This isn’t a hard choice
BY: MAX WILSON
Staff Writer
I don’t know how to say this in a way that hasn’t been said before.
Maybe I should use an analogy:
If you woke up to find your house in flames, who would you call first? The fire department, with years of training and practice and specialized equipment, or your cousin?
Your cousin doesn’t have any specific knowledge of fighting fires. He doesn’t even know CPR. But he insists that people who die in fires actually die of other things, like smoke inhalation. And that not everyone will die in a fire.
The firefighters have the skills necessary to save your family and stop the fire from spreading, but your cousin read an article on Facebook that said that firefighters actually make fires worse, and that they get money for every person who dies in a fire. Plus, your brother’s neighbor’s cousin’s wife’s sister died the same day she installed a smoke detector—which Big Fire insisted everybody needs.
Sure, your brother’s neighbor’s cousin’s wife’s sister died in a car crash, but isn’t it a little suspicious that the car crash happened the same day she installed a smoke detector?
Who do you call?
We’ve all had to make that choice over the course of this pandemic. Do you trust medical professionals and scientists who say that wearing a mask has been proven, again and again, to slow the spread of a deadly virus? Or do you claim that your freedom is being oppressed, your civil liberties are being infringed upon, that by wearing a piece of cloth over your nose and mouth at the grocery store, you are being assaulted and offended?
Do you trust the nation’s top infectious disease experts when they go on TV and urge everyone to get vaccinated? Or do you say that the vaccine is unnecessary, that you read on the Internet that the vaccine makes you magnetic, that you’re young and healthy, that God gave you an immune system, damn it—and then, when you do get sick and doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists are leaning over your ICU bed, telling you that it’s time, you need to be intubated and put on a ventilator, insist that you actually do want the vaccine?
This isn’t a hard choice. Listen to the people who have dedicated their lives to studying medicine and the human body.
I know that we’ve gotten a few mixed messages over the course of this pandemic. The science and data are constantly evolving. When the vaccines were first authorized for use by the FDA, we didn’t have the Delta variant.
Let me be perfectly clear: unless you are a scientist, you do not know more about infectious disease or medicine than people who have spent decades studying and training.
Your five minute Google search that you call “research” is not the same thing as the research that the CDC does.
Your neighbor’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s friend’s coworker’s sister’s high school classmate is actually not the best person to listen to—unless your neighbor’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s friend’s coworkers’ sister’s high school classmate is, in fact, an infectious disease expert.
Listen to the scientists.
