaccines are not safe for a whole host of reasons, some valid, some just crazy. I’d like to first debunk some of the crazy reasons. There are no nano-sized tracers in the vaccine that enables the government to track your movements, and from my understanding of the development process, no shortcuts were taken which would affect the efficacy of the vaccine.
Refusing to be vaccinated against a deadly disease like COVID-19 just means that you place yourself in mortal danger. Now, if that was the only problem, I suppose I could live with it. If a person wants to die, who am I to argue? But by not being vaccinated, these people are also endangering others. Their elderly relatives, neighbors, and friends; children with underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable; and the society at large.
And, in a country with so many obese people, I’d hazard a guess that there are a lot of vulnerable people here. Of course, it’s considered politically incorrect to point out that people are a bit on the heavy side, even if it’s obvious that they are because they don’t exercise or eat sensibly, but when it comes to threats to my health and the health of those I care about, I’m in no mood to be PC.
My advice is: TAKE THE DARN SHOT. I had no adverse reaction to either shot, probably because at my age, my system is not as active as younger people, so it took its time absorbing the vaccine. But I wouldn’t have minded a day or two of discomfort, knowing that when it passed, I was protected.
As for some of the other things people are doing that really bother me, the refusal of many to wear masks when they’re around others is probably the most irritating. These people who claim that it violates their rights to be told to wear a mask don’t seem to realize that their refusal violates the rights of other people to live. Or maybe they just don’t care. Their right to be stupid ends six feet from me. So, I’m issuing a request.
Everyone who refuses to be vaccinated or to follow common sense rules like mask wearing, please announce this to the world so that everyone can know who you are and cross the street when they see you coming, refuse to answer the door when you ring the bell, and refuse to be in any enclosed space with you. If you approach a store, restaurant, or other public venue that requires masks, exercise your right to go find another place that caters to your stupidity, and allow the rest of us to live in peace.
By making the choices you make, you are separating yourself from civilized society. This is your right, but you DO NOT have the right to impose yourself and your ignorance and lack of empathy upon others. – NWI
