TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT

At last count, some sixty-six million Americans eligible for a Covid vaccine have not gotten one. And many of them have no plans to do so. Often, these never-vaxers cite "personal liberty" as the reason they will not be coerced into getting the jab.

They simply refuse to be told what to do.

Now, with job-related vaccine mandates popping up all over the place, these people are forced to make a stand. They will lose their jobs, lose their homes, lose everything they hold dear, rather than give in.

Personal liberty, baby!

And I'm all for personal liberty. Nobody should make you do anything you don't want to do.

Your country mandates you drive on the right? Drive on the left and see what fun that can be!

Your school board says your kids have to be vaccinated for measles and whatnot, forget about it! Home-school the hell out of the little rug-rats!

(As a bonus, your precious shorties won't be subjected to indignities like having to hear President Obama address the student body. I remember one mother in tears over this criminal misuse of presidential power.)

Seriously, if you want to take risks with your health, go for it. Eat fruit without first washing it. Rip the tags off your mattresses. Mix beer and wine, or whatever it is that's supposed to eff you up the most. Smoke dope from a baggie you found in the street. Roll the dice, man!

Jump out of an airplane without a parachute. Fine with me. It's your friggin' life. Just don't land on anybody. You don't have that right.

Not willing to take the vaccine? Great. Just go home and stay there. Someone will let you know when it's all over.

Because if you're unvaccinated, and you're out and about, attending anti-vax rallies and so forth, unmasked (because it's all the same stuff, right?), the chances are pretty good you're going to get sick.

And I get it: That's jake with you. You can take it. Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe you have few or no symptoms. It happens that way. You're going strong, feeling fine. Or toughing it out, as you do, pushing forward! Hero stuff, right?

You do that, Big Guy, and you're going to infect somebody else.

And they're going to spread it farther. And the new guys will spread it, too, in ever widening circles, ripples in the pond, expanding outward, gathering up more folks, more infections, more new cases.

When that happens... (And why would it not happen? Are you convinced the whole thing is a hoax? Just more damn Fake News?) When those cases multiply, somebody is going to die.

Maybe an old guy, or somebody with immunity problems, or just some very unlucky middle-aged shlub. Somebody is going to die. And it's going to be your fault. Like you put a bullet in his head.

Maybe that's what you really want: the personal freedom to kill people.

Double-O status, baby!

Look, nobody knows when this thing is going to end, but we can be pretty sure the longer it goes on, the more variants are going to pop up.

The current mortality rate is a bit under two percent. Are you willing to bet there will never be a variant with a greater punch? How about twenty percent?

Or a twenty-percent survival rate?

The longer the pandemic goes on, the worse it could be, and anti-vaxers will inevitably prolong this nightmare.

Nobody knows what level of vaccination (or survival of the disease) will lead to herd immunity. Seventy percent? Eighty? Ninety? Ninety-nine percent?

It seems a lot of people are willing to take that risk, for the sake of their God-given personal liberty.

If humans were by and large smart and responsible, legal mandates for proper behavior would not be necessary.

Unfortunately, we live in a world populated by a-holes and eff-heads. Turns out we humans always have what we consider excellent reasons for all our disastrous actions, all our stupid decisions. Our ability to rationalize the crap in our heads defines us. And that will never change.

Until something comes along and wipes us out.

Maybe Covid will step up to do the job.