I’m wearing a mask again.
Not everywhere. But anywhere there is a crowd. Like the grocery store or the baseball game. Unlike well over 50% of my fellow Arkansans I’m completely vaccinated against COVID. And based on my doctor’s advice I am also recently vaccinated against pneumonia. So I’m pretty much good to go. So why the mask? Am I going to start knocking over liquor stores? Do I enjoy relative anonymity?
No. I’m putting the mask back on because it’s not about me.
Arkansas is pretty much setting the land speed record for spikes in the Delta Variant of the disease. Am I returning to the mask because I’m afraid of catching it? Not so much. Certainly with asthma and coronary artery disease I sure don’t need it. But if I were to catch it the odds are good that the symptoms would be relatively mild since I am vaccinated.
But here’s the deal. If I catch it, I could spread it to some Joe Blow at the Target store. And this would not be good for him because the odds are, if Joe Blow is an Arkansan, he or she is likely to have not received the vaccine. Especially if Joe Blow lives in a rural area.
For the life of me, I do not know how, to my mind at least, a public health crisis became politicized. It seems pretty simple to me. The stats show that the vast majority of COVID infections incur in people that are not vaccinated. Unfortunately that holds true for those that die from COVID or COVID related complications as well. Does the vaccine make you bulletproof and invisible? Of course not. But it sure increases your odds.
The vaccine is safe. It is plentiful. It is effective in preventing a fatal disease. It is free.
I mean, c’mon.
A lot of Arkansans would rather repose trust in advice from social media or jackleg preachers than people with actual expertise. Like doctors. I’ve read various “arguments” against getting the shot. The most recent, at least to me since I don’t spend a lot of time in Crazytown social media sites, is that the government’s vaccine program resembles the experiments performed by the Nazis on captive humans. Some damned fool actually signed a pleading in the Houston Methodist case raising this argument which the judge rightfully rejected as “reprehensible.” As for me, there are two “N” words I never use. “Nazi” is one of them.
But the lion’s share of the “arguments” against taking the shot center around some misguided notion of personal freedom that taking the shot would imperil. As someone put it the other day “the government doesn’t have an interest in my personal health.”
Which amusingly enough sounds like it’s in the same area code as the “pro choice” argument. Which most folks making the argument in the context of mass inoculation of the populace- at least around here-could not possibly agree with.
The government has an interest in the public health. The government has an interest in trying to keep this fire tamped down before we are back in lockdown mode. The government has an interest in keeping the economy growing.
And so yeah, it has an interest in your personal health to the extent that your health might be vital in stopping the spread of a deadly disease which has demonstrated downstream ramifications for all of us. Why is this so hard for some people?
So I’m putting the mask back on in public as bad as I hate to.
Because it’s not about me. And it’s not about you either.
It’s about all of us.
