Dear CME Family:
For the life of me, I cannot understand or explain why people, logically, refuse the COVID vaccinations (except for beliefs that it may be harmful to their health).
“For the life of me …” Those words do not form a sentence, but a phrase that may not say to you what it says to me, so let me try to tell you what it says to me. To me it says: “If my life depended upon me explaining it, I might not live.” So I am saying, “If my life depended upon me being able to explain why people refuse the vaccination – unless it is that they choose to not do so for health reasons – I would probably lose my life.”
I understand fear enough to know that some people may not take vaccinations because they fear. They may fear that the vaccination(s) could be harmful to their bodies; they may fear that the vaccination(s) could create in them diseases that will make them worse; or they may fear that someone has put something in the vaccination(s) that is harmful. Yet, the same can be said for the food they purchase from the grocery store; yet, they go home and eat it. That food may be harmful to their bodies; that food may create disease(s) in persons that makes them unhealthy; or that food could have been compromised by someone with substances or injections that could make you sick … but these same persons still eat, probably every day.
I understand the politics that makes some people not take the vaccination (though I may not appreciate the politics of it). Some people argue that a part of the development of vaccinations used stem cells from aborted babies, so they will not take the vaccination. Some people argue that the government has no right to make demands upon us to take the vaccination(s). Some people argue that we need to stand up for our “freedoms” or we will lose these freedoms in this “free” country. Yet, those same people have to know that all kinds of tests have been used in the past and are used in the present – on animals and on people – to develop improvements for our lives.
(And many people have sacrificed for these discoveries. Yet, they do not refuse the improvements because they were not discovered or tested in pure ways, either in their envisioning or in their development. Why sacrifice what is “better” or “best” because it was not done in every way that is “good?” Or, who among you demands your “freedom” to not buckle your seat belt when you get a ticket for being unbuckled? or who among you argues that you have the right to put your unlicensed 14-year-old behind the wheel of your vehicle, since you “own” it? We make laws for the good of the whole of society. It may be my “right” to not want to be vaccinated, but if the vaccinations are better for the whole of society and they are not proven to harm me, why put my “right to say no” ahead of the better health of the larger society?
Since the time this Delta variant of COVID-19 has been among us, the percentages of recovery for those hospitalized for COVID-19 while unvaccinated have not been good. Why make yourself susceptible to that low chance?
I am aware now that many of you who are in the CME Church, who are reading what I write, are not vaccinated. Except you sincerely believe it is a proven medical risk that is not good for you, I find that decision to refuse the vaccination difficult to logically understand. I invite you to help me understand it logically, if you will; but in the meantime, I urge you to please reconsider your decision. If it is rooted in fear, I can understand, because for many years I refused the flu vaccine out of fear. But when COVID came and there was no vaccination, the fear of the flu vaccination was replaced by precaution.
So, in my own way, I am pleading with those of you who have thus far refused to take the vaccine to please reconsider. Do it for yourself. Do it for your family. Do it for the people you will be in contact with who can be exposed to the disease by you, without your knowing it. Is it 100% guaranteed? No. Does it mean you will not get COVID-19 at all? No, not necessarily. But the track record of the exposed person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 beats the track record of the exposed person who is not vaccinated any day.
Bishop Lawrence Reddick