For a few brief weeks in the spring, it seemed as if the United States was poised to announce a small victory in the fight against the pandemic. A vaccine had arrived in record time. It was proven effective against serious illness and hospitalization, as an average of 2 million adults were getting inoculated each day and there seemed to be plenty of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson doses to go around. The media scrambled to write pieces about how to stay safe while still breaking free of isolation, and there were seemingly millions of rhapsodic tweets about our Hot Vax Summer.
But then, predictably, the anti-vaxxers and their BFFs the anti-maskers had other plans.
Yes, COVID-19 is surging again, this time fueled by the highly infectious and deadly Delta variant, which is ravaging the country—especially in places with low vaccination rates such as Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. As of August, about half of the country remains unvaccinated. But as this unvaccinated group has asserted its importance and become a public health menace, it seems dangerous to dismiss them as an undifferentiated collective. […]
I agree with what Ms. Baptiste said later in the article that the lack of perceiving oneself as a member of a community and having a responsibility to others in the community is most troubling. We’ve celebrated individualism, yes, but we’ve always (at least in my lifetime) “circled the wagons” together too. It also baffles me that Fox News can continue to spew nonsense with no consequences.
The Federal government needs to mandate that people get vaccinated.