For eight or so hours on Saturday, I felt like absolute shit. There’s no two ways about that. In return, I got the comfort of knowing that in two weeks my chances of being hospitalized or experiencing severe symptoms due to the Great Plague will have plummeted to something negligible. That feels like a deal well worth making.

“But,” some would say, “You don’t know what they’re putting in your body.” That’s a factually correct statement. I don’t know the chemical compounds that make up a bacon cheeseburger, either, but that doesn’t stop me from jamming them into my mouth with abandon. 

I’m neither a chemist, biologist, not medical doctor. I have, however, been well vaccinated over the years – against diphtheria, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, flu, and now COVID-19. I was given and took those vaccinations because people who are chemists, biologists, and medical doctors advised that they were beneficial.

After a year of people bitching about businesses being closed, not wanting to wear masks, schools being virtual, and general angst about what they think has been taken away due to the virus, I hope you can forgive me for being perplexed by why the same group is displaying what’s being charitably called “vaccine hesitancy.” It seems that the group loudest about wanting to “open up” and “get back to normal” would also be agitating loudest to get vaccines in their arm faster as that’s the key to getting from where we are to where they want to be.

There will always be a small subset of the population that legitimately can’t take a vaccine for medical reasons. For the others lined up in the “don’t wanna, can’t make me” camp, I honestly have no idea what’s driving you towards generalized irrationality. I can make an educated guess or two, but I’m quite sure I couldn’t do it without being considered unspeakably rude.