It is shocking Mississippi has scored the highest rate of covid deaths per 100,000 people in the nation. If Mississippi were a separate nation (I am so thankful we are not), we would be second in covid deaths in the world only behind Peru (CNN Sept. 20). Governor Reeves told CNN’s Jake Tapper the deaths are a lagging indicator. Yes Governor, but the deaths happened; and the leading indicator, the covid case rate, remains near highs of last winter. No surprise. So many Mississippians have not, or will not, take the vaccine (41% of those eligible). They are left to the toxic combination of vaccine misinformation and leaders who refuse to lead. There is plenty of fuel left as a result for the virus to continue to burn through Mississippi’s unvaccinated.
A prime factor in Mississippi’s inability to end the repeated covid surges is the refusal of elected leaders to do their duty to act decisively to protect the health, safety, and welfare of all Mississippians from the virus with public sector vaccine mandates. Polls show most Americans support vaccine mandates to get us all out of the pandemic. (Chris Cillizza, CNN, Sept. 20). Mandates are essential especially in Mississippi where getting past vaccine hesitancy remains resistant to any other solution. Yet Mississippi’s elected leadership will not show leadership with public sector vaccine mandates despite the huge effect that could have toward an end to the pandemic here. Forget especially IHL leadership. IHL’s Board formally voted September 17 to ban all state universities from mandating the vaccine for students, the only college board in this country to take such aggressive action against the health of their campuses. IHL took its action on the Motion of lawyer Chip Morgan, a Phil Bryant appointee, even though over 700 colleges and universities nationwide impose vaccine mandates to protect their students and faculty. IHL took its action even though the effect for public health and safety of such mandates would be huge toward an end to the pandemic in Mississippi.
In the absence of public leadership, it is as important as ever for individual Mississippians to take their own initiative to convince friends who are vaccine hold outs to help us end the pandemic. I think it comes down to two ways of persuasion: easier or harder.
The easy way: hope your friend’s private sector employer or college mandates the vaccine, and it becomes difficult for them to enter music venues, restaurants, bars, and gyms without a vaccine card. Then you don’t have to get involved. Your friend’s boss, college or favorite watering hole will smarten them up to get the shot promptly without your having to do a thing.
The harder way: you are left to convince your friend yourself for their own sake along with everyone else’s. I say harder because if they were not convinced in the past six months, will they ever be? Your friend already has had plenty of time to practice reciting the (false) reasons the anti-vaxxers give out on Facebook to avoid the vaccines, or simply not to bother. Long drawn-out arguments though with friends will not do. No one likes tedium. What you need are the quick vaccine arguments that will convince any halfway rational person (as for trying to convince the fully irrational, more about that in a moment).
Here are three quick points you should be prepared to make to your hesitant friend:
Stats: Even after Delta, fully vaccinated people enjoy 5X less chance of Covid infection than the unvaccinated; 10X less chance of hospitalization, and 10X less chance of dying. (Source: CDC Sept. 10). Just remember 5X, 10X and 10X.
Infections: While “fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others”, the amount of virus goes down faster in vaccinated people. Indeed, “vaccinated people will likely spread the virus for less time than unvaccinated people.” (Source: CDC Aug 26). An important reason to become vaccinated after Delta then is vaccination minimizes the risk of infecting others.
FDA: The FDA’s permanent authorization of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine on August 23 ended the debate over the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. Completely. Finished. We, the vaccinated, are not going to argue with the unvaccinated about it anymore. The FDA’s permanent use authorization likewise ended the argument that the vaccines are “experimental”. That debate is over and done. Gone. History. Your friend no longer has even the excuse given by the media to wait “to do your own research”. Not after the FDA and CDC did the research for them and everyone else.
So, you have your three points ready to give your friend: the stats, the need to minimize infections, and the FDA’s authorization. If those three points will not convince them, then they are likely not halfway rational, but fully irrational about the vaccine. Horrified or not you will be left on the sidelines to watch Darwin sort it. The virus will keep finding the next host, at some point finding your friend. Still, it will not be your fault. It is not your fault, after all, we all live in a physical universe even if some of us choose not to believe it.
Let us hope for their sake you can convince your hesitant friend, and we can all in the private sector can convince the other 41% of Mississippians eligible to do so to take the jab. If the easiest means of convincing them does not happen (private employer and venue mandates), or the somewhat harder way (your three reasoned arguments), then tragically your fiend will be left to the hardest means of all: personal observation of what Covid can do to them or someone else unvaccinated they know or care about.
Let us hope also for all our sakes we can convince the other 41%. If we cannot, we have no prospect of ever ending the pandemic in Mississippi. Nor of regaining our collective freedoms of association and travel we all so fondly remember from the safer days of 2019.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
