Vaccine mandates have become the latest issue to roil our nation, contribute to the culture wars and make us feel more divided than ever.
At issue is the concept of individual liberty. Should the government or my employer have the authority or power to demand that I be vaccinated against COVID-19 and its mutations?
Answer: Children have to be vaccinated against various illnesses in order to attend public schools so why should this be different?
But the deeper question is how we see ourselves in the world in which we live. We are all certainly individuals who enjoy the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We are also part of an interconnected world in which individual actions can have repercussions in the lives of people around us. How we see ourselves in this world makes all the difference in how we view things like vaccine mandates.
Do we prize personal liberty ahead of the well-being of the people around us or do we see the safety and security of our community as more important than our personal freedom? This is not a false choice but a real question of values.
“Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community” by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, utilizes language that helps us understand where we are today. Social capital, he maintains, has declined in our country over the recent past with very detrimental effects.
Defined as the networks of relationships among people, social capital is what keeps a democracy functioning. Shared identity, shared norms and values, provide the glue that enables civic engagement and respect for the common good.
As social capital declines, the result is the rise of personal freedom as superior to the common good. This transition is largely unexamined because it has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe.
When Damian Harris scored a 64-yard touchdown in the Patriots’ recent victory over the Buffalo Bills, it was fun to watch. The camera was on him, sprinting into the end zone without anyone getting near him.
What the camera did not include at this point were the other 10 men on the field who made his touchdown possible. Individual effort does not take place in a vacuum. It takes 11 football players, working together as a team, to win games. Tom Brady is a great quarterback as long as he has the protection he needs to do his job. The exercise of freedom never takes place in a vacuum.
The Democratic governor of Colorado recently downplayed vaccine mandates by comparing them to raincoats. We don’t force people to wear raincoats when it rains. The decision is left up to them, he opined. He called this an exercise of individual freedom. When it comes to the pandemic, however, we have to wonder whether an exercise of individual freedom is simultaneously a disregard for the health and well-being of others. If I get wet by not wearing a raincoat, this is certainly my prerogative. If I decide not to get vaccinated, however, my decision affects others. This is radically different from choosing not to wear a raincoat.
In 2021, more than 460,000 people died in our country as a result of COVID-19. The vast majority of these people had decided not to get a vaccine.
Close to home, the recent death of an unvaccinated corrections officer led Essex County Sheriff Kevin Coppinger to relay a television message from his family about the importance of not making a similar mistake.
This same missive has also been relayed by the surviving members of a number of unvaccinated talk show hosts who discouraged vaccinations and subsequently succumbed to COVID-19 themselves.
While these are notable cases, we have to believe that the surviving families of the unvaccinated deceased probably echo these same sentiments.
As the omicron virus spreads at the speed of light around the world, hospitals and intensive care units (ICU) are once again being filled to capacity. By some accounts, more than 80 percent of the hospitalized are unvaccinated as are more than 90 percent of the ICU patients.
When an unvaccinated person dies, they leave behind doctors, nurses, hospital employees, friends and families who they may have infected with the virus. Some of these people may have also suffered serious illness and even death. It is no wonder that hospital personnel are feeling frustrated to the point of leaving their professions.
The highest exercise of freedom is the freedom to do what is right. When freedom is exercised in the opposite direction, it is license and makes the common good its casualty. It is now up to all the vaccinated to convince the vaccine skeptics that it is time to get vaccinated so that we can put this pandemic behind us. This is not about politics. It is about common sense and our responsibility to care for one another.
Msgr. Paul Garrity is a recently-retired pastor of the Archdiocese of Boston. He can be reached at [email protected].