09/17/2021
By Kate Stone Lombardi
Many of us can’t wrap our heads around why so many people won’t get the Covid vaccine. I’m pretty tired of reading about conspiracy theories, distrust of the government, and on and on.
Once, I considered writing an article from the perspective of someone who had suffered from diseases that are now almost eradicated through vaccines. Personally, I’ve had measles, rubella (then called “German measles”) chicken pox, and scarlet fever, the very disease that rendered Helen Keller blind. I remember my polio vaccine and knew older people who had suffered from that disease too.
If people understood the ravages of these illnesses, they wouldn’t fight these vaccines. Maybe it would convince young people who hadn’t known a world where people lived in fear of disease, disfiguration and death. Until I remembered that people have now witnessed more than 600,000 Americans die and they are still not convinced. That people deny Covid is real with their last breath before the ventilator tube is inserted down their throats.
Which brings me to this alarming statistic. A few years ago, an organization called YouGov polled 8,215 adults to get a sense of their views on the shape of the earth. Fasten your seatbelt for this one (unless you believe that is an imposition on your personal freedom): THIRTY FOUR percent of 18-24 years old are not certain that the Earth is round. They checked off one of the following three boxes: “I have always believed the earth was round but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts,” “I have always believed the world was flat but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts,” and “I have always believed the world was flat.”
The next age cohort, ages 25-34, fare slightly better – only 24 percent (Yup, nearly a quarter) have some doubts about the world being round.
If folks aren’t certain about the shape of the Earth, what hope is there about the efficacy of the vaccine?