Do you know what’s easy to count? he thought. The number of people whose deaths were Covid-related. Well, plus a few extra for cases we didn’t know about. What? Tens of thousands, give or take?
And, he thought, you know what’s not easy to count? The number of people who were saved by Covid vaccinations. Not only those whose lives were saved, but those who were spared long-Covid, the effects of which were especially hard on and eventually killed – and are still killing – those who weren’t vaccinated.
He thought about this as he read in the New York Times how the U.S. was and is a “global-outlier” because the CDC recommended, and still recommends, vaccines for children six months or older. Covid, said the NYT, had little effect on children, so the harms of things such as missed school outweighed any benefits. Furthermore, the NYT went on to say that the pressure exerted during the pandemic (which the US is still experiencing, the numbers spiking over the holiday season) was perhaps extreme for people of all ages.
Putting down the NYT, he wondered whether it could be proved that fewer children died not so much because they were vaccinated, but because so many adults were. A ripple effect. The contagiousness of the disease lessened as more and more people were vaccinated.
And, he thought, what if the lives of even a fraction of the children vaccinated were saved? What if, he thought, even just my child had been saved?
He thought, My state, Hawai‘i the “Aloha State,” had one of the highest vaccination rates in the U.S. And, per capita, we had one of the lowest death rates, children and adults.
I wonder, he thought, if, in the spirit of aloha, the spirit which may very well have contributed to a higher percentage of residents and their children being vaccinated for the good, not only of themselves but for the welfare of all those in their community, in their ‘Ohana that is Hawai‘i – what if that contributed to so relatively few deaths?
Caring about others. Aloha is precious, he thought.
But then he laughed. What a foolish thing to wonder about. The doctors know, all the experts know.
“What the hell?” he said aloud to no one.
Hey, he thought, maybe we all should have just ignored the advice to be vaccinated and let Covid run its course. After all, indigenous peoples all over the world survived the diseases visited upon them by outsiders. Well, many of them.
And people have survived mass flu epidemics like the one in 1918. Hey, look at all the folks who survived catastrophic events like the Black Plague that hit multiple times, even. Of course, those did kill a lot of children. Ah, but that was then. Ancient history. What happened in the past doesn’t count.
It’s true, he thought, all the lucky ones who survived those events did so without the aid of vaccines.
I get it, he thought. Who needs vaccines? If you’re lucky, if your children are lucky, you’ll get through any kind of pandemic that comes our way.
“Screw vaccines,” he said aloud to no one.
But then he thought about it again. The spirit of aloha. In the spirit of aloha, if another pandemic killing millions of people should occur during his lifetime, and if scientists developed a vaccine before millions more died, he’d get it.
Not for me, he thought, but for everyone else with whom I share this planet. In the spirit of aloha. That’s what counts.
Lanning Lee 