Running up into election day this year, there were way too many people going on about resisting anti-COVID mandates. Some of these “acts of resistance” were overblown, as a few unexpected revelations popped up, and a few of the “freedom fighters” are still fighting on as though they feel that have something to prove.
Which is, what exactly…?
Is it that they’re afraid of the vaccine? After all this time and all the information being made available, not to mention how most doctors (including hopefully your own) are suggesting vaccination, you’d think this would have been addressed by now.
As someone who got fully vaccinated a few months ago, if you’re looking for stories about side effects, I got tired and stayed in bed for a day after the shots. It felt like I’d gotten a cold and needed to spend the day in bed, which most people were doing when they got sick before the COVID crisis came about. And despite vaccination, if someone requests I mask up, I do, as it’s much like a request to have a shirt on before you enter a store.
Or is it perhaps some form of statement to do this? After having a few “bad role models” hogging up all the air in the room like a large hole in the side of a spacecraft, is this maybe some form of “lack of virtue signaling” that some folks need to put on?
It seems that the one theme that keeps coming up again and again if someone tries and ask them about this is that this feels like an infringement on their freedom. It’s a grand statement to make, alongside their freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom to carry military-grade hardware into a fast food franchisee.
And if it were simply a case of individual expression, then hey, more power to them. If they want to risk their own lives, being four times as likely to die from COVID than vaccinated patients, well that’s on them.
But there’s an old saying that’s been used in some form or another for 140 years or so, “Your rights end where my nose begins.” Which considering how COVID gets transmitted, is quite apt… As the vaccinated carry less of a potentially infective COVID load, they become less of a spreader, and wearing a mask as well best protects others in case you are. And if you don’t give COVID a place to incubate inside you because you’re vaccinated, we don’t have as many places for COVID to mutate and try to “mix up the act.”
Which brings us back to the question of proclaiming your freedom on this issue. If you stand this way, are you saying you want the freedom to get sicker than you might? The freedom to make other people sick? The freedom to give a disease chance to become more virulent and deadly?
Yes, that old song claims that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but why does anyone else have to cover your losses?
Or maybe it’s embracing freedom to not be told what to do, a freedom from responsibility, a freedom from consideration of others, a freedom to be selfish, a freedom to grab everything good for yourself and not listen to the person you elbowed in the eye to grab what you think is yours…
Which can be neatly summarized in one word: Immaturity…
So is being the cause of the Delta variant and the Great Resignation actually worth it? Is you being free worth making everyone else pay for your mistake?
Isn’t it time to grow up…?
James Ryan 