Hamlet’s Covid Soliloquy: To Vax, or Not to Vax.

Hamlet’s Covid Soliloquy: To Vax, or not to Vax?

With apologies to Shakespeare, Hamlet’s paraphrased soliloquy “to vax, or not to vax”, retrofitted for presumed freedom fighters challenging the government’s mandate for all to vaccinate against the coronavirus:

To vax, or not to vax; that is the question?
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The sharp prick needle of outrageous gov’ment mandates,
Or remove thine arm away against a sea of experts,
And by opposing end them?  To live free or die;   
There’s more; and by free to say risk suffer
The headaches and thousand gasping breaths,
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.  To die, but free;
perchance take others with us; ay there’s the rub.

Those who refuse to vaccinate presume to follow the words expressed by Patrick Henry:  “Give me liberty, or give me death”, his words reduced and affixed to New Hampshire’s license plates:  Live Free or Die.    Some who refuse to vaccinate shall do both.  

Taken to an extreme, the Gadsen flag—with yellow field depicting a coiled, ready to strike rattlesnake, “Don’t Tread on Me”—that was carried by the mob into the Capital, has morphed into an egocentric mantra:  “Government can’t tell me what to do.”

Defiance to government mandates makes up a part of American psyche. Indeed, that resolve for freedom from an overreaching government at the risk of one’s life remains a hallmark of Revolutionary America.   The colonists who resisted British rule risked their property and their lives in defense of freedom—but not just for themselves individually, but for the greater good, to-wit:  a fight for freedom for all.

Conversely, the anti-vaxers risk of their ‘own’ lives for personal freedom ill fits within the true framework of patriotism:  to risk one’s life to protect freedom for all.   Rather than preserving freedom, the anti-vaxers elevate their quest for personal ‘freedom’ above the larger community as they increase risk for all, rather than benefiting all.

Compare the revolutionary or civil war soldiers who risked a bullet for freedom for all, of whom Abraham Lincoln described as giving ‘the last full measure of devotion …[so] that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom….”   Their devotion to freedom was for the nation—not themselves as individuals.  Personally, it would have been safer for the soldiers to stay home, free from the risk of canister shot and bullets.

Truth be told, the anti-vaxers simply refuse to be bothered, and would rather wrap themselves in the flag, with platitudes of freedom from “government telling us what to do’, with a patriotism grounded on the risk of their lives—gratuitously extended to others—for their right to be free from mandated inoculation.   That kind of “freedom” is a selfish one, the antithesis of risking one’s life for freedom for all.

While Revolutionary patriots stood willing to take a shot—a bullet—for fellow Americans, recalcitrant anti-vaxers remain unwilling to take a shot—an inoculation—for fellow Americans.  Instead, they prefer placing others at risk in order to preserve their egocentric freedom to do what they want, or what they do not want to do.  

Their failure to vaccinate feeds the pandemic’s momentum when they contract the coronavirus, which as we have seen tends to mutate to variants that penetrate the shield of those already vaccinated.   In addition, those vaccinated can still get sick, though generally not as sick as the unvaccinated.  More importantly, non-vaxers spread the contagion to children too young to be vaccinated.

Economically, an ingredient for all us of in our ‘pursuit of happiness’, the continuing spread of the pandemic to non-vaxers hamstrings business while increasing the crushing costs of medical care, with a concomitant increase in private medical insurance premiums, as well as costs to Medicare and Medicaid, ironically paid by the government that they disdain.

Non-vaxers are not patriots, but rather zealots seeking to preserve their individual freedoms, paid not solely by the individual, but instead by all. To those anti-vaxers who say I risk my own life to be free, please re-read the last lines in Hamlet’s unedited soliloquy:

Devoutly to be wish’d.  To die, but free;
perchance take others with us; ay there’s the rub.