We are suffering from at least two pandemics at once. Most obviously—the pandemic of the Covid-19 virus. But just as prevalent is the “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” as it has been dubbed by others. And let me be clear—I do not use that phrase to say that it is a pandemic that only affects the unvaccinated. I truly do mean that the unvaccinated are the national sickness. Rather than call it a pandemic of the unvaccinated, I could call it a pandemic of willful obstruction to progress and community betterment.
My life and the lives of those I love have been made less convenient and more dangerous due to a microscopic virus that wreaks havoc on the lungs can result in death or permanent disability. My life and the lives of those I love have also been made less convenient and more dangerous due to the millions of Americans who promote or believe lies about the vaccine or who have an unchecked “spirit of individualism and liberty” that has gone to the extreme, resulting in the deterioration of community welfare and common good.
We (as humans) have done a spectacular job of attacking the biology of the virus—creating several vaccines that are safe and effective. We have been less effective against the pandemic of purposeful ignorance and obstruction. I’m not talking about educating those who are likely to listen to logical information. We are doing an incredible amount of information dissemination, education, and making vaccines widely available and barrier-free. But we cannot seem to combat the millions of people with a personality type hell-bent on selfishness, scientific opposition, and political partisanship.
What does it matter if we have a vaccine for Covid-19 if millions of people refuse to take it out of defiance? Or out of any of any number of personal fears and hesitations that pale in comparison to the deadly virus itself that has quashed the general welfare and open life as we know it? Paradoxically, these people entrenched in their “rugged individualism” deny us the full benefit of the vaccine, which is only fully realized when widescale use of the vaccine stops the virus from spreading and mutating in ways that ultimately could come back to haunt even those that have been vaccinated. (To say nothing of the people who are unable to be vaccinated due to age, allergy, or infirmity.)
The life they claim to so desire—one of freedom of movement throughout the country and one of an open economy—is most easily and quickly attained through mass vaccination of our citizenry, which they are avowedly opposed to. They don’t listen to science. They don’t listen to logic surrounding the philosophy of the common good. They are as mindless and destructive as the virus itself—sweeping through society and destructing our welfare.
And so, we are stuck. I am powerless against the natural course of the virus as well as powerless against the selfishly defiant. I am thrilled to have a vaccine for Covid-19, but I wish we could somehow vaccinate ourselves against the selfish.
I will leave you today with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. After leaving Presidential office in 1909, Roosevelt embarked on tour of Northern Africa and Europe, and ended up giving one of his most famous speeches of his career at the Sarbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910.
We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extreme individualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme socialism. Individual initiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; and yet we should remember that, as society develops and grows more complex, we continually find that things which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative can, under changed conditions, be performed with better results by common effort.
. . .
Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless, because of the failure to agree on terminology. It is not good to be a slave of names. I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.
Like what you’ve read? Please subscribe to get this type of FREE content delivered to your inbox once a week. I appreciate you more than you know!
These are such frustrating times. I feel for any parent who is sending children back to school in an environment that pretends there is no safety concern. The cognitive dissonance is amazing.