Editor,
I think in a world-wide emergency like we are living through, everyone should be working for the collective good – even it means doing something that we’d rather not. In this case, getting “jabbed” to slow down the pandemic.
Covid’s been a shadow over all of us for nearly two years now. The experts determined early on that once about 3/4 of the adult population was vaccinated, we’d be out of the woods (herd immunity). Unfortunately, though the vaccines have been available for many months, we have been slow to reach that threshold. Finally, it looks like we are getting close nationwide, but major regions of the country, including ours, still have a long way to go.
I am baffled by the level of vaccine resistance we’ve been seeing. Haven’t we all had loads of shots, for school, the military service, travel abroad? I doubt there was much resistance to the polio vaccine we older folks got back in elementary school.
I think that sadly, in the U.S. at least, it reflects a political/cultural divisiveness that has been worsening for years. People seem to be more suspicious of the motives of others than they used to be. Even objective, sound science is questioned.
It seems clear that for our collective good as a species, we must learn to better work together if we’re to successfully deal with coming challenges.
Hopefully, the world will get through the current crisis and will have learned something about cooperation from this shared experience.
Dave Spencer