Stop Telling Me How to Talk to Anti-Vaxers

Frankly, I don’t need any more lectures about how I need to patiently explain to anti-vaxers why Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective.

The most ridiculous thing about this narrative is that somehow it’s on the “pro-vaccine” community to “convince” the unpersuadable, the obdurate, the obtuse, the YouTube “researchers,” et. al. that they need to get vaccinated, or else it’s our fault that Covid is running amok again.

Where’s the think-piece telling anti-vaxers how to listen? Don’t they have a responsibility in all this? I mean this. Somehow we’ve taken their role and responsibility out of this, even though their behavior is the cause of it all.

Now let me be clear, I’m not equating “unvaccinated” with “anti-vax.” There is a segment of the population that just can’t get vaccinated. Children under the age of 12, and people with certain allergies or immunodeficiencies can’t take it at all. I’m not talking to them.

Nor am I really talking about the vaccine hesitant — particularly from communities of color — who are reluctant because of our nation’s less than stellar history of experiment on them.

I’m talking about those who can get vaccinated but refuse to because “reasons.”

I keep thinking of an analogy. If someone insists they have the “freedom” to play in traffic because it’s a “public road” and they’re the one taking the risk, that doesn’t mean they have the right.

They could get hit by a car, but it’s also possible that a driver will swerve to avoid them, potentially endangering themselves and other drivers on the road. If there’s a multi-car pile-up, the person who insisted on exercising their “right” to play in traffic is at fault.

Drivers have the right to drive on a road that is safe and free of idiots playing on it. Greater public safety dictates that it’s OK to make playing in traffic illegal.

In the same way, there is no “Constitutional right” to spread Covid. And as much as the “spreadnecks” would like to pretend otherwise, “freedom” doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want, wherever you want.

What about our rights?