It’s getting tiresome to read another letter from the likes of S. Gallagher that still get facts wrong, or miss the bigger picture regarding vaccines.
Vaccination does reduce transmission, contrary to Gallagher’s letter. What’s true is that it doesn’t completely prevent transmission, which is not saying the same thing.
An analogy might be useful. The unvaccinated are walking around with revolvers fully loaded with six bullets. Every time they point their gun and pull the trigger, they will shoot someone. The vaccinated are walking around with only one bullet in the cylinder. When they pull the trigger they are most likely going to fire an empty chamber.
Everyone benefits when we are all walking around with less bullets.
It’s a fact that non-vaccination increases the probability of hospitalization and needing an ICU bed. Medical resources dedicated to the unvaccinated are unavailable to those needing critical medical procedures. People have died as a result.
At its peak, COVID was putting enormous emotional and physical pressure on health-care workers. Many were and are burning out, and leaving the profession.
Every warm body that the virus infects is a new host in which to mutate to a new and possibly more dangerous variant. It would force us all to start over yet again with lockdowns and masks.
For most of us, vaccinations are a ‘we’ thing, not a ‘me’ thing.
Mike Laplante
Saanich