What about MY freedom? A short essay by Takket
This has been bugging me for some time now. Like a slow-motion car wreck, we have watched the delta variant sweep methodically across the USA. We know what it did to India, and now it is here.
I am the spouse of a disabled person, someone who spent over a year leaving the house for nothing but doctor's appointments while we waited for the vaccine, because they have many high risk factors for Covid death. I restricted my own movements for their benefit as well. Masking up (as required by my employer, which I'm grateful for), every day at work. I used curbside pickup options wherever possible to avoid exposing myself to other shoppers. We took no recreational trips. We celebrated the holidays last year over skype. I handed off thanksgiving dinner in ziplock containers to my parents in the parking lot.
Then the vaccine came, and we both hit refresh on the browser a thousand times over trying to get appointments. When one came up I got my spouse one first, because they needed it more than me. Then I got my appointment a week or so later. I had to leave work in the middle of the day and drive 25 miles in the wrong direction (away from my home) to get my shot, then drive back to work.
By late May and early June the numbers here in Michigan were virtually zero. We made plans for a vacation to Florida in September, and attended outdoor art fairs. I bought tickets to see my beloved Red Sox play the Tigers in Detroit next week, and will go with my father, and a best friend who is bringing his son. We mostly stopped masking, but I did wear one for a huge art fair with thousands of people. No one gave us a hard time about wearing a mask, though about 90% weren't wearing one. But this did not bother me. There were almost zero Covid cases still at this point, and the CDC told us we were safe.
My employer dropped the mask mandate, eventually, and for about two weeks I went without one at work.
This week, I started wearing one everywhere again. My employer still does not have a mandate back at work, but I feel like it is inevitable, and wearing the mask does not bother me physically.
This week, we also cancelled our trip to Florida in September. The numbers there are out of control, and the governor is actively working in all avenues to increase them. I simply cannot trust my health or that of my spouse to the decisions other people make. On the television I see report after report about vaccine hesitancy, and I see people with signs saying "my body my choice", something I know they are saying tongue and cheek to troll Democrats because most likely, they are anti-choice when it comes to a woman's right to choose.
And that brings me back to the question in my OP.
What about MY freedom? Why is it the only persons whose freedom and rights to go where they want and do what they want that seems to be of any relevance in all this is the people that don't want to wear masks or get the vaccine?
What about all the people like me who are again putting off a vacation? Who enjoyed being told by their employer you don't have to wear a mask or get a temperature screening, because we don't think it is necessary anymore? Who felt safe again going out into large gatherings of people and enjoying the things we remembered doing in 2019?
We all soldier on doing what is right, and what is recommended, silently in the background. Our sadness, that these restrictions imposed on our freedoms by our desire to not catch Covid or spread it to anyone else, is unknown and unheard in the media. We have listened to all the facts, heeded the warnings of all the experts, and rolled up our sleeves to do what must be done. And the result is that Delta is taking over the USA because as it turns out, only the freedoms of those that DON'T want to do the work, matter.
Let me be clear on something though. I oppose the idea of the government strapping people down and injecting them with a vaccine. That is dystopian. And I do not share the sentiment that the CDC "did the wrong thing" in dropping masking guidelines when they did. At the time they appeared to be no longer needed. That turned out to be wrong but NOT because they made the mistake over underestimating the virus. No, the mistake they made was overestimating how many Americans would do the right thing and get vaccinated.
The CDC believed the numbers were low and would continue to drop because we would get to the 70% of fully vaccinated people and achieve herd immunity. They were wrong, because the irresponsible are so much more selfish than we ever realized.
What we need now is an awakening of the corporate sector to help us out of this mess. This week, the news is encouraging. Many organizations are realizing that the irresponsible are cutting into their bottom line, and in the USA, if 600,000 dead people can't talk, money always will. Locally both the University of Michigan and Michigan State announced all faculty, staff and students must be vaccinated to attend this fall.
Nationally both Disney and Walmart have instituted vaccine requirements for their employees. Imagine a company like Disney that is surely seeing their bottom line drop through the floor as they try to recover from the pandemic, seeing vacation packages being cancelled right and left because people that might have felt safe a month ago being terrified to go to Florida now.
Are you a company that wants to get people back in the office? Start requiring the vaccine. Are you a restaurant that just can't seem to turn a profit because people still don't want to eat in? Start requiring proof of vaccine to eat there.
People who don't want the vaccine have the right to say no, but it is time to stop catering the whole of our society to their whim, especially since it is literally killing people. It is time to stop losing OUR freedoms because THEY don't want to help, and pretending that their opinions are the only ones that matter. Just because the rest of us aren't loud and obnoxious about our desires to get back to normal doesn't mean we don't have them. They don't have to get the vaccine but we shouldn't all have to suffer because of it.
If you don't want the vaccine you can skip going to college this year. You can get drive through instead of eating at a restaurant. You can miss out on the concert and stay home with your kids instead of taking them to Disney World. The rest of us did our part so we could go back to living our lives, and it shouldn't be us that once again bears the burden of cleaning up the completely avoidable mess that you have made.
It didn't have to be this way with delta. We had the tools needed to stop it in its tracks, and it is not my fault that the unvaccinated crowd refuses to use them.
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