Political Gumbo: Take the Damn Shot and Stop Being Stupid

[UPDATED] Over the past several days, I have spoken to several community members that I have some degree of respect for regarding the COVID-19 vaccine.

The conversations can be lumped into three categories, people who believe they are being tracked by the vaccine, people who believe the virus is harmless and my personal favorite, people who think the whole damn thing is made up to take their rights away.

Let’s start at the top, if you think the government is attempting to track you, I can tell you how to get rid of the tracker.

Open your window and throw your cell phone and credit cards out, they have chips and can be used to track you. There you go – you’re not being tracked any more.

Well back up, donate the money to me before you toss the cards out. You won’t need it, the government can track your spending.

Get rid of your car, it’s being tracked by automatic license plate readers.

Also that pesky Internet connection, it can be used to track you.

The government does not need to tank the economy to do something it can easily already do.

Now go get the damn vaccine. If you think the DNA is messing with your DNA – um yeah, okay.

Second, if you believe the virus is harmless and cannot kill you, I would suggest you take a look at any of the numerous people who once had similar opinions and now regret it.

Why do they regret it, well because they got COVID and it almost killed them.

Here’s one from a Baltimore Sun article, Phil Valentine, a prominent conservative radio host who scoffed at the need to get vaccinated is now on a ventilator and in critical condition. Phil, who once wrote that he was not going to get the vaccine because his chances of dying from the virus were “way less than 1%,” is now hospitalized, attached to a ventilator at night, and to an oxygen mask during the day, so he can breathe.

Then there is H. Scott Apley, H. Scott once posted on Facebook that he wished he lived closer to a “mask burning party.”

H. Scott also he suggested that mask mandates in Germany were akin to Nazism. And when former Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen celebrated good news this spring about the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy, a seemingly outraged Apley called her “an absolute enemy of a free people.”

It’s unknown if H. Scott changed his mind, he died this morning.

Regarding your rights to choose what goes in their body, yeah ask Cocaine dealers if that defense works in court.

You can’t even smoke in a public store.

No shoes, no shirt, no service.

At a private business or your place of employment, many of your rights end at the door.

Your boss has a right to mandate you be vaccinated, drug tested and yes sober, and judging from the phone calls I received, maybe sobriety is the issue here.

Your boss can bar discussion of certain topics at work, control how to dress and when you work.

Yes, you have your rights, but there are limits to your rights and sadly, far too many people seem to be forgetting that.

The vaccine deniers want restaurants and businesses open, but they don’t want to wear the mask.

They want churches open so they can worship, yet they don’t want to follow the simplest commandment, you know loving your neighbor, i.e. protecting the health of the community.

They want kids educated in person, but they don’t follow simple science.

If you won’t take the vaccine for stupidity, which is simple common sense, we won’t get past COVID,

Get the damn shot and wear a mask.

Political Gumbo is an occasional opinion column by Pasadena Now Managing Editor André Coleman