We can’t beat COVID-19 without collective sacrifice
In the past couple of weeks, two of our nation’s enduring wars had indelible images reverberate across our state and country. We saw the faces of 13 Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice in our war against terrorism in Afghanistan, while in Cheshire we saw parents fulminate over a mask mandate, refusing to make even the smallest sacrifice in our war against COVID-19.
Two wars, one in a foreign country and one here at home. Both required a sacrifice, but one required a collective sacrifice not just that of the courageous few.
On Aug. 25, the day before a suicide bomber took the lives of 13 service members overseas, a handful of parents at a Cheshire elementary school hurled obscenities and vitriol at Gov. Ned Lamont, Rep. Liz Linehan and other public officials at a back-to-school event.
The merits of wearing a mask don’t have to be argued anymore. We’ve seen the effects in states that don’t have mask mandates. That’s not what this is about.
This is a symptom, not the root cause. The parents in Cheshire and many like them across America have lost the ability to make a collective sacrifice for the larger good — for their country. They throw the word “freedom” around without understanding or acknowledging the sacrifice that is inextricably linked to that freedom.
Our war in Afghanistan was launched after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. We lost more than 2,400 American service members in that 20-year war.
Yet today our war against COVID-19 sees that many American deaths in just two days. That is a staggering loss of life.
It was hard not to be struck by the glaring contrast of the events less than 24 hours apart. Americans in Kabul, some barely out of high school, willing to give their lives for our country while a group of adults in Cheshire remained implacable in their refusal to make the smallest sacrifice to help protect the rest of us.
The starter pistol in the race to the bottom of public discourse was fired a while ago, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stop it. To do that, we have to understand the cause. From racial injustice to income inequality to our recent wars, there has not been a need for our collective sacrifice. Some of us had to carry the burden, while others were left unaffected.
This has created the environment we now live in, where we are incapable of eradicating a virus because certain Americans refuse the smallest action for their fellow countrymen. A free shot is too much of an imposition; a thin layer of fabric is too burdensome. Their obvious insouciance for the health and well-being of others is proudly on display as they shout down doctors and elected officials.
The journey back to our PRE-COVID world will remain stultified until those who refuse to receive a free vaccine or wear a mask when indoors learn something about the word freedom they pepper into their vehement protests until it becomes an exercise in semantic satiation. I would encourage them to heed the words Medgar Evers spoke in 1963 when he said, “Freedom has never been free.”
The sad and frustrating part is that we are all in this together. It is no longer enough for some of us to do the right thing, to sacrifice, to be responsible. The war against COVID-19 is not the war in Afghanistan. It’s going to take all of us.
We can get lost in the morass of science deniers and political polarization, but at its core it is nothing more than some Americans being incapable of making the smallest sacrifice for the rest of us.
We can’t ask every American to be as brave and selfless as the heroes who lost their lives in Kabul or Medgar Evers, who gave his life to advance civil rights. But we can ask every American to do the bare minimum to save our lives, our economy and our way of life. It is not too much to ask because freedom has never been free.
“It is no longer enough for some of us to do the right thing, to sacrifice, to be responsible. The war against COVID-19 is not the war in Afghanistan. It’s going to take all of us.”