This is an opinion column.
My mom still nags me sometimes, which is remarkable as she’s been dead for more than 30 years.
When she was alive, she taught Shakespeare to high school kids in rural Alabama. We bought our first VCR so she could record Julius Caesar on PBS to play for her students. On her classroom bulletin board, she drew a caricature of the bard, next to which she’d written in large block letters, “Would you buy a used car from this man?” Something I can’t imagine doing — getting those kids not just to read plays and sonnets, but to appreciate them — she thought was fun.
What she did was missionary work, and some days I wish I could ask her why she bothered.
This is one of those days.
I could use an answer right now for why I’m supposed to care about others, because quite frankly, after nine months of a pandemic, I’m exhausted by it, and a vaccine offers an escape hatch for giving a rip about what other people do.
Our country values the individual first, but there is no individualist solution to a communicable disease. Slowing the spread of the coronavirus has required everyone to do their part — wearing masks, social distancing, forgoing family gatherings and unnecessary outings in public.
But all of that is about to change with a shot in the arm. A vaccine flips this whole thing on its head. With two jabs in the shoulder, you’re an individual again, no longer dependent on other people doing their part.
And then what?
Because, no matter the freedom that poke affords, there are millions of people looking at it and saying, “Nope, not for me.”
Already we’re swimming against a current of ignorance and misinformation. On Wednesday, a rumor spread on social media that an Alabama nurse had died hours after taking the vaccine. Only thing was, it wasn’t true. Somebody just made that up, and that lie is still out there, moving from person to person like the virus itself.
But why should I care?
I’ll confess a dark thought. For the last several months I’ve said to myself that — once there’s a vaccine, once my family is protected, once anyone who wants one can get one, once the innocent are safe — if somebody else doesn’t want it because they think the whole thing’s fake, that it’s a globalist conspiracy for mind control or a plot by Bill Gates to make people sick or whatever …
To hell with ‘em.
That’s more vaccine for the rest of us. Let COVID be the chlorine in the gene pool. I’ll just count to 20 one more time as I wash my hands of it, and …
Out, damned spot?
I can still hear her, even if she’s not here to answer my questions. I know when my mom would disapprove.
We’re not done. Not yet.
When the vaccine arrives, the real hard work begins — convincing as many people as possible to take it.
It will take neighbors talking nicely to neighbors, friends working patiently with friends, spreading a message — the virus will no longer be a game of chance but rather of choice.
A whole lot of folks are missing something important, something of which everyone should be proud. The coronavirus vaccine is a tremendous achievement — a marvel of medicine delivered in record time. Never before in history would so many have worked so hard to achieve something so difficult for the benefit of everyone on the planet.
But until we get through to every person this could help, some degree of that achievement will have been wasted. And lives will be lost.
The fault, at last, is no longer in our stars, but in ourselves.
Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.
You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram.
More columns by Kyle Whitmire
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December 18, 2020 at 10:02PM
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