The Plague of the Poor
Last night I had a few interesting conversations with a range of people at a birthday party.  The group I was speaking with were mostly in the sciences and technology with a couple of high school teachers and a college professor in the mix.<p>The perspectives were interesting.  I won&#x27;t get into all the details here.  I&#x27;ll just say that the well-reasoned opinions spanned a range.<p>The teachers had legitimate concerns about their safety while teaching in-person classes.  One of them told me that the students pull down their masks all the time and that it is impossible to enforce it (she even said it was somewhat cruel for some).  Yet she was genuinely concerned about her safety and that of her family.<p>A tech executive, older than the rest of the group, said he waited as long as possible before getting vaccinated because he wanted to see more data.  Or, to be more accurate, he said something like:  I wanted to give it enough time to see if fully vaccinated people were going to end-up in the hospital because of the vaccine.  He was concerned about potential long term issues (a decade or more).  In the end he reasoned he is old enough that he was far more likely to die from something else anyway, so, in his case, the potential for long term effects could be discounted.<p>Everyone in this gathering was vaccinated, yet, vaccine hesitancy came up in a number of conversations.  There were also threads about the idea of the government forcing people to do something with their bodies under threat of losing their jobs, not being able to travel, not being able to go to any public places, etc.  In many ways it is an argument that rhymes with the abortion debate:  In that case we (well, some of us) believe it is the woman&#x27;s right to choose.  In other words, the government should not have anything to do with a woman&#x27;s body.  And yet, with vaccines, we accept being forced to inject a substance under threat of harm?  It&#x27;s an interesting and very complex comparison.<p>If I had to summarize the various conversations I would say everybody there wants everyone to be vaccinated.  The difference is in how different people think we ought to get there.  Some were OK with forcing the issue, others though it was a potentially dangerous precedent.<p>As is always the case, when you have in-person conversations with people you can actually explore issues in a far more civilized and informative way, everyone is respectful and there is no down-voting or flagging.  Just people talking and sharing ideas.  Refreshing when compared to the shit show online discussions often turn into.<p>Anti-vaxxers need help.  The path is education, not a hammer over the head.  They are not elementary school dropouts without teeth.  They come in all shapes, sizes, races and levels of education.