The Tipping Point on Vaccines, So To Speak: We Are Reaching It

Well, we're pretty close to being there. Meaning, the tipping point on vaccines.

No, not that tipping point, where herd immunity happens, where those getting shots so far outnumber those who haven't that we can start walking around like real, unmasked human beings. How devoutly to be wished.

No, no. The preliminary tipping point: The one where the number of shots far outnumber the people who want them. Because there are a whole bunch of people who: 

• don't think they need them; 
• don't think it's anybody's business whether they have them or not;
• think it's wrong for the government to make health decisions;
• think that they will be the one in many, many millions who will get sick anyway; or 
• are somehow religiously objectionable.

And that is an enormous percentage of our population--not the majority, but enough so that we can't look forward, not for a long time, to the day when 'normal' becomes part of our operating lexicon.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has said that 13% of all adults will definitely not get a vaccine shot. Why not? 

Let's run down the reasons, some from the article, some not:

• Not enough information--this is a cop-out. It's all over the Internet. Just get online. What the hell else do you need to know? If you get shots, you won't die. If you don't, you might. Questions?
• Side effects--Yes, there may be some. They may last a day. Look at it this way: This is what you're avoiding. Covid may last forever, even if you don't die from it. There is such a thing as "long Covid," too, with coughing and tiredness for months. Wow, does that sound like fun. How's that for side effects? Then, on the other hand, there is death.
• Long-term effects of vaccines are unknown--again, a cop-out. Covid's long-term effects are pretty definite, if it gets bad enough: You'll be dead forever anyway, but why start now?
• Don't know what's in it--Just ask. Your doctor will tell you. Probably researchable on the Internet, too. There's no poison. Millions have received shots and are perfectly healthy. That's the idea!
• It's just like the flu--Nonsense. This ain't like anything anybody's ever had. Yes, people die of the flu. They die in car accidents, too. But not nearly 600,000 in just a year. Uh-uh.
• You can't make me--Correct. If you don't care about yourself, though, which is your perfect right, do you care about anyone else? Is that somewhere on your agenda?
• God is in control (Robin Vos, Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, with that philosophy): Okay, so we're helpless, then. That's baloney, though. We now have several very effective vaccines. And, if you want to think about it--clearly an option for those suffering from another contagious disease, being ERA--excessively religiously afflicted--you can say that God also made humans who have brain power, have successfully attacked this virus with all the ingenuity they can foster, and did it with speed unprecedented in human history. If God meant for us all to die from Covid, for us to give up and face the rapture (which is what some evangelicals believe), all but a few of us would be quite dead by now, kind of like Stephen King's premise in The Stand, which is a book I've thought of several times in the past year. God, if you think he or she means anything, obviously didn't mean that. Death is inevitable, true. Once again, terrible death from a virus isn't. It doesn't need to run its course. It can be stopped. Right now.

Yes, they have now found some people who got the shots and still got sick, and a few of them died. And they have to figure out why. But those numbers are so incredibly low in terms of the whole population, that--like in all science--it represents an inevitable, minuscule exception. Besides, getting vaccine shots are still the most guaranteed way to prevent illness from this awful virus. It may not be absolute, but you have to get really, really unlucky for it to be otherwise. 

The only other alternative is to throw yourself out there and hope like hell the germs won't find you. If they do, you're in for a rough ride: Isolation in the hospital with a contraption stuffed down your throat indefinitely, perhaps in futility, just make sure you're still breathing. Which, if it's bad enough, is the way you'll die, of slow, torturous drowning. No one deserves that.

Guns are an inevitable price we have to pay for freedom in this country. So is abortion. So are people who don't want to get vaccine shots. Which of the above is the most hazardous? Tough call.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark