PAGE A8, KEIZERTIMES, AUGUST 13, 2021
Harassing the unvaccinated
PUBLIC SQUARE welcomes all points of view. Published submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Keizertimes
COVID whiplash
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown is responding
to the state's COVID-19 resurgence with the
delta variant. She ordered this week that
mask mandates in public indoor spaces are
back in place.
People are not pleased with the
ever-changing requirements. Mandates to
wear a mask and getting a vaccine violates
personal liberities, some say. Some sege-
ments of society say that Americans are free
to take risks even if it endangers their live or
the lives of others. People take health risks
every day with choices that are harmful.
The number one role of government
is the protect the people and keep them
secure. If the United States was facing immi-
nent attack from a foreign source, the people
would be up in arms if government did noth-
ing in response.
There are more than a few social media
posts from COVID- deniers and anti-vaxx-
ers, laying in a hospital bed, hooked to
machines imploring people to take COVID-
19 seriously and get a vaccine.
Whatever her faults, Gov. Brown and her
health advisors are making the decisions
they believe is best to stem the tide of new
Editorial
cases of infections and hospitalizations. It
is expected that if Oregon remains on its
current trajectory, there will be a shortage of
up to 500 hospital beds by September. That
should alarm everyone.
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention has said for months that most
people wore a mask in public settings and
received one of the vaccines, we could see
the end of pandemic. There are reports that
some who have been fully vaccinated got
sick with COVID, but their condition is not
to level of requiring hospitalization.
Americans are free to make choices they
feel is best for them. For some that means not
allowing a COVID vaccine to go into their
arm. For more than 150 million Americans
that choice is to be vaccinated.
COVID is not going away. We can't know
what other variants other than delta are lurk-
ing in our future. That's why the governor
is making decisions to keep the people of
Oregon safe. That is her job.
—LAZ
SHARE YOUR OPINION
SUBMIT a letter to the editor (300 words), or guest column (600 words),
email us by noon Tuesday: publisher@keizertimes.com
WHEATLAND PUBLISHING CORP.
142 Chemawa Road N, Keizer, Oregon 97303
Phone: 503.390.1051 • www.keizertimes.com
PUBLISHER
& EDITOR
Lyndon Zaitz
publisher@keizertimes.com
FOLLOW US
ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
NEW DIGITAL
SUBSCRIPTION PRICING:
$5 per month, $60 per year
PUBLISHED
EVERY FRIDAY
Publication No: USPS 679-430
YEARLY PRINT
SUBSCRIPTION PRICING:
$35 inside Marion County
$43 outside Marion County
$55 outside Oregon
POSTMASTER
Send address changes to:
Keizertimes Circulation
142 Chemawa Road N.
Keizer, OR 97303
Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon
By MARC A. THIESSEN
In recent weeks, President Joe Biden
has been trying to insult unvaccinated
Americans into getting immunized. He
has told the vaccine-hesitant that they
are “not nearly as smart as I thought you
were,” that they are responsible for the
pandemic, that they are refusing to do
their patriotic duty, and that Americans’
patience with the unvaccinated is “run-
ning thin.”
Here’s a better idea: stop harassing
them.
First of all, no one has ever been
insulted into changing their mind.
Telling the vaccine hesitant they are
stupid and unpatriotic is not likely
to convince them to get their shots.
If anything, it will have the opposite
effect, increasing resistance to the vac-
cines. According to former American
Enterprise Institute president Arthur
C.Brooks, “if you insult someone with
whom you disagree, the odds are greater
than 3 to 1 that the person will harden
his views against your position.”
Second, the unvaccinated minority
do not pose a serious threat to the rest
of us. So far, 165 million U.S. adults have
been fully vaccinated, and 70% have
now have had at least one shot, which
research shows is highly protective
after just two weeks. This means 192
million in total now have vaccinated
immunity. Breakthrough infections are
still rare—NBC News reports that there
have been about 125,000 cases in 38
states, which represents a rate of about
0.07%. And according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, as of
Aug. 3, only 954 vaccinated Americans
have died of COVID-19, and only 4,641
have been hospitalized. Most of those
are elderly, immunocompromised or
have co-morbidities making the vac-
cines less effective.
What about the risk to children,
many of whom are ineligible to be vac-
cinated? Unvaccinated children are at
similarly low risk for serious outcomes
as vaccinated adults. CDC data show
that just 406 people under 18 have died
with a COVID-19 diagnosis code in
their record and the CDC has no idea
whether COVID-19 was incidental or
causal in their deaths. One study found
zero mortality in children without pre-
existing conditions. Healthy children
are not a serious risk —and healthy vac-
cinated adults (such as teachers) are at
near-zero risk from them.
What this means is that if you are
an otherwise healthy vaccinated per-
son, you are effectively bulletproof
against serious illness. While we should
encourage unvaccinated Americans to
get immunized for their own sake, they
pose no real danger to the rest of us.
So, stop harassing them. The left
believes in “my body, my choice” when
it comes to abortion, but not when it
comes to vaccination. Unlike abortion,
vaccine hesitancy poses virtually no
risk of death to others who are otherwise
healthy human beings. Refusing to get
vaccinated may be a bad health choice,
but people make bad health choices all
the time. They smoke, drink to excess,
abuse prescription drugs and engage in
all sorts of risky behaviors.
If the Biden administration wants
other
VOICES
to convince the vaccine-hesitant to
make better choices, the best thing they
could do is speed full approval of the
vaccines. A Kaiser Family Foundation
survey found that 44% of unvaccinated
Americans would be more likely to
get a vaccine once it is fully approved
by the Food and Drug Administration.
But right now, the FDA may not decide
on full approval for the Pfizer vaccine
until January 2022. The agency has
not even begun priority review for the
Moderna vaccine, while Johnson &
Johnson has not filed for full approval.
That is ridiculous. With 347 million
doses administered, the FDA has never
had more safety and efficacy data on a
new vaccine. It’s hard to convince wary
Americans to put a vaccine into their
body if the government won’t give it full
approval.
Reimposing covid restrictions on
vaccinated Americans also feeds vac-
cine hesitancy. According to a new
AP-NORC poll, 64% of the unvaccinated
have little to no confidence the shots are
effective against variants such as delta,
when in fact they are highly effective.
Forcing vaccinated Americans to wear
masks only feeds that misperception.
Another bad idea is vaccine man-
dates. The Biden administration is
now requiring federal workers to get
vaccinated and encouraging private
businesses to do the same. This will
only spark greater resistance, particu-
larly among those who see mandates
as an infringement on their individual
liberty. The last thing we need to do is
encourage more Americans to see vac-
cine resistance as a political statement
against an overbearing government.
The nonimmune population is rap-
idly dwindling. There are now fewer
than 93 million Americans who are eli-
gible for shots but have chosen not to
get them, but that does not mean they
are unprotected against the virus. Marty
Makary, a physician and professor at
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health, estimates that up to half
of that population has been infected
at some point with covid-19 and thus
have natural immunity from prior infec-
tion. At that rate, as many as 46 million
unvaccinated Americans have natural
immunity, which a new Israeli study
just found is 6.7 times more powerful
than vaccinated immunity. As more of
the unvaccinated catch the virus (at
a rate as high as 1 million a day) more
and more are recovering and becoming
immune.
The vaccines are a modern med-
ical miracle that have saved us from
the worst pandemic in human history.
Some will never get them, and that is
their choice. Free people are free to be
wrong. The rest are persuadable. The
way to do so is not with mandates or
insults. Approve the vaccines and let
them decide.
(Washington Post)