For the majority of our readers — who are vaccinated (because we live in Eastern Mass.) — the reasons being given by those who refuse to get the shot, even when they are dying in the hospital, are inexplicable.
The most-often heard statement from the new COVID cohort is that they were exercising their “freedom†from the tyranny of government officials who have been urging Americans to be vaccinated.
However, freedom isn’t free, as those who are filling the critical care beds in our hospitals are learning the hard way. Further, their freedom to die affects the rest of us, both by spreading the disease among their fellow citizens and pushing our healthcare system to the brink.
Ironically, getting a COVID-19 vaccination shot is among the least demanding of the many impositions on our freedom that all of us experience as Americans each and every day.
Even in our free society, we live with restrictions on our behavior in everything we do. No one has the right to walk naked down the street, to drive a car as fast as they want, or to not pay taxes, to name just the most obvious examples of restrictions on our personal freedom.
More to the point (no pun intended), many vaccines already are mandated from the time we are born in this country in order to attend public schools.
In addition, unscrupulous politicians (Trump, Cruz, DeSantis, et als), together with disingenuous social and traditional media, are amplifying this corrupted notion of absolute freedom.
Ultimately however, the decision to get the vaccine remains a personal choice. But as we watch the suffering among the unvaccinated, their pathetic plight brings to mind the title of the classic James Dean movie, Rebel Without a Cause.
Yes, the unvaccinated may be exercising their “freedom.â€
But in the final analysis, what was the point of it all?
