Vehement

In Wisconsin, we have a state legislator who is urging health care workers not to get vaccinated.

Tomorrow, I’ll go with my pregnant daughter to what is probably the best hospital clinic in the state and I’ll have no idea if the people we encounter are vaccinated. The ones that aren’t will feel bolstered by the state legislator, justified in their decision to resist the ‘tyranny of the government’ in pushing a vaccine that has been proven to nearly eliminate one’s chances of getting seriously ill or dying of Covid.

It could be the person at the front door who takes our temperature and asks us the Covid questions in one long run-on sentence: Have you had a fever have you tested positive for Covid have you been in contact with anyone with Covid? and then hands us both Visitor badges that we clip to our shirts. Or the kind person who makes sure we know where we’re going and holds open the door or the one who checks my daughter in and gives her a new, two-pages long sheet of her upcoming appointments because, you know, she is having a seriously high-risk pregnancy.

But never mind.

Don’t tread on me.

Meanwhile, the pundits tells us not to get mad. Getting mad won’t work, they say. We have to be gentle, help the unvaccinated allay their fears, get more information. Shaming is the wrong strategy.

To them I say, shaming isn’t a strategy, it’s a reaction. I’m not shaming the unvaccinated because I think it will convince them to get vaccinated. I’m shaming them because I am furious that they are putting people at risk. Me. My daughter. The granddaughter I haven’t met yet.

And far away from me, in California, my beloved twin grandsons who just want to live their little boy, baseball-loving, back to school lives but have to worry about getting sick because adults won’t do what’s right. I can’t stand it that they are eight years old and have to think about Covid-19 a single minute.

My whole life I’ve had people pat me on the head and tell me to “calm down.” There is no calming down on this. There are some unforgiveable sins. This might be one of them.

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Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash