On Convincing The Unvaccinated
“I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.”
That was the headline of an article by HuffPost’s Kayla Chadwick published in 2017. Its thesis was simple: there is a fundamental divide regarding what it means to live in a society. On one end of the divide, society is a shared project, something we build and sustain together for everyone’s good. On the other, society is a burden to be overcome, a largely unnecessary obstacle to the individual’s radical autonomy, where naked self-interest is to everyone’s benefit. It’s a stark division between (broadly speaking) communitarian and libertarian ideals — we’re all in this together versus everyone is on their own.
I bring this up because it remains possibly the most succinct summation of America’s ongoing cultural civil war. There are two separate “nations” at each other’s throats over irreconcilable first premises, and nowhere is that division more pronounced than over basic public health policy. Is wearing a mask a necessary temporary adaptation to the pandemic, or is it a basic affront to personal liberty? Is vaccination something that ought to be required (as it has been for decades) for the health and welfare of the entire community, or is it a dangerous takeover of individual bodily autonomy?
“I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.”
Last night, President Biden took to the airwaves to talk with the country about his recent decision to impose a vaccination mandate that could potentially cover a hundred million Americans. It’s been something he’s been reluctant to do, but the surge over the last month, fueled by the critical combination of the highly virulent Delta strain of SARS-CoV-2 and an immense vulnerable population, has made it necessary. Biden struck a firm tone:
“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And it’s caused by the fact that despite America having an unprecedented and successful vaccination program, despite the fact that for almost five months, free vaccines have been available in 80,000 different locations, we still have nearly 80 million Americans who have failed to get the shot… This is totally unacceptable.”
The fact that this was even necessary seems unacceptable. And it’s hard not to feel even a little anger and despair at where we find ourselves, nearly two years into this mess. There remains in the United States a population of dedicated believers in the idea that nobody owes anybody anything, that there is no common good, that you can’t tell me what to do. The President is using his executive authority to wipe away barriers to vaccination such as requiring paid time off for the shot and its aftereffects, but as much as I support that, it’s hard to imagine that very many of those 80 million people were holding out for PTO.
“What more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see?” The president pleaded with the nation; the vaccine is FDA approved; it’s free; it’s safe; it’s convenient; and it’s effective. But none of those were the problem.
“I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.”
The messaging around public health during this pandemic has been largely focused on solidarity and community. Mask up to prevent others from getting ill; not just to protect you, but to slow down asymptomatic spread and protect others. Maintain your social distance for your protection and that of others. On and on and on, the message went, that we’re all in this together. But that didn’t stop mask obstinacy at either the individual or government level. Why would vaccination be any different?
I wish it were possible to make the case for public health in a way that could convince the millions of people out there who believe it’s a government plot to take away our freedoms, that there really are such things as communities that our behavior affects, but that same population is proving immune to reason, inoculated against reality and good sense by the overwhelming fear that someone is coming to take something from you.
We should all care about one another enough to finally put an end to this pandemic, but that requires getting diehard individualists on board with the public common world. At this point, I don’t know if anything short of truly cataclysmic could break the spell. There was a moment, last year, when the former president could have rallied his base behind public health and forged one of the most unifying moments in our nation’s history.
But that would have required caring about other people.
Even now though, I’m hopeful that there’s still something we can say to make that a reality — to make people care about other people.
