More than a year and a half into the pandemic and it looks like we are at the beginning of a fourth wave. This time, it's largely driven by illness in the unvaccinated, although those of us who are vaccinated still have to worry about breakthrough infections.
I've seen quite a few articles (most of them, like this one, from US media) about people who have been vehemently anti- vaccination getting sick and realizing on their deathbed that they made a bad, bad choice. I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
So who should we have compassion for? The people who wind up in the ER after refusing to get vaccinated? Or the healthcare workers working around the clock to save their lives? For the hurt feelings of the anti-vaxxers who feel looked down upon? Or the children being hospitalized because a preventable pandemic is raging out of control again?
In a perfect world, we’d feel compassion for all of them. Every life is precious. But it’s been a long 18 months with a lot of tragedy and we’re only human. We’re at the point—passed it, really—where compassion is becoming a finite resource.
Eventually, we’re all going to get fatigued and the compassion will run out. I say this not in celebration, but lament. Because this, too, was a preventable tragedy.
What limited compassion I have left is reserved for the unvaccinated ill who haven't been vaccinated for medical reasons or because they simply haven't been able to get a shot (although at this stage of the pandemic, that shouldn't be a real reason, at least in Canada).
Author John Scalzi discusses this in more detail in a recent blog post titled How Bad Should We Feed When the Willfully Unvaccinated Die?
This comes up because over the last few weeks there’s been an uptick in news stories about people who chose not to be vaccinated dying of COIVD, and on their deathbeds — or alternately, just before an intubation robbed them of the ability to meaningfully communicate with others — they expressed regret for not having got a vaccination earlier, which statistically speaking would have very likely kept them from dying. The story noted above is representative: Right-wing media personality Dick Farrel, who spent time on his radio show railing against the COVID vaccine for all the usual right-wing reasons, died of the virus and apparently told a friend before his demise that he wished he had gotten the vaccine. By then, of course, it was too late.
Dick Farrel didn’t have to die. He knew a vaccine existed, he presumably had access to the data that showed its efficacy in preventing the disease taking hold in the large majority of people, and minimizing the damage it does in the minority who still contracted the virus despite vaccination. Yet he affirmatively chose not to get the vaccine, and he went out of his way to convince others not to get the vaccine as well. He’s dead now, felled by a virus whose worst damage he could have easily avoided. How bad should we feel about his death?
Indeed, here in the second half of 2021, how bad should we feel about the COVID-related death of anyone who still chooses not to get vaccinated — with the full knowledge of the consequences of contracting COVID, and the spread of the rather-more-infectious Delta variant of the disease, and the ease of acquiring a shot (which here in the US is free to get, incidentally)? Is there a certain point where one throws up one’s hands, says, “well, you knew better, didn’t you?” and washes one’s hands of them?
As with so many things in this world, I think it depends.
Scalzi has somewhat more sympathy than I do for those who have been brainwashed by the right-wing media cesspool. As for those who should know better and spread the disinformation that's led to this growing disaster (especially those in the media and government), I have absolutely no sympathy for them and quite a bit of anger. It may not be very Christian of me, but I'm not a Christian. Neither is the virus.
