Our pandemic, and theirs

Medical experts from the federal Centers for Disease Control are calling the surge of coronavirus cases across the United States “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Almost all new cases of COVID-19 are among people who have declined to get vaccinated. Most vaccinated people testing positive, the breakthrough cases, are asymptomatic or their illness is mild.

Mask mandates are again in front of us. Public health officers of most Puget Sound countries, but not Skagit, are recommending everyone wear masks in indoor public settings – restaurants and stores. La Conner’s mayor issued an executive order last week requiring town council attendees to wear masks.

On the streets of La Conner, more tourists are masked. At least one merchant has had people from Alabama and other states in her store.

It is probable that most people wearing masks everywhere in this country are vaccinated. The great majority of people in this country are vaccinated. They are healthy and want to stay that way.

Now, in August, many of the unvaccinated are telling pollsters they are not getting the vaccine. Why? Political, ideological and just plain false reasons. People can insist they have the right to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater, but they do not. That argument has been settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.

People who can get vaccinated and refuse to are unlit matches walking among us.

Part of the tension is from people insisting that the Declaration of Independence gives them the freedom to ignore public health mandates. They quote their “unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Some want a blank check to do what they want, taking personal responsibility. But that is not how the British were defeated. When the U.S. Constitution was written, the first sentence became “We, the people.”

We cannot all pull together for the good of all when some insist on standing apart in mistrust and distrust of the community of which they are a part. We will never create a healthy society for all when some willfully act as carriers of disease.

This editorial will not prompt anyone to get vaccinated. Some reading it, however, may decide to speak with unvaccinated family members, friends and co-workers and discuss with them their concern over their being unvaccinated for them, for themselves, and for the rest of us.

Some reading this will neither believe nor take kindly to these words. Have conversations with your doctors and local health professionals. That is what researchers are saying. Let’s tell those who can vaccinated but won’t to ask their doctors about their choice to fight the vaccine instead of the coronavirus.

Their doctors may be having different conversations with them otherwise, asking questions about the infection they have caught and their ability to breathe.

Dr. Howard Leibrand, Skagit County’s public health officer, says society is evolving into two groups: “They are going to get the illness if they don’t get the vaccine.”

In the Christian Bible, Jesus tells his followers to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Vaccination is the surest sign of concern for individual and community health. Self-love and shots of the vaccine will put the pandemic in all our rear view mirrors. There is no other way to get through and past this ongoing tragedy.