Vaccines: From the Individual to the Collective

Lately I have been thinking back to the months following my son Darío's chemotherapy, when his immune system was still so weak that we could not re-vaccinate him against diseases that most parents do not usually have to worry about: measles, whooping cough, rubella, pneumonia, tetanus. Most concerning of all was chickenpox, because that vaccine contains live viruses that, although weakened, could still cause disease. Given the battered condition of my son’s immune system, we had been clearly warned that such a scenario could be catastrophic.

And sure enough, a boy in our orbit soon came down with chickenpox. He was not vaccinated. I don’t know if his mother will ever understand that her “very personal” decision had literally put Darío’s life at risk, exposing him to an unweakened version of a virus that was benign for her son, but terrifying for mine. The rage I felt when she told me about this “minor incident” is one of the most intense feelings I have ever experienced.

Right now, this rage is welling up inside me once again. New cases of COVID-19 are surging, ICUs are filling up and health workers are suffering through their umpteenth pandemic crisis. And yet, too many vaccine-eligible individuals remain unwilling to accept the obvious: that vaccines prevent hospitalisation and death, reduce infections by a sizable margin and protect the health system from collapse.

New cases of COVID-19 are surging, ICUs are filling up and health workers are suffering through their umpteenth pandemic crisis. And yet, too many vaccine-eligible individuals remain unwilling to accept the obvious

Their arrogance is scandalous: interpreting scientific evidence as their intuition dictates, without any training. But even more galling is the moral dimension of their actions: the lack of solidarity, the extreme individualism, the refusal to look beyond their own navel and consider the real, flesh-and-blood people who will end up becoming infected as a consequence of their actions. Some will die, while many others—along with their families and contacts—will endure the best-case scenario: home confinement.

From what I have read, many of these people are proud of their critical spirit, of their independent thinking, of the fact that they do not allow themselves to be manipulated. For me, however, they belong to the same ethical underworld as crooks, tax evaders and everyone else who couldn’t care less about their fellow human beings.