To my vaccine-hesitant friends: I get it, the world is a scary place. We do not know the long-term effects of any of these COVID-19 vaccines and will likely not know for 50 years. We do know the short-term effects of COVID-19. I do get if you are young and healthy, the individual effects to you are not great; so why should you care? For 50 years we have heard “my body, my choice.” I agree with that! You have a right to do whatever you want to do with your body. That is how liberty works. I would be amongst the first to fight if people were forcibly vaccinated.
Here is what I want you to think about. What about the immunocompromised? My mother’s husband, Mike, was living on dialysis for 9½ years; it is a grueling existence and ultimately ends in death. He just got a kidney transplant, thank God. He has a new lease on life and hope for the first time in a decade. However, for people in his condition, those with other organ transplants or with other immunocompromised conditions, the vaccine does not effectively work on them because they cannot develop the antibodies. They have no choice. They are also amongst the highest risk for death if they contract COVID-19.
I ask you to consider if you value community and country. Sometimes we make personal sacrifices, even sacrifices to our personal health, to serve the greater good. I am not going to tell you that you must get vaccinated. I am going to say that you should consider doing it for the community rather than yourself, if after you consult with your physician you determine that you have no particularized risk if you take this vaccine.
Easy for you to say, Isaac — right, you already took it. You’re right, I did already take it and I took it to protect myself. I am relatively young but obese and so I bear some risk if I contract COVID-19. But I have faced a similar choice in the past. In the 2000s when I was younger, thinner and in the Army National Guard, I was ordered to get the anthrax vaccine. I was scared. Anthrax was some scary stuff and my chances of being exposed were, let’s say, remote.
Now when I say I was ordered, really, I wasn’t, you could get a discharge if you did not want to take the vaccine. I affirmatively did not want to take the vaccine. I chose to do so anyway. My commitment to my country and my community prevailed on me to risk my personal safety for the greater good. I knew that taking that vaccine was the cost of defending the liberty of others to have freedom over their own bodies. I knew when I signed up for the military, I was putting myself at personal risk anyway.
Now, I know many of my vaccine-hesitant friends have not signed up for the Army and many probably think I was foolish for doing so myself. I also know that you are not inherently selfish. I know that you care about your neighbors and communities. I see you volunteer in a million ways. This time I urge you to consider, if the risk to your personal safety is not outweighed by the need of all of us as a community to protect those people who are immunocompromised and cannot make choices for themselves.
For 244 years, we as a country have been making personal sacrifices for the greater good. Almost always the sacrifices were voluntary. I urge you now to think long and hard if despite any risk, this is the right thing to do. If you decide that even though you don’t want to, it is the right thing to do and you are willing, getting a vaccine is as easy as walking into your local pharmacy and it will not cost you any money.
Whatever you decide, I know it will be the right choice for you. I just hope that it will be the right choice for Mike and those like him, too.
Isaac Mass is a former Greenfield City Councilor and a veteran. He can be reached at isaacmass@gmail.com