Editor, Gazette-Journal:
Throughout history, we humans have relied upon each other for our survival. This is still true but many of us seem to have forgotten. We are now suffering from a worldwide pandemic the likes of which we have not seen for over a hundred years. The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed millions and there was nothing available to stop it. Of those who did survive, many would suffer for the rest of their lives from Parkinson’s disease.
Today, thanks to modem science, we have an effective vaccine to combat the COVID virus. In spite of this, almost 700,000 Americans have died. If more had been vaccinated, many of those lives would have been saved. While it is true that the fatality rate is only around 2 percent, about 14 percent of those infected end up in the hospital with many in the ICU on a ventilator. As an anesthesiologist, I have been associated with ICUs for over 30 years and I can safely say that being a patient in one is not much fun and being intubated and on a ventilator is even worse. No one in their right mind would want that. And we are just now beginning to learn about some of the long-term effects. So this is a really, really bad disease.
And yet there are those who feel, for one reason or another, that they have the right, the freedom, to refuse the vaccine. They talk about having a “natural immunity” not realizing that they must first have the disease in order to get this. That is a gamble that most would not take.
These anti-vaccine folks are being selfish. They have lost sight of the fact that we, as in the past, must rely on one another for our survival. The English poet John Donne wrote several centuries ago that no man is an island. We must work together. We have a duty to do this. “Duty” is a small word with a powerful meaning. It is generally defined as a moral or legal obligation to do something. Robert E. Lee wrote, “Duty is the sublimest word in the language; you can never do more than your duty; you shall never wish to do less.” Sometimes duty requires us to do something that we really don’t want to do. But we must do it. That’s what duty is all about. We humans now have a duty to get vaccinated. Freedom has nothing to do with it; survival does.
Arthur H. Jennette, MD, FACA
Cardinal, Va.