Getting the COVID vaccine is not a “personal choice.” It never was, really, but the onslaught of cases fueled by the delta variant has removed any doubt.
And yet that’s not what Florida’s governor would have you believe. On Friday, Gov. DeSantis actually uttered these incredible — and incorrect — words about the vaccine: “It’s about your health and whether you want that protection or not. It really doesn’t impact me or anyone else.”
Doesn’t impact anyone else? Talk about a profile in selfishness. Almost 46,000 have died of COVID in his state since the pandemic began. Too bad we can’t ask the thousands who have died since vaccines became available if they wished everyone around them had gotten vaccinated.
This governor already has gone to war against school boards and parents who want to keep kids safer in schools with mask mandates. He’s fought against cruise lines that want to preserve their businesses by making sure their customers can stay COVID-free on ships, by requiring vaccines. Now he’s dismissing the role of vaccines in reducing community spread.
And it’s the opposite of what he says. COVID’s spread actually is a community problem, and solving it starts with vaccines.
Getting the vaccine certainly helps the person who gets the shot...It vastly reduces the chances of being hospitalized or dying of the disease. But it also reduces the spread of the virus to others. That’s the critical point that DeSantis is disregarding in his zeal to appeal to the freedom-at-all-costs far-right of his party as he heads into reelection and eyes the White House.
...
That means you, as a vaccinated person, are helping to safeguard people who can’t get the shot, like children under 12 and the immunocompromised, such as those with transplanted organs. You’re also helping to protect seniors whose immunity often isn’t robust enough even they are vaccinated. You might even be saving the life of someone who simply refuses to get the vaccine.
