125. “Freedom"

You—the unvaccinated—are free from the fear of smallpox, because I and millions of others around the world were vaccinated against it.  It is now gone—after centuries; after killing millions of American Natives when the first Europeans arrived with it; after George Washington gave his troops at Valley Forge a crude form of vaccination against it; after milkmaids in England showed milder cases of it and the first modern vaccines were developed; after the World Health Organization made it a priority to vaccinate the world, and enough were vaccinated so that the last major outbreak in the US was in 1949, and the world was declared free of smallpox in 1980.

You—the unvaccinated—are free of the fear of polio, because polio vaccines and massive polio vaccination programs were mounted in the 1950s and 1960s, and because the Gates Foundation and Rotary International have conducted major vaccination programs around the world—through wars, droughts, and objections by some that the vaccinations caused sterility and all manner of side effects. Polio hangs on in our midst, believe it or not, with many, including people in our own community, who survived the disease as children and now live with “post-polio syndrome,” a consequence of polio-weakened muscles that become debilitating with age. 

You probably don’t worry about measles, as I and my parents did when I was five or six and was put in a darkened room for a week lest eyes be damaged, an outcome that sometimes accompanied the disease. You were likely vaccinated against measles and other childhood diseases as children, even though you will not pass that gift on to your own children. 

If you are under 40, you probably didn't get or need vaccinations against smallpox and polio, and if you got measles, mumps, etc, or not, enough of your neighbors did to keep those diseases at bay.

The lesson is that your—and my—freedom often rests on the good work of others, and it always goes back to some common consensus among a broader community that we are all in this world together, and it is our obligation to consider the well-being of our fellow humans as we consider our own. 

In fact, it can be argued that if we look out for our fellow human-beings we will in the long run be looking out for ourselves. Vaccinating myself and my family members gives the Covid less room to run in our community—and in the world. Less opportunity to mutate and become deadlier (it’s already happened once, with delta now raging). Less likely to come back to me.

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