Mike Wells: In COVID times: What we owe our children

August 6th, 2021 by admin

In the late winter of 2020, we began to feel the full brunt of COVID-19. But through the vision of President Trump, and others, Project Warp Speed brought us the life-saving vaccines months ahead of any projected time estimate. The collective effort of all was a miracle by any standard.

But despite initial broad bipartisan support and the public urging of vaccinated Presidents Trump and Biden to get the vaccine, the percentage of citizens who are getting the vaccine has slowed considerably. Which should be troubling to all of us because our most precious family members, our children and grandchildren, most of whom are not old enough to get vaccinated, are seriously at risk because of exposure to unvaccinated adults. Especially because of the delta variant.

With history as our teacher, the sheer horror of the polio pandemic in the 1950s should show us we are dealing again with a highly contagious virus, with life-and-death consequences. And those times have something important to teach us if we will listen.

When I was a little boy my older sister’s best friend, Janice Kay Litton, contracted polio within weeks before the vaccine was available. She never walked again, and she died an early death.

The physical signs and scars of limp limbs caused by polio of some of my classmates, who contracted polio before the vaccine was generally available, were not unusual growing up. And even though the polio vaccine was highly effective as gauged by experts (90%), much less than today’s vaccines, few people declined to get the vaccine because of any remote downside risks. The death and visible reminders of the devastation of the virus told their own stark story.

It was the right of parents to get the vaccine, or not, then and now. But I bet Dr. and Mrs. Litton would have given everything they had to get the vaccine for themselves and their old-enough child if it been available just a few weeks earlier.

Our children will be headed back to school soon. Millions are too young to get the virus vaccine, and some can and will contract the virus because they are around adults and their old-enough-to-get-vaccinated children. They are not vaccinated because parents mistakenly believe the vaccination is not effective.

And yet the most recent monthly statistic of rising COVID-related deaths in our country reveals that 99% are of people who were not vaccinated. (Only 10 of 1000 of those vaccinated.) Hospitalizations of the unvaccinated are also highly disproportionate versus vaccinated persons.

It is a healthy democracy when we are free to disagree. But when you are not vaccinated, it is clear you expose your too-young-to-get-vaccinated children, and those of others, to the virus. They get sick, and some die, even though they had no choice in the matter. One low-vaccinated-percentage state now has as many minor children contracting the virus as in the 65 and older category.

One family of six was in the news recently. The wife was pregnant. The parents and some of the children got the virus, and the mother was on a ventilator for a long while. She survived, but they lost their unborn child.

When you are on the bad side of the virus, the father said, and you lose a child to it, your attitude changes about the vaccine. He said he and his wife had some doubts about whether the vaccine worked, so they did not get vaccinated. But as others who feel that way in the abstract, what they will never doubt now in the flesh is that the unborn daughter they lost because they were not vaccinated will never take her first steps or meet the love of her life. And the parents will have on their lives’ Ledger of Regret that they could have avoided all of it. Because they had what the Litton’s did not have so long ago: a vaccine they could have driven around the corner and gotten for free.

Please get the vaccine. Let’s not bet the life of a child on a political issue. These children who are not old enough to get the vaccine are so vulnerable. The lives you save are not only your own, but our precious children. All our religious faiths implore us to love the little children of the world. Including our own. Because at more than any time before, it’s about innocent children.

Tags: Law

Posted in: WS Journal Articles