Matching Tracksuits

It’s been many, many months since the Polish community gathered after Mass for any sort of social event. Today, there was an informal gathering afterward with a small potluck.

I’ve mixed feelings about such things. I’m vaccinated as are K and L. E is of course not vaccinated, but he didn’t spend any time to speak of in this room. And while I’d like to assume that everyone else was vaccinated, I’m just not certain.

Numbers are rising; the CDC now recommends a mask for everyone regardless of vaccination status; such gatherings seem increasingly risky.

Yet risky for whom? The unvaccinated. That means three groups:

1. Children whose parents would willingly and quickly get them vaccinated if the vaccine received FDA approval for that age group
2. People who would get a vaccine if they could but have associated health issues that makes it risky and
3. Every unvaccinated person who has chosen not to get vaccinated for a variety of reasons, almost all of which (no, all of which, come to think of it) I regard as willfully ignorant, idiotic, selfish, and immature.

At this point, I’d really like to say of such people, “Screw ’em. Let them get sick. Let them die if that’s the course the disease takes. They had a chance to get preventative help and they elected not to. Choices have consequences; ‘freedom’ is truly never free.”

The real problem, though, is that these people who are unvaccinated and getting sick are taking health resources from the few vaccinated individuals who contract the disease and everyone else with any other conceivable health issue that now have to wait for medical attention thanks to the anti-vaxers.

I’d honestly have no problem with hospitals setting up tents in their parking lots and putting unvaccinated covid cases there. Everyone else should receive priority.

“But you can’t do that! It’s immoral!”

Since when is triage immoral?

Additionally, insurance carriers should start applying a hefty penalty for those who can be vaccinated but are not.

I saw the meme and just couldn’t let it go without comment. Why? I knew I’d convince no one. I knew I’d risk doing damage to the relationship if I didn’t control my venting. Still — how could I just scroll on?

To begin with, it’s clearly a composite meant to suggest that the Holocaust survivor and this person wearing the as-far-as-I-know-non-existent covid vaccine bracelet were at a ball game together.

“Hey,” we’re meant to assume the survivor said, “watch out — I got something like that bracelet back in the forties.”

But it’s clearly a composite. There’s haloing around the braceleted hand showing it was inexpertly clipped from another image in Photoshop, and the proportions are all wrong. Still, I decided to skip that and simply, directly deal with the issue at hand, commenting,

This comparison is an utter insult to the victims of the Holocaust. It’s like comparing hall passes in school to the Soviet gulag system.

The poster replied,

G it is a very extreme comparison. But try to get on a cruise ship, fly American Airlines, cross into Canada, or work for Disney. They are forcing you to put a non FDA approved injection in you are to prevent a virus that you have a 99% chance of passing without the aid of medical help.

So much to deal with in that comment. I decided for simplicity once again:

J, it’s not simply an extreme comparison; it is an inaccurate comparison. The people with those tattoos, obviously mostly Jews, got those numbers upon being forced into concentration camps. They were put in these camps not because they were sabotaging the German war effort, not because they were refusing to comply with this or that edict, and mostly not because their political views didn’t line up with the state’s (though there were a sizeable number in that category, particularly in the early days: Dachau was the first concentration camp, and it was built in the early thirties specifically for political prisoners) — they were put in these camps because of who they were. They were undesirables, considered sub-human. They were put in the camps because they were Jews, or Roma, or Slavs, or homosexuals. There was no way they could attempt to prove they’d reformed their political views in hopes of getting out. There was no way they could attempt to prove they’d reformed their religious views (in the case of the thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses the Nazis interned) in hopes of getting out. They were, in the Nazis’ eyes, not even human and deserving of nothing more than death.

The vaccination issue is entirely different. The powers that be are trying to get everyone vaccinated to end a pandemic. (And it’s not simply a question of how survivable this virus is: there are long-lasting health effects among survivors, and the impact the current surge is having on hospitals means that people with other issues cannot get care because hospitals are getting overwhelmed with new cases.) To compare being shunted off to concentration and death camps where you’ll be killed immediately or worked to death over a period of weeks or months to not being allowed to go on a cruise or to visit Disneyworld because of an unwillingness to get a vaccine seems a disingenuous comparison that makes light of the horrors of the Holocaust.

At this point, a friend of the original poster — someone I don’t know — piled on. It was destined to happen.

J most of us understand your real point , that we shouldn’t be forced into anything so inhuman. Some people just want to fell better about their self fir supporting idiotic things.

