BY: MARY WILSON
Opinions Editor
Practically a year into COVID-19, the global pandemic that has killed more Americans in a single year than in all of World War II, we’re starting to see signs of hope. Vaccines—that modern scientific miracle—are now available and effective against the coronavirus.
That is nothing to downplay.
Despite a disappointingly slow rollout in some states (exhibit A: Missouri), more and more people are getting vaccinated and therefore playing a major factor into getting back to some sense of normalcy.
Still, too many people are refusing to get the vaccine. The state of Missouri’s official website on the COVID Vaccine says that the “choice to be vaccinated for COVID-19 is a personal one.”
Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, a religion that, according to the BBC, has 1.2 billion followers worldwide made a statement to an Italian news program. According to a New York Times news article that covered the Pope’s comments, he called the vaccine a “lifesaving, ethical obligation.”
“It’s an ethical choice, because you are playing with health, life, but you are also playing with the lives of others,” Francis is quoted as saying. He continued, “I’ve signed up. One must do it.”
He added that not taking a vaccine that “has no special dangers…is a suicidal denial that I wouldn’t know how to explain.”
While the Pope is not a government official, he is, I’d say, one of most influential people in the world.
People list a variety of reasons for not getting vaccinated, which is proven to protect against the virus and also reduce the intensity of the illness and might even reduce the spread of the virus.
Some are worried that the government might be tracking them via a microchip implanted through the vaccine.
Others say that not getting the vaccine is their personal choice.
This, in fact, annoys and angers me the most.
So you don’t want to get the vaccine? Being a young person, you’re statistically unlikely to become severely ill should you contract the virus. You might not even develop symptoms.
So why get vaccinated?
Why not just vaccinate the elderly and people with chronic health conditions and frontline workers and medical professionals?
To keep everybody healthy—to stop even more people from dying—we need herd immunity.
Everyone who is able must be vaccinated. We need as many people to get vaccinated as possible so we can achieve herd immunity. We’ve achieved this with diseases like polio, diseases that my grandparents’ generation watched kill and disable countless children.
Some people, like myself, are unable to be vaccinated.
I have a chronic health condition, an autoimmune disease, that frequently lands me in the hospital. To keep my disease from killing me, I need to take oral steroids. These lower my immune system significantly, and, should I contract the virus, puts me at much higher risk of death or being in the ICU on a ventilator.
My doctors have told me that I am not eligible to get the vaccine while I’m on steroids. Even when I’m off steroids, and I get vaccinated, the other medicine I’m on likely lowers my immune response, leaving me less protected than a healthy person who was vaccinated.
In other words, I rely on herd immunity.
I hear people all the time say that they “want to get back to normal.”
I do, too.
I want to go eat in restaurants, and visit friends, and hug family members. I want to be able to travel. I want to go learn in a classroom without fearing contracting a deadly virus. I want to be able to visit my 92-year-old great aunt in a nursing home, who we haven’t seen in almost a year.
I want to get back to normal, too.
But to do that, we all need to do our part.
If you’re eligible to get vaccinated, get vaccinated.
Wear a mask when you’re around people not in your household.
We’ll get back to normal soon. I promise. I hope. I need to believe that.
Until then: when you’re able, get vaccinated. We all have to do our part.
