Vaccines should be mandatory
How generous of the letter writer to sacrifice us oldies for the sake of the GNP.
No country that I am aware of has ever said that seniors should be the first to get the vaccines when they are rolled out. Every country has rightly said that doctors, nurses, and all other front-line workers should be the first to get the vaccine(s).
I trust he will forgo the vaccine when it is offered if his own life means that little to him but life, the only one we will ever have, does have value to me.
If he feels that his life has little or no benefit to society, his willingness to discount my life and the lives of other seniors and most vulnerable in society, he goes beyond obnoxious and has no right to speak for others who don’t consider themselves disposable. He’s in good company though, as Donald Trump pushed the Republican mantra of the economy over public health and the morgues are overflowing.
In the bigger picture, vaccines are the only way to achieve herd immunity and if it were in my power to do so I would make vaccination mandatory. Including childhood vaccinations. Yet the anti-vaxxers are out there spreading their nonsensical claims.
What a surprise that MP Sloan of the Conservatives allowed a petition by conspiracy know-nothings to be tabled in Parliament calling vaccines human experimentation. We can all be thankful that these idiots and the social media platforms that they infest weren’t around when vaccines to end the scourge of polio and smallpox were created.
There is a political implication to what MP Sloan did.
But more importantly it should be noted that the Conservative leader will not challenge or rebuke MP Sloan on his conspiracy theories which only bolsters my belief that our Conservative party is just a version of the Republican party in the U.S. and filled with the same deplorable mindsets that are anti-science, anti-intellectual, and sprinkled with white-nationalists from the far-right. If the Conservative leader can’t even rebuke MP Sloan than he has no hope of rebranding the party by removing the political and religious extremes that have usurped it.
If only there was a vaccine against conspiracy theories and their brain-addled believers. Oh right, there is, it is called education and support for fact-based evidence and critical thinking. Conspiracy theories are houses built of cards and can’t stand up to reality. Remember that when you hear anti-vaxxers, along with selfish, anti-mask refuseniks. Huff, and puff, and blow them all down for everyone’s sake so we can get out of this pandemic sooner rather than later.
Robert T. Rock
Mission City