We gothcha though.

It was one of those comments that I initially felt spoke for itself: I could only weaken the impact of its stupidity by commenting, but of course, I did just that:

What is “so inhuman” about vaccination? I’m kind of fond of our small-pox-free, polio-free, mumps-free, diphtheria-free, tetanus-free, hepetitus-free, rubella-free, chicken-pox-free, whooping-cough-free, measles-free world, and I would argue that the eradication of the aforementioned diseases is the opposite of inhumane.

The original poster replied:

G all of those vaccines are fda approved with minimum long term side effects. And non of those are forced into your arm.

I was tempted to ask, “How do you think these other vaccinations are delivered? Have you never gotten a vaccine or had a pediatrician give one to your child? How do you not know that these are all injected?” But I refrained from being a smartass just in time for another friend of the original poster to jump in as well:

[I]f the eradication of those diseases is good enough reason to get a vaccine, then why would you get the one they are touting now? It doesn’t eradicate it. It doesn’t even stop you from getting it, or giving it to others. It only supposedly makes your infection carry less symptoms if you should happen to get it. The problem with that is that the symptoms from the vaccine itself are just as bad as the disease it’s aiming to make easier to endure.

And of course, I had to respond again:

J, these vaccines all received emergency FDA approval because it’s something of an emergency.

T, viruses evolve. They mutate. That’s why we get a flu shot every year instead of once in our lives. (If I were a betting man, I’d bet you don’t get flu shots either.) The covid vaccine minimizes the chance of infection and lessens the symptoms of the infection. I’m not an immunologist or a virologist, but I’d bet that’s exactly how every other vaccine works. Seat belts don’t prevent 100% of fatalities, so why use them?

I just don’t understand this thinking. Why do they think the FDA would approve these vaccines unless the agency thought

1. the vaccinations are safe and
2. the disease they battle is serious enough even to consider emergency approval?

What does the FDA stand to gain by approving dangerous vaccines? What do doctors stand to gain by exaggerating the risk of covid?

Such people, I think, simply see conspiracies everywhere.

Sam Harris begins his book The End of Faith with this:

The young man boards the bus as it leaves the terminal. He wears an overcoat. Beneath his overcoat, he is wearing a bomb. His pockets are filled with nails, ball bearings, and rat poison.

The bus is crowded and headed for the heart of the city. The young man takes his seat beside a middle-aged couple. He will wait for the bus to reach its next stop. The couple at his side appears to be shopping for a new refrigerator. The woman has decided on a model, but her husband worries that it will be too expensive. He indicates another one in a brchure that lies open on her lap. The next stop comes into view. The bus doors swing. The woman observes that the model her husband has selected will not fit in the space underneath their cabinets. New passengers have taken the last remaining seats and begun gathering in the aisle. The bus is now full. The young man smiles. With the press of a button he destroys himself, the couple at his side, and twenty others on the bus. The nails, ball bearings, and rat poison ensure further casualties on the street and in the surrounding cars. All has gone according to plan.

The young man’s parents soon learn of his fate. Although saddened to have lost a sun, they feel tremendous pride at his accomplishment. They know that he has one to heaven and prepared the way for them to follow. He has also sent his victims to hell for eternity. It is a double victory. The neighbors find the event great cause for celebration and honor the young man’s parents by giving them gifts of food and money.

These are the facts. This is all we know for certain about the young man. Is there anything else that we can infer about him on the basis of his behavior? Was he popular in school? Was he rich or was he poor? Was he of low or high intelligence? His actions leave no clue at all. Did he have a college education? Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer? His behavior is simply mute on questions of this sort, and hundreds like them. Why is it so easy, then, so trivially easy–you-could-almost-bet-your-life-on-it easy–to guess the young man’s religion?

In a similar way, many of us could make assumptions about these people on social media that, while not as sure as Harris’s example, are fairly certain:

1. They are Republican.
2. They reject the results of the 2020 election.
3. They are Evangelical Christians.
4. They believe in the existence of the so-called deep state.
5. They watch Fox News, One America News, and/or Newsmax.
6. They think Obama was not an American citizen.

And I’m sure they make certain assumptions about me based on my posts:

1. I am a Democrat.
2. I wish communism for America.
3. I believe anything liberal authorities suggest.
4. I watch CNN and MSNBC.
5. I am willing to sacrifice freedom for convenience/”safety.”

So here we are, making assumptions about each other, some of which are right, many of which are wrong. (All of the assumptions I assumed they made about me are wrong.)