It's Time

Life always carries with it the risk of sickness and death. You can get hit by a bus. You can catch pneumonia. The flu kills 40,000 people a year on average. Let’s just accept that unless we’re willing to go above and beyond what we’ve done for centuries there will always be a chance of sickness and death in our world. Sure, we could all wear hazmat suits and live like the Boy in the Bubble and never get sick ever. But I don’t want to do that. And I assume you don’t either or else you’d be living in a bubble right now. Yes, that’s obviously a bit of hyperbole. Wearing a mask isn’t the same as living in a bubble. There’s obviously a lot of room between those two things. But I think I’ve made my point.

We are trying to have a child right now. Preliminary studies have shown that getting COVID while pregnant can cause some harm to the baby, specifically by impacting the placenta or causing premature births. Both mother and child have a much better chance if the mother is vaccinated, which my partner is. I say this to let you know that I do have some skin in the game. Losing a child or having a preemie would be devastating and dangerous. So I have not come to this conclusion lightly.

I think it’s time to end all forms of COVID mandates. Mask mandates, vaccine mandates, all of it. If you want to still wear a mask, no one is stopping you from doing that. Feel free. Many people around the world wear masks every day as a part of their daily lives. Keep distancing if you want to. I fully support everyone’s right to make themselves as safe as possible. You do you. I promise not to judge.

We’re entering our 3rd year of the pandemic. We’ve lost roughly 930,000 of our fellow citizens to this virus. Almost a third of American’s have caught COVID (78 million cases reported but it’s probably a bit higher). Worldwide almost 6,000,000 people have perished. 77% of Americans have received at least one vaccine shot with 65% of our population fully vaccinated. That’s actually not too bad. It could be better, for sure, if conservatives in this country were more forceful in pushing their supporters to get it. But let’s not kid ourselves and pretend that’s going to change any time soon.

I don’t intend to make light of the 2,000+ deaths we’ve been having every day since January. The thing of it is, that most of those deaths have been from unvaccinated people. You have a 20x higher chance of death without being vaccinated. For every 100 people who die from COVID, five of them are vaccinated. And you’re twice as likely to catch COVID (or really test positive for it) if you aren’t vaccinated. The people who are dying are exactly the people who should be, namely, the people who refuse to protect themselves and others from it, with a few unfortunate vaccinated people thrown in.

This reminds me a bit about the debate over circumcision. I find it to be a barbaric and unnecessary mutilation of a child. God knows what kind of long-term psychological impacts come from it. One of the arguments I’ve heard from people is that it’s healthier. It’s true there is a lower chance of getting certain kinds of cancers and infections without a foreskin. But I think that misses the point entirely. I could guarantee your child will never break their arm if we cut those off at birth too. Why not chop off their legs too and prevent them from ever having skinned knees, sprained ankles, or broken toes? Of course, if you remove a body part there will be less of a chance of there being problems with said body part.

We could completely eliminate death from car accidents by banning cars and all manner of travel faster than a light jog. We could end airline disasters by grounding the planes and never taking to the skies again. We could prevent all manner of sexually transmitted diseases by castrating everyone and stitching up women, only allowing reproduction through a controlled means in a laboratory. All of these things are absolutely ridiculous and no serious person would ever consider them.

Yes, COVID is deadly and scary. Yes, there are massive risks to people who are immunocompromised and have other co-morbidities. But aren’t there always? Isn’t pneumonia just as dangerous to those people? Or the flu? COVID is killing so many people because it is new and it attacks us in ways we aren’t prepared for. And it was maybe/probably also designed in a lab to do just that. Or maybe it was just an accident. Or maybe it came from nature. I’m not a biologist so I can’t really say.

What I do know is that our society has been irrevocably changed over the past 2+ years. I see it every day in my students. Simply put, during the course of the pandemic, they have forgotten how to be people. I see their mental health struggles. I see my own. I see rising suicide rates. I see angry, violent battles being waged between anti-mask people and mask people. I see the divide between the two sides in our country being split ever further. I see no end to this battle, no relief coming down the pike. One side must give in and I believe that must be us, the people who understand why masks are important and why getting vaccinated saves lives. We must let the fools win.

This will undoubtedly lead to another surge in cases, another wave of death spreading over the land. It will be tragic and devastating, like all the ones that came before it. But it will not be us that die. It will be them, with some rare exceptions. There are still millions of people who have yet to become infected, either because they live in remote areas or take every precaution to prevent it (like masking and being vaccinated). I understand there are people who WOULD choose to be vaccinated but can’t due to some medical reason. I feel for those people, I really do. But this is the way of the world. People die.

I’m tired of all the fighting. I am tired of the division over something as simple as wearing a mask. But forcing our fellow citizens to do something that they feel violates their freedoms is something we MUST listen to. Just as I support and listen to millions of minorities who say police brutality is real and must be stopped, I am also compelled to listen to the millions of people who do not want to wear a mask. To be clear, I am not conflating these two examples. They are obviously very, very different things. But if the point of a democracy is to create a better nation for all of us, we MUST listen to each other.

I know many of you reading this will not agree with me. Heck, I barely agree with me. But I am smart enough to know when I am licked. And folks, we’re licked. If almost a million deaths aren’t enough to change people’s minds then I don’t know what will. How many more stories about an anti-vax person dying from COVID and their last words are “I wish I’d gotten the vaccine” do you really think it’ll take? 15? 100? 1,000? How much longer shall we wait to try to go back to normal? Another year? Two? COVID isn’t going anywhere. It is here to stay. And we’ll likely have to get vaccine boosters every year or so to deal with whatever variant comes along.

This is the same trajectory the flu takes every year. And yes, COVID, right now, is far deadlier than the flu but it has been losing some of its potency. We’ve come up with better ways to combat it. We have vaccines. We have a better understanding of it. And through the virus’s own evolution, it has become less deadly. These are all good things.

People seem to live under the delusional that COVID will just go away. That if we had 99% vaccination rates it would disappear. It wouldn’t and it won’t. It is here to stay for the long haul. And I don’t intend on wearing a mask forever. I don’t plan on socially distancing forever. I want to hug my friends. I want to return to the world we once knew. I’m vaccinated, I’m boosted, and I’m ready to get more if need be.

To the people who want the mandates to continue and want even stronger enforcement, I ask this: at what point will you feel OK with ending them? What statistic do you need to see to say “ok, let’s end this”? Shall we all just hole up in our homes and never leave them again?

Death comes for us all, eventually. That much is inevitable. We do not need to commit societal suicide in some foolhardy quest to prevent it. We accept risks every time we take in a breath. Every heartbeat could be our last. For me, I’d rather live with the risk than die without. That’s part of what makes being alive so special: it is fleeting, dangerous, and beautiful.

It’s time to get back to the lives we once knew.

Finally, I will say that now that I’ve written this I fully expect to get COVID and perish from it. God has a wicked sense of irony and I see no better target than myself.