"Peter, you have watched too much Fox News"

A doctor told me I was wrong. 

I had written it was time for Democrats to stop telling vaccinated people to mask up.

Time to move on, I had said. The virus is endemic. Now we should admit we are simply going to live with it.

My premise in a recent post was that the government had done what it could on COVID. Government advisories and requirements regarding masking and distancing gave us time to create a vaccine. It is free and available. The vaccinated are generally at as much risk of getting sick as we were pre-COVID.  

From this point forward, I argued, it was in the hands of the individuals. It is an epidemic of the un-vaccinated. A great many people evaluate the risk of the vaccine as greater than the risk of COVID. I think it is crazy, but they are not me. Maybe they just feel pressured and harangued by earnest do-gooders. Maybe they already had COVID. Maybe they know somebody who lost a day's work from feeling fatigued after the second shot. Maybe they watch Fox News and they imagine they are resisting tyrants. Everybody has a reason.

My point is that the big, meta-message by Democrats is now being perceived as overkill by a critical mass of Americans. Democrats care too much. People who aren't vaccinated have their chance and they vote with the unmistakable body language of not getting vaccinated.

Reality is an unforgiving teacher. If Trump-supporting Democrats-can't-make-me people are the ones getting sick and dying, eventually people will wise up.  Or not. It is a free country.

Eliot Nierman

Eliot Nierman is a physician, a professor at a medical school, and a college classmate. He has posted here before, with a very popular post urging people to wear masks because his own and other hospital systems were being overwhelmed by COVID patients. He sent me three letters in short succession telling me I was wrong. I have woven them together and edited them lightly to turn them into this Guest Post.

Guest Post by Eliot Nierman

Peter, you have watched too much Fox News and similar information sources. You may be correct about the politics but are dead wrong about the science and medical facts. 

The difference between COVID vaccination and masking and risky behaviors like riding a motorcycle is that vaccinated people are wearing masks primarily to protect the unvaccinated rather than themselves. If COVID risk just included those who could get vaccinated but refused, then you could say the unvaccinated dug their own graves by choice. But the risk includes kids who can’t get vaccinated and people for whom the vaccines don’t work--the immunosuppressed. The delta variant is more deadly for them, too, and who knows where the next mutation will take us. Vaccines may no longer work, and children may no longer largely be spared.

With the delta variant out there and spreading, there is also the risk of vaccinated people getting asymptomatic infection and infecting others. The unvaccinated have no qualms about requiring and expecting medical care when they get sick even though they are putting medical personnel and their children at avoidable risk. People who do known risky behaviors--motorcycles, SCUBA, smoke cigarettes--often pay a premium in terms of insurance, as they should. I am not aware of any situation where not getting vaccinated for COVID raises a premium. 

About the only things your examples of fatty food, cigarette smoking, and motorcycle-riding share in common with COVID are that they all increase medical costs that the rest of us share. However, I will be fair and mention the benefits to the rest of us in terms of unhealthy behavior by others. They do die at younger ages and save the Social Security system money. I wish every cyclist would wear a helmet, but the reality is that the ones that do not provide a disproportionate share of young, healthy organs to transplant. 

One more thing that you are getting wrong: Because vaccination rates are much higher in the elderly and sick than in the young and healthy, and because the delta variant is both more infectious and more deadly than the earlier forms of COVID, a large percentage of those now in the hospital getting critically ill and dying are young and otherwise healthy--the most tragic and costly people to lose.

I have no disagreement with you about recognizing the disappointment vaccinated people feel about being advised to go back to masks and distancing. What is happening among Democrats and medical people is that we are feeling increasing anger at the non-vaccinated who are subjecting the rest of us to this. That anger is probably counter-productive in the political realm.

But, honestly that is supposed to the difference between adults and children. One group faces reality and the other lives in a fantasy works of denial over the effects of vaccine-refusal. Sometimes reality sucks and pretending it does not only makes things worse. And remember we are just talking about a mask and a vaccine, not shutting down the whole economy again. If everyone who could get vaccinated went ahead and got vaccinated, even masking would be unnecessary as would this conversation.