Agree to Disagree: With great power, comes great responsibility

No, life is not a Spiderman movie, but Choices do have Consequences.

There. I said it. you can hate on me all you want, facts are facts: choices have consequences. Sometimes, those consequences affect only the person making the choice, but other times, they affect other people. I try my best to make choices that don’t land other people in the cross-hairs of my consequences.

It’s ironic. Those who were 100% against the “my body, my choice” stance when it came to abortion, are suddenly all for it. They want the freedom to choose to get vaccinated or not, and I agree, they should. Except, unlike an abortion, which affects strictly the mother, the fetus and potentially the father, the act of not getting vaccinated, especially if the person works in health care or education, has the potential to affect the masses, especially with the Delta variant lurking in the horizon.

Some school boards, hospitals, businesses and governments have started to implement regulations requiring their staff to be fully vaccinated or face unemployment. Others are pushing for a vaccine passport that will allow only vaccinated people to do non-essential things. Is it harsh? Yes it is. Is it fair? No it isn’t, but who promised you life would be fair anyways? In this case, the well being of humanity as a whole surely should supersede selfish individual choices, don’t you think? Why should small businesses suffer and end up in a fourth total shutdown, because of people who chose not to get vaccinated?

We are in a health crisis, one that has taken more than four and a half million lives. One might think that being offered an ultimatum such as “the jab or the job” is not much of a choice at all, but I would argue it is. Because, remember. The thing about choices is that everybody has one, including employers.

It is perfectly acceptable and reasonable, not to mention legal, for them to enact measures they feel will keep their patrons and employees safe. I could even argue that it is actually more of a responsibility.

If the pandemic worsens, will we start seeing more drastic regulations, things like hospitals asking for vaccination status before admitting someone for Covid care, for example? You think it’s far fetched? A leaked memo from a Dallas hospital showed that this was actually recently being considered. “If North Texas starts running out of ICU beds, doctors may have to consider coronavirus vaccination status as a factor in who gets priority care.” When you think about it, why wouldn’t they? Why would they give priority to someone who actually thought this pandemic was a hoax? I’m not suggesting they should, but if they have no choice, and have to start prioritizing who gets treatment or not, wouldn’t it be fair to use this as a criteria?

Again, it’s all about choices. And consequences. You want the choice, then bravely accept what follows.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. P. J. O’Rourke