Safe Haven

 I have a loose acquaintance who has a frame on her Facebook profile picture that says, “I don’t care that you are vaccinated.” There have been plenty of reactionary spoofs like this, related to COVID. I think people still think that it’s OK to play politics with the virus, or that if there are any undeniably political elements to safety and care in a COVID world, that opposition is morally neutral or good. It’s an act of charity, to protect yourself. It’s an act of charity to protect others. I hope that “political” isn’t just “anything I don’t happen to like,” and that it’s not consequently synonymous with “social.” If there is no “we,” eventually, there is no “I.” I won’t say that every vaccine refusal is illegitimate, obviously. Some of us literally cannot safely take it. But most are. And the facts are that this thing mutates, the more people it infects. With more mutations brings the possibility and even likelihood of greater lethality. If some people might rightly argue that ...