Along with benefits come responsibilities

I am beyond disgust at the demonstrations against the COVID-19 vaccination, pandemic regulations, the vaccine card, etc. especially when directed at health care workers.

These latter are the people whose dedication and skills are essential to preventing massive death rates from COVID, never mind treating the countless other ills we humans experience.

Targeting them is deeply unfair and troubling. My gut reaction isn’t printable, but more delicately put, the protesters’ behaviour is obscene, mindless, completely selfcentered, and hypocritical beyond belief.

One is either a member of society or not and along with the benefits come responsibilities. Ignoring this basic tenet, these people seem to consider it their right is to decide for themselves whether or not they get vaccinated against this virulent and resourceful virus and be required to prove it. (Of course I am not speaking of the very small number of people who genuinely can’t be vaccinated.)

Never mind that deciding not to has potentially very serious repercussions for others and for our society/world; never mind that this decision has been made, on the basis of rather obvious misinformation and a belief in toxic individualism; never mind, apparently, that their inaction could endanger their own families..

At the same time, I very much doubt that many adherents to this kind of wonky thinking would hesitate to call an ambulance or turn up at their local hospital’s ER if they had an accident or became seriously ill. Given the statistics from across the country indicating that the vast majority of COVID sufferers arriving in hospitals have not been vaccinated, they clearly expect the same care as those who take responsibility for the effects on others of their actions, or inaction, and get vaccinated, agree with a vaccination card, and so forth.

So, if you want full (as one person phrased it) “autonomy of the body,” at least exercise a modicum of consistency and do not expect help from the society you spurn. When you get ill or are injured, refrain from calling 911 for help, do not expect medical care (which, oh horrors, might include procedures or drugs to keep you alive, but which you didn’t authorize), and continue to exercise your “right” to be completely self-centered by removing yourself from all other benefits of the social fabric.

Who knows, you might gain posthumous fame as a well-deserved candidate for the Darwin Awards!

Eva Durance Penticton