“Folks are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks … It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.” — Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, July 23.
Hey, vaccine refusers. Listen up.
People are losing patience with your lame excuses for failing to get vaccinated against COVID-19. This virus has killed one in every 500 of us; nearly 680,000 Americans have died. Yet only 55% of our total population, and 66% of those over age 18, are fully vaccinated.
Enough is enough.
Unvaccinated, you’re an exorbitantly expensive liability to society. You’re a potential killer, a walking woodpile, a welcoming petri dish. You’re exactly what the virus needs to not only spread itself but also mutate into a perhaps even more deadly version.
Your failure to vaccinate abetted the super-contagious delta variant now detected in 99% of U.S. cases and sending us, once again, into crisis mode. Perversely, national vaccination rates recently dropped.
Understand this: With COVID-19, you’re either the problem or the solution. The anger coming your way is caused by the unnecessary deaths of people you’re blindly killing, the exhausted health care workers you’re traumatizing, the medical system you’re bringing to its knees, the non-COVID patients you’re depriving of urgent medical care, the children whose education you’re hampering, the local businesses you’re destroying, the national economy you’re undermining and the national security you’re weakening.
All this, you’re proclaiming, is what others must endure in the service of your blinkered notion of “individual freedom.” You insist it always trumps the common good. But in a civilized society, that’s never been a survivable strategy.
With 42.6 million COVID-19 cases in a nation of 330 million, we’ve won a dreadful global sweepstake. Runner-up India, with 1.3 billion inhabitants, has “only” 33.6 million cases and 446,000 deaths.
American ‘triumph’
It’s a wretchedly ironic triumph of our prized American “exceptionalism.” We’re the scientific superpower that produced safe, free, remarkably effective vaccines. Yet we’re the nation, in sheer numbers, opting for the most COVID deaths.
The vaccines have made the virus far more selective about who it kills. While you dawdle and dissent, it’s rewarding responsible behavior and punishing irresponsible behavior. Nearly all of those dying are people like you. Hospitals report that roughly 95% of COVID-19 deaths are among the unvaccinated.
When there wasn’t a vaccine, private insurers paid 100% of treatment. Now patients are charged co-pays and deductibles. COVID-19 hospitalization costs up to $156,000 for patients on ventilators or in intensive care. People on Medicare without supplemental insurance may face medical bills. Insurers do pay for vaccinations and testing. People without insurance are vaccinated for free.
Washington recorded 7,487 COVID-19 deaths by Sept. 24. The state is 69.7% fully vaccinated. Okanogan County, 52.6% fully vaccinated, reports 53 deaths. With more than 500 new cases over the past two weeks, county infection rates are higher than ever.
Vaccine mandates raise hackles. Your failure to vaccinate is why we have them.
The unvaccinated and unmasked increasingly, and rightly, are denied access to commercial services and public venues — and they’re losing jobs. When Gov. Jay Inslee issued a vaccine mandate as a condition of employment for state workers, 7% of them demurred.
Yet there’s long-settled legal precedent that allows government to require vaccinations. General George Washington, hardly in the business of depriving Americans of freedom, ordered smallpox vaccination of troops. But at least 26 states recently passed laws weakening government authority to protect public health.
It’s a perplexing tactic, this Republican anti-vaccine mandate, anti-masking stuff. The Republican Party already is short on voters. So how does it profit Republicans to promote policies that enable a virus to kill off the voters they do have? Hello?
Under-vaccination in red states allowed nearly 12,000 preventable deaths in July and August, according to researchers at Northwestern University and Weill Cornell Medical College. In blue states during that period, 4,800 preventable deaths occurred.
Offloading cases
Still, Republican politicians stubbornly oppose mask and vaccine mandates even as their hospitals overflow with COVID-19 patients. Idaho’s Gov. Brad Little is depositing his governing failures on our state’s doorstep, unloading his state’s COVID-19 patients on Washington’s stressed-out hospitals. Recently 29 Idaho patients were occupying scarce beds in one Spokane hospital.
Our Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, in a witless attempt to do political penance for his irreproachable vote to impeach Donald Trump, is co-sponsor of the Masks Off Act. The money taxpayers spend educating a child in a mask-mandating public school would be given to any parent wishing to spend it enrolling their child in a private, mask-free school.
The day after Newhouse endorsed this unprecedented effort to preemptively eradicate Republicans in childhood, his constituents in the Tri-Cities learned that children account for 29% of that area’s new COVID-19 cases.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a presidential aspirant, wants to punish — with $5,000 fines — local governments and businesses each time they require anyone to be vaccinated. People might be making the wrong choice in refusing to vaccinate, DeSantis says, but he argues that this is their right.
Wrong. You’re free to harm yourself. But not if it harms others. Full stop.
Your freedom ends where my nose begins, as the old saying goes. The virus you spread from your nose to mine makes your harmful personal behavior my business.
So, please. Get over yourself. Vaccinate.
Solveig Torvik lives near Winthrop.
