Everything gets polarized these days. I don't want anyone to die, that's for sure. A mind boggling number have.
There's no denying the social conflict involved. One one side, you have people who believe there's no such thing as society, so the individual can do as he/she pleases. Then you have the side that says we bear responsibility to each other, and all shades of opinion in between. It exists outside of the vaccination debate, and it carries in to every discussion we seem to have.
We all have individual responsibility. Is it to others or just to ourselves. Ring the bell and watch the punching begin.
If the two main sides get into a debate, each can accuse the other of exactly the same things. It is a mess. We're all apparently sheeple, we're all scared.
I absolutely support government mandated measures as long as they come from elected governments, and can be supported scientifically. I would argue that if you are unvaccinated, you stay away from the rest of society. That's your choice. If you're drunk or high, you don't drive. If you have any level of self education, you can easily learn how viruses work. Figure that out, and the choices are stark. If you now want to follow the talking points and accuse me of being some sort of elitist - I'm a working class guy who reads a lot. I've worked for the elite - never got invited to the table.
I accept rules, from elected government, that mandate what I can do in my car, how my food is to be handled by suppliers, etc. I accept the need for certain credentials for certain jobs, the right to be booted out of a job for certain well defined behaviours, and the right to be quarantined if a dangerous virus hits and lives need to be saved. I can be justifiably arrested if I do things that put other people's lives at risk, even if I am just acting stupid with no intent to harm. With the vaccination situation, we aren't talking the penalties for armed assault. You shouldn't be permitted to go where lots of vulnerable people are, and you should be penalized if you do.
I'm also a person who has been thrown in jail for peaceful protest. If I disagree with a public policy, I believe we have an obligation to speak up. I didn't like my sheep's pen, but I'm also not a passive receiver of rules. They have to make sense. If I chose to be unvaccinated and to parade around with no mask while not socially distancing, I'd have the moral standing of a drunk driver.
I hate propaganda - anyone's propaganda. People need free access to facts, and they need to discuss. Caesar, you're the 3rd person I have 'spoken' with who got bad side effects. I know more long haulers, including my daughter, who caught COVID before vaccinations were ready. When I got vaccinated, I took the same risk as you, and I was simply lucky. Stats said I probably would be. I know many more people who died of COVID than who were affected negatively by the vax. I gambled that even if I got ill I would at least not be an easy, cooperative carrier who would provide a nice little habitat for the virus to mutate in, and spread to family and friends. The chances of it going wrong were microscopic, and I took the risk. So did you. Right and wrong exist, and the people giving you a hard time are simply wrong.
I make a point of reading the right, the left and in between. I read the scientists, and until it became too frustrating, I used to read the deniers. We have a privately owned press, and it says what it's paid to say. The pro-vaccination 'side' has had a pretty consistent message. The virus is mutating and changing fast, as they all do, but the vaccines are what they are. Omicron is a new virus, really, in the COVID-19 group. Its incredible ability to spread takes away a lot of the protection of others arguments, although where I am, hospitals are overflowing with severe cases, and the ICUs are filling again, fast. Those are non political facts that are easy to access. My wife had a cancer surgery delayed in wave one, because the local resources were overwhelmed. We know surgeries are being delayed, and hospital workers are burning out in droves. So there is a social incentive to make even a survivable case milder, if you are inclined to think in social terms. If you don't believe in society, there may even be a chance to save your own butt. The virus doesn't care. It mutates along, changing at random.
