Vaccinations…The New Divide

I read an article on Vaccination Etiquette this week and realized that our aversion to free choice and free will would strengthen as the Pandemic weakens. We are setting ourselves up for the next great societal division, and I am afraid things are about to get ugly. You would think that a year of isolation would lead to a desire to mingle with people again at any cost. After all, we are supposedly social animals that crave the attention and interaction of others. Instead, we see a reluctance to remove the mask and share our time in the presence of others. It is as if the facial shield has given us some security, and we are not ready to take the training wheels off the bike. We have lost our courage, and we have become sheep in the trek to achieve herd immunity. What a sad lot we have become.

Being vaccinated is about to become the qualifier for friendships, relationships, attendance at school, employment. Even family gatherings may become vaccinated in this room and anti-vax in this other. The President is holding our return to normalcy, including a maskless society, on his obsession with every person in the country getting two shots in their arm. Towns, cities, and states are doing the same. Governor Whitmer of Michigan is holding her state closed until a certain percentage of Michigan residents are vaccinated. Reaching these arbitrary targets will not happen. Vaccine Reluctance is a real thing, and there will always be a high percentage of people who refuse to take the needle. Joe Biden, who had said that we would be able to comingle by the Fourth of July, now points to Labor Day. The red line is moving.

Some states are far ahead of others on the road back to normal. Florida, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota are proof of what is possible, but these are Red states, and Blue states love the power they maintain over their citizens. They will not give up the power without a fight. In the meantime, businesses remain closed or are permanently shut down. The economy that was coming back under Trump by the release of restrictions imposed by their political leaders has stalled, and the unemployment rate surged in April. Biden says this is fine, and his Jobs Plan is designed for the long run and not to be measured now.

What we can measure now is unemployment, inflation, illegal immigration, and out-of-this-world spending. If this four-month debacle were at the hands of a Republican President, all hell would break out. This President continues to garner accolades and is still above water in his approval rating. This is a bold new world where very little makes sense.

What is it going to take for Biden and Blue State Governors, and even some community leaders to take off the handcuffs? There is no clear answer, but one thing is guaranteed; if Biden continues to wear a mask everywhere he goes, we will never reach the vaccination goals asked for to release the country. He is ruining the credibility of the vaccination by his actions. He is a feeble leader, but then, most of us knew that.

So now we have a country that is not rebounding as it should. We have a country confused about vaccines. We have a country that is reluctant to remove its mask. We have a country of us versus them, and the divide is getting wider. This President ran on the promise that he is a unifier. We knew that was bogus. We got a President that cannot even see the divide let alone erase it. People voted for Biden because they wanted relief from the egregious overbearing personality of Trump. What they got was relief from leadership. I bet they would love to have those tweets back now