I’m vaccinated. I caught the coronavirus bug in March 2020 right at the beginning of the pandemic, before we really knew what was going on. I thought I had the flu until reports came down that a lack of taste and smell were associated with COVID-19. When I was able to get a test for antibodies, I had a whole gang of em (and I kept making antibodies for the next year, right through my vaccination appointment). I was pretty sick, but I was never near death. Before I got vaccinated, I personally was never all that afraid of dying, because I’d contracted COVID and kicked it just fine. I was living life with my antibodies and felt pretty safe going about my day. When I got vaccinated, it was more out of a responsibility to everyone around me — the vaccine made it less likely that I would contract COVID-19, which means I would be less likely to spread it around the community to people who weren’t vaccinated. Now that the Delta variant has become the dominant strain in the US, I’ve gone back to wearing my mask whenever I go inside a business because it’s more contagious than the original strain and people who are vaccinated are testing positive for the virus. Am I afraid of dying or getting sick? No. Am I afraid of catching it and passing it on to others? Yes.
To me, this is how you behave in a civilized society. You do things you may not need to do for yourself, but those actions would potentially benefit those around you. I’m not wearing a mask for myself. I didn’t get vaccinated for myself. I did it to keep other people from getting sick because those people may not have the relatively easy experience with COVID that I had last year, or they may be unvaccinated and more susceptible to contracting it in the first place.
That’s one reason to get your vaccine — protecting others. The other reason is the knowledge that vaccinated people aren’t dying of COVID, so if you get vaccinated and contract the coronavirus, it’s a pretty safe bet that you won’t die. Neither of those reasons make space to make fun of a vaccine that could save your life and the lives of those around you, so I don’t make space to feel bad for people who play stupid games and win stupid prizes.
Meet Stephen Harmon who thinks the vaccine is ridiculous.
He doubts the necessity of the vaccine because it’s not 100% effective. As you know, if something is not 100% effective, there is no reason to do it. You may still die if you get into a car crash wearing your seatbelt, so why wear it at all? You can still get shot in the head if you’re wearing a bulletproof vest, so why even bother?
^The math ain’t mathing, but y’all already know that. He doesn’t want a vaccine and this is the United States, not France, so we can’t make him get one.
That was July 8th. One day later we have…
…an introspective COVID journey already? Life, and Miss Rona, comes at you fast. And the hits just keep on coming.
I really want Black people to set themselves free of the chains holding us to a blind allegiance to Christianity with no critical thinking. Even if you are the most devout Christian, you can still believe that DOCTORS and SCIENCE are tools by GOD to help save you.
The miracle was the vaccine. Asking God for a miracle after you scoffed at the one he sent you is punching your ticket straight to the other side to tell him to his face why you ignored the perfectly good resources he already sent.
The critical choice was months ago when he could’ve gotten the vaccine and didn’t. Had he gotten it, he wouldn’t have been in a hospital bed giving doctors permission to intubate him. And he’d be alive right now.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. This is what happens when you don’t get vaccinated because you don’t understand science, believe you know better than the people who’ve devoted their lives to studying infections diseases, and pray to God instead of trusting the doctors God already sent. (I’m an atheist — I just grew up in the church.) I don’t care that this guy is dead any more than I care about all of the other stubbornly unvaccinated people on ventilators. I care that they have selfishly left their loved ones to deal with their totally preventable death. I care that they are walking around infecting other people before their symptoms are bad enough to send them to the hospital. But I don’t have any space to care that they got what they signed up for.
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