Well that's the thing isn't it? The conversation on a global pandemic is being driven by social media and so you will hear only the wildest stories.
I guess that does work both ways but you'd think after so many people got vaccinated we'd be able to start being a bit less hysterical and a bit more objective. Apparently not.
As someone who has been vaccinated I am perfectly comfortable with people making their own decisions.
I would get a booster too and again I am fine with people who don't want that.
I don't really get the blind rage or the eagerness to take people's personal choice away from them.
Even if people are making absolutely terrible personal decisions I think we just have to accept that this is part of having free-will.
Maybe it sucks but it is what it is.
Yes, free-will is the crux of the matter for many, and certainly part of my own frustration when it comes to talk of covid passes/mandates. Personally I haven't gotten the vaccine yet. I'm not against vaccines in any way, but I do have concerns in this particular case, for a variety of reasons. I also have an auto-immune condition as well as polycystic kidney disease, and I'd rather not take it for the time being. Plus I already had covid, and it was fairly intense for me, although didn't warrant hospitalization.
But the hysteria around this pandemic is, despite the deaths we've incurred, overblown imho. I mean, double the amount of people died from heart disease last year, and the bulk of that was likely "voluntary" in the sense that people were abusing themselves with poor diet and sedentary lifestyles. Granted, heart disease isn't conventionally thought of as contagious, although you could make the argument that in a social context - via learned behaviors - it most certainly is. If you look at families who suffer from the effects of
environmental heart disease (behavioral), it most certainly has the appearance of a contagion, albeit in a different manner of communicability. But that's a whole different conversation. We could also put (behavioral) diabetes, through all the mortality and illness associated, into the same mix. And these things also put society under a collective strain. Increased health insurance premiums, unnecessary stress on the healthcare system, familial stressors, and on and on.
In the end, for me, the vaccines are available to those who wish to protect themselves in that manner, and that ought to be the end of it. If they work (and evidence supports their efficacy) and you've gotten it, you shouldn't concern yourself with whether or not others have done the same. It's not like covid is going to vanish. Just like the common flu, it's here to stay.
So many seem fixated on the extremists, which are, and have always been, an incredibly small minority. But many cannot cope with any difference in perspective, justified or not. We live in a world that will always have varying points of view, and if we're to consider ourselves a society - a collective where we all have worth - allowances have to be made for differences. Otherwise, we walk the road of authoritarianism, and we can see from (relatively recent) human history, the outcomes of that path.