Those Who Refuse COVID-19 Vaccination Deserve Our Thanks

 

Yes, really.

People who have decided not to accept a COVID-19 vaccination have their reasons, and I respect those reasons whether I agree with them or not. There's rational skepticism over the possible side effects of new technology like "messenger RNA" vaccines. There are people who already have immune system problems, or a history of adverse reactions to injections of strange stuff into their bodies. There are people who calculate, correctly or not, that those risks are worse than the risks of the virus itself. And, yes, there are a few dumb-asses with dis-proven or un-provable hypotheses, and some contrarians who won't do anything someone else pushes them to do, whether doing it makes sense or not.

But all of those people are helping humanity beat COVID-19.

The natural evolutionary path of a highly contagious virus that causes disease in humankind (or any other host) looks something like this:

1. At first, the virus cuts through its hosts, whose immune systems are utterly unprepared for a new kind of infection, like a scythe. It kills a lot of people, especially those who already have co-morbidities that an infection can make worse.
2. Then, the virus begins to mutate. Some of these mutations are more deadly or more contagious, some are less deadly or less contagious.
3. The mutations that are more contagious and less deadly are more successful at reproducing. They tend to displace, or even drive to extinction, the less contagious and more deadly mutations. And often, the immune response to one mutation will turn out to be helpful in fending off other mutations.

The "delta variant" of COVID-19 is currently the leading mutation. It's thought to be more contagious than most other mutations. The jury's still out on how deadly it is, but it may well be less deadly than other strains.

All the un-vaccinated people out there are helping it spread. They're moving humanity toward some semblance of "herd immunity" in the same way that vaccinated people are, but they're also helping COVID-19 mutate toward even weaker variants such that at some point the dominant strain of the virus will be of no more general concern than that other family of coronaviruses, "the common cold."