Is There a Better Way?

 

The White House released a statement that basically says, "if you are vaccinated, we have your back, but if you are unvaccinated, there's only so much we can do." That's some pretty stark stuff, but I'm not actually sure how many ways are left to tell the actual grown adults (not the under 5 year olds who can't get the vaccine, or the eligible minors who might be prevented by their grown adult parents) that play-time has been over. Here we are, over 800K US people dead of COVID-19, and there are still people who want to claim it's the government taking away freedoms--not their bullshit ideas of freedom taking away other people's lives. 

There's only so much you can do with people who won't be vaccinated, won't social distance, and won't mask up. They made their choice. They insisted on it. Lecturing is supposed to be useless because it makes them double-down. Doom-saying supposedly just makes them more paranoid. What's left? Once the anti-responsibility folks start pretending they've been Nuremburged and Mengeled, other than a firm sock to the snooter I don't know what course-corrects their deluded asses. 

Especially when conservative vice-signaling seems to rely in part on vaccination-defiance. There really doesn't seem to be a point to trying not to politicize the vaccines since that ship is sailing away, setting a course for the Virgin Sea. Because they have to be free...free to... 

Look, I'm not the one to tell the Biden Administration they are fucking up the messaging just yet, but in part, they are. The thing with mutations is, you don't know what you are going to get, ever. That's why I'm pissed off at people who already want to declare that the Omicron variant is less deadly than Delta--we don't know that because hospitalizations and deaths are a lagging indicator anyway, and because post-infection syndromes exist. Also, there is likelihood the reinfection and a double-team of Omicron and Delta could occur, and we already know Delta is really deadly. 

People want to believe a more-infective variant is necessarily less deadly. There is no guarantee that it is, though. The next step could easily be as contagious as measles, as deadly as MERS. The thing is, the only way to prepare for the next variant is to deny a foothold by making a wall of immunity to try and prevent further spread or deadly consequences. In other words, if we are in a war against this virus that has killed so many, antivaxxers are deserters. Poltroons. They aren't conscientious objectors, but conscienceless and thoughtless collaborators with the viral enemy.

To use a metaphor. Of course. I would like the Biden Administration to communicate more thoughtfully, because I know they could. No one anticipates Delta or Omicron, but they were obviously a part of the evolutionary package of a pandemic run amuck without worldwide strong RNA vaccine programs (free or damn cheap). Now, if we want to reward the careful, we better make some quantity of free testing available (like, insurance or the government pays for X number of free COVID-19 tests a year, because people can't waste money on tests like they are rich)and also do something to make the test production step up. We need RNA vaxxes to be evangelized all the hell over. 

We need to figure out an on-ramp to gather in the skeptical, and I don't quite know how to do that except discrediting and demolishing the prominent anti-vax voices. I really wonder if RFK had lived, if his lil' namesake wouldn't have a better hobby than to be causing harm all over. 

But will guilt work, or doomsaying? I don't even know. And I also wonder about the hardcore antivaxxers--do I even want them awake and aware to the danger and saving themselves? For spreading so many lies, there is a mean and unkind part of me that sort of hopes they hear Darwin laughing at them on their way out. 

I wish there was a better way than trying to tell people that threatening reality is threatening without it seeming political. Maybe we could expect grown adult people to sort out consequences for themselves, as they insist that they do understand. 

I don't know that being harsh isn't the only way. I really don't. But I totally understand why the White House is framing this in the starkest terms.