So..
I've grown up in America and benefitted from all that entails. Economic stability, top tier health care, functional public health, a strong national defense, strong natural resources, a lot of great people already here, a situation that attracted great, talented and hard working people from all over the world.
There are plenty of places to have disputes, but seeing them about public health has been one of the most discouraging experiences I've had as an American.
Plenty of blame to go around for it.
But, I think "The Death of Expertise" really foreshadowed this kind of situation and how easily it would break us.
The vaccine is safe. "Safe" does not mean 100%. Some people will have significant side effects. A very small number compared to how many are vaccinated. Those side effects are not communicable.
The vaccine does not belong to a political "side." It was developed under the Trump administration primarily and distributed under the Biden administration. It's not a political device.
I've received all required vaccinations all my life for a number of reasons.... the biggest? To protect myself and to protect others.
800,000 Americans have now died from COVID in 2 years.. an astonishing number. As someone wrote recently that I saw.. 3000 Americans dying completely dictated our foreign policy for a decade.. but now? We fight ourselves.
I believe in the freedom America provides. I do not think that my freedom is created in a vacuum. "God" does not fly the fighter planes or pilot the nuclear submarines.. fellow Americans do. Americans who are required, by the way, to be vaccinated.
A threadbare definition of duty would make committing to taking the vaccine a slam dunk on those merits alone.. but when you look at the death toll.. the hundreds of thousands of serious cases.. the long covid stuff we don't have a true handle on... the occasionally overwhelmed health systems... why would an American even question their responsibility to each other?
I don't get it.
Some of the policies are maddening.. some of the information flow is bizarre and broken.. because massive systems have flaws that humans exacerbate.
But the basics... vaccination.. testing.. .and masking when there's a significant spread going on... are so, painfully simple and safe (I've defined "safe" earlier and admitted it's not 100%), that I wonder why Americans would fight themselves, rather than fight a pandemic and move forward together.
I believe my success as an American is intertwined and related to your success as an American. There are so many things that require real, thoughtful debate for to figure out the best policies, etc.. and I wish we were doing that. But, we're not.