Getting Vaccinated is Child’s Play
How 8th grade social studies taught me we should all vaccinate
My daughter loves this story from my childhood. At the end of eighth grade, my social studies teacher told the class we were going to play a game, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. He was going to ask each of us one question from the material we covered over the entire year. If each student answered the question correctly, on the last day we would have a pizza party, but if just one of us got the question wrong, we would have a comprehensive final exam instead. As a class we were given a set number of do-overs, three or five, but that was it, and we could not help each other. Everyone had to get their one question right.
This was riveting for us at thirteen. The class got off to a great start. Gradually, sometime in the middle, as the teacher went around the room, we began to use our do-overs so that by the time we got to last few children, every answer had to be correct.
Finally, the last question and when we heard it, we all breathed a sigh of relief. “In what year began the War of 1812?”
The problem was Susan didn’t know. Of course, I remember her name. She stared blankly at the teacher as the rest of us stared in amazement at her.
The teacher repeated the question with helpful emphasis: “In what year began the War of Eighteen Twelve?”
Susan was stumped.
Some of the students tried to help. “Look at me, Susan. You can do this,” one of them said. “In what year — year — began the War of EIGHTEEN TWELVE?”
Susan shook her head slightly and pursed her lips. A tear began to fall from her eye. I don’t know if she was having an off day, if she was overall a little slow, or if she thought it was a trick question, but she was frozen and in mortal anguish.
Meanwhile, the class was going crazy. “Come on, Susan! Come oooon, Susan!” We began to chant. This is my daughter’s favorite part of the story; she joins in “Come oooon, Susan!” She gets into the suspense every time even though she knows how the story ends. Of course, the chanting was just making it worse for poor Susan, who must have been somewhat traumatized by this experience as I think I was a little traumatized just witnessing it.
One right and obvious answer
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Susan a lot, every time I hear someone say that getting vaccinated is a personal choice. It could be a random person on the street or TV, an entertainer, a conservative being interviewed, or an athlete. (I can’t watch the Phillies because the team has not met the 85% vaccination threshold set by the league to travel unmasked.) When they say, “It’s my personal choice,” I think, Come on, Susan! This is a right or wrong question and you are getting it wrong.
Getting vaccinated is not a personal choice; it is a community responsibly.
At least, Susan knew she didn’t know the right answer. She wanted to get it right. She wanted to get it right for us, her classmates, her community. And in this way, she was far smarter and far more compassionate — evident by her suffering — than everyone who is choosing not to get vaccinated.
A thought experiment
Imagine if there was an airborne virus going around as contagious as COVID that everyone could be infected by and pass on but the great majority remained completely asymptomatic. However, the virus is very lethal, more lethal than COVID, but only to people who are lefthanded. The vaccine does not prevent a lefty from getting sick if infected; it only prevents the the disease from being passed on to others. Thus, in order to protect lefties like me from dying, everyone, left-handed people and all right-handed people, would have to get vaccinated. What do you think would happen to us southpaws if this situation was a reality?
My prediction is that my fellow right-brainers and I would go extinct and baseball — the sport in which handedness matters most — would change completely.
Seriously, think about how unraveled our society has become. You can swap into this scenario any group with a less common trait. What if the disease was only lethal to people with blue eyes, or red hair, or freckles , or who were lactose intolerant, or flatfooted? Would enough of us step up to save them?
It appears not. We would let a specific segment of the population die, and those who did not get vaccinated and allowed the deaths to happen — enabled them to happen — would say that they didn’t do anything so it is not their fault. But with vaccinations, inaction is the same thing as pulling the trigger.
We were a good class. We were an engaged group who learned a lot. Throughout the year, we had already earned the pizza party. The teacher wanted to have an end of the term celebration instead of a final exam just as much as the students did. But the integrity of the trivia game was at stake.
Fortunately, the teacher was wise and knocked a stack of papers off his desk. For a brief spell, he and a few students in the front of the room disappeared from view to pick up what was scattered on the floor.
When the challenge resumed, Susan was wiping her eyes and had a smile that was a mix of embarrassment and relief. She gave the correct answer and we all cheered.
Sometimes it is necessary for a community to intervene to help individuals find their way to the correct answer. It’s not cheating when everyone in the group is impacted. It doesn’t matter how you get to the correct answer; you just need to get to the correct answer. If mandates are the only way for the community to get holdouts to the correct answer, then mandates are necessary.
Rational, caring people intervene when they know someone is suicidal. If someone said, “It’s my personal choice to kill myself. You have no right to try to stop me,” very few people are going to think, Well, he has a point. It is his life, and walk away. Most people will go to great lengths to do the right thing and save a life.
Not getting vaccinated against COVID is suicidal, homicidal and genocidal. It is time for the majority of us who know the right answer to the vaccination question to stop being so polite and patient with those who are getting it wrong. Think of all the thousands and thousands of giant pizza parties that could be held safely and joyfully if more people got this question right.
The stakes could not be higher.
