Anti-mandate inconsistencies

I spent some time Saturday talking with some anti-vaccine-mandate folks, including old friends, who were waving signs on Highway 160 in Alamosa. Many passers-by seemed to agree with them, but I don’t. When I asked why they did accept social mandates such as driving on the right side of the road (which all passing vehicles were doing), wearing clothes in public, and avoiding public intoxication or violence, but opposed mandatory Covid vaccinations, they didn’t have an answer. Also, the church my friends belong to will expel them for violating mandates against drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, illicit drug use, or extramarital sex. Mandates are a normal, useful, and accepted part of all our lives. We need to recognize that.

Also, why is it that there is no uproar about current mandatory vaccinations for school or child care including: hepatitis B, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, haemophilus type B, polio, pneumococcus, measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox? This is largely because a certain politician, his political party, and their “news” outlets use Covid and vaccination against it to stir up people with misinformation.

We will all be making progress when the people in the street are, instead, protesting the fact that the U.S. is the only developed country in the world that does not have universal, guaranteed health care which will shield all of us from the terror of bankruptcy and homelessness because of inability to pay catastrophic medical expenses. All of us, insured or not, suffer under that threat. It should not be that way. Laws to make sure the super-rich are paying their fair share of taxes will let us have that. While billionaires avoid taxes because they buy off politicians, we suffer without guaranteed health care. Free Covid vaccinations protect all of us from death, or from chronic Covid disease we cannot even pay for.

David Lenderts, M.D.