“Imagine living in a world so spoiled by lack of serious illness,” the message board statement read, “that we forget the benefits of vaccines and start to reject the same vaccines that brought us to this point.” If anyone asks, I tell them I avoid anonymous Chan-style discussion boards, because they encourage ignorance, self-righteousness, and boorish behavior. But I keep coming back, because sometimes, like here, somebody says something so right, it deserves further amplification.
As I approach two weeks without face-to-face contact with another human being, COVID-induced cabin fever reducing me to thoroughly unproductive jelly, this message seemed especially pointed. We Americans, alongside the British, Indians, and a few other highly populous countries, continue struggling with the balance between liberty and health. What form of unfairness do we, collectively, consider acceptable? Which moral precept do we value higher? And exactly how much do we even exist, as separate individuals?
These questions don’t matter merely in the abstract. They also matter because, as the original comment observed, we didn’t achieve the level of widespread health which humanity now enjoys, without many sacrifices along the way. The discovery of vaccines stopped the spread of once-virulent diseases like polio, smallpox, and even potentially lethal tetanus. Penicillin became the first of several wonder drugs. Even handwashing, once deeply controversial, became a lifesaver. Living to age thirty became commonplace.
Now a noisy minority, deaf to history’s lessons, are committedly kicking down the ladder their ancestors painstakingly ascended. Vaccine denial is just one component of this. Science denial has become a hallmark of wealthy modernity. Widespread anecdotal reports of patients denying COVID-19 exists, even as they’re dying of it, are just the latest manifestation of this. Faced with concrete, painful evidence that the way we’ve always done things doesn’t work anymore, some people just deny.
What worries me most, though, is that this problem isn’t unique to science. Reading the pro-vax comment which got me thinking in this direction, I realized I’d seen it elsewhere, almost verbatim. Gar Alperovitz and Chuck Collins made these arguments, almost verbatim, regarding economics. Post-WWII, Americans enjoyed a period of unmatched prosperity and security, made possible by government subsidies and public-private cooperation. Then we destroyed the network, convinced it provided others with an “unfair advantage.”
Admittedly, this prosperity and security wasn’t universal. The New Deal and its Eisenhower-era successors had racism baked into their structure, and the benefits accrued mainly to White Americans. This applied to health equally: Black and Latinx Americans have always had more limited access to preventative medicine, like vaccines, and are more likely to live downwind from smoke-belching factories than White Americans. But in the aggregate, Americans enjoyed government-backed prosperity, right up until we destroyed it.
COVID-19 provides a microcosm of why we seemingly can’t solve persistent problems in America. Just as a lead smelter cannot discharge waste into the air and water and assert that “it’s my property,” I cannot breathe into the shared air and claim “it’s my lungs.” It clearly isn’t mine alone. Yet this belief, which permeates American politics and economics, that we’re all disconnected individuals drifting along, separated from others, is disproved by a contagious disease.
Certainly there are areas where we exist as separate beings. If I enjoy science fiction, and you enjoy romance novels, let’s just read our respective books privately and not bother one another. But that doesn’t apply to circumstances that clearly belong to the community. Our society’s wealthy and powerful, who can afford to purchase legislators at fire-sale prices, have looked at centuries of collective stewardship of shared resources, and decided: nah. Kick the ladder down.
Humanity has achieved widespread levels of health and prosperity when we’ve acknowledged our shared responsibilities. When we admit I have a responsibility to get vaccinated against smallpox, not only so I don’t contract it, but also so I don’t transmit it to others. When I have a requirement to steward my land, not just because it’s mine, but because the invasive species which flourish here spread seeds elsewhere. When ownership derives from trust, not arrogance.
Some people look at their health, prosperity, and comfort, and think: I did this. Certainly, these individuals contributed to it, since heedless people tend to squander money and get sick from needless risks. But to believe you, individually, created your comfort, without any contribution from those around you, or before you, shows profound ignorance of history. If we inherit the dividends of others’ efforts, we inherit the responsibility to keep fighting their good fight onward.
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