How unnecessary!

To the Editor:

This was my contribution at the Sept. 7 Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors meeting on the issue of vaccination:

Supervisor Kirk held forth, interminably, applauded by antivaxxers. Staff patiently assisted technically, while he searched for something, anything, to undermine the medical consensus.

Reality: locally, just one patient in the ICU was vaccinated. The CDC reports 99% of deaths and hospitalizations were unvaccinated.

The roomful of anti-vaxxers vociferated their freedom, only to be enlightened when loved ones fall ill, hopefully not on their own deathbeds.

I showed the smallpox vaccination scar on my arm, now almost invisible. Appropriately so, smallpox is now extinct, vanquished, by almost universal vaccination. (Polio could be too. Likewise measles, but for anti-vaxxers.)

“The anti-vaxxers have set us back a year. We thought we were almost through this. Now we hunker down, again. The economy suffers. How unnecessary!

“You (the supervisors) are responsible for county employees. No one should have to work alongside colleagues who choose to expose them to a virus, mutating by the minute to be more virulent, more lethal, to take home to older parents and as yet unvaccinated children.

“It's not just a matter of being sued, a real possibility, but a moral obligation. Exercise the power invested in you!

“Declare simply: Get your shots, or stay home for unpaid leave! Simple choice: a sore arm for a day, to save lives.”

Paolo Maffei

Sonora