“Conformity is a cage that confines our ability to think. It is a cage that hinders growth and deters individualism.”

— Yahya Mohamed

“People’s minds are changed through observation, and not through argument.”

–Will Rogers

Do you remember? A Covid vaccine was to be rolled out, we would all opt to get it, and the pandemic would be over. Not so fast, my friends.

Americans are individualists. It’s in our nature. After all, our country was created as a result of our founders’ refusal to live under King George III’s onerous rules.

We pride ourselves on going our own way, making it via our grit and determination, and beating the odds. Think Amelia Earhart, or maybe John Wayne.

Then, something comes along that stumps us, or even stops us dead in our tracks. There was the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and 9/11.

Now this…the “elephant” in the room: Covid 19. Even typing it brings a nasty taste to my mouth.

As a physician, I respected its potential for catastrophe and honored the government’s advice. Of course, I knew it would fizzle out when the summer of 2020 came.

Of course, I was wrong. A virologist or epidemiologist I am not.

Why were we then surprised when Covid 19 became politicized? It seems everything worthy of national media attention has that fate today.

Even physicians in national positions were thrown into the deep end of the political pool, with predictable results: poor messaging, mixed signals, and overstepping of their bounds of knowledge, all resulting in distrust by the American people.

Remember, these are physicians who we affectionately refer to as “lab rats.” They live in a world of petri dishes, microscopes, and sterile chambers in laboratories. Their work is vital, but they don’t take care of actual patients.

Their views and recommendations were based on science–at least, as they interpreted it–but they seemed unable to consider the real-world consequences of their edicts: the emotional, educational, and financial toll demanded of ordinary Americans.

In part, I suspect, not everyone bought in on the safety and necessity of the vaccine due to messaging from both sides of the political aisle.

Without getting into my personal opinion on vaccines, I’ll just say I spent thirty-eight years in my career persuading parents of my patients of the importance of vaccines.

I’ve seen vaccines developed for diseases that early in my career almost routinely killed patients for whom I cared. Those diseases have now all but disappeared.

This is not the place for evangelizing on all things Covid. If interested in that discussion, please email or call me. But, allow me one point…

…as a children’s advocate for all of my career, I must say this: to relegate our children to remote learning, or in-person learning with masks, is just plain wrong. Students are voiceless pawns in a game played by teachers unions and government officials. These people should, and I believe do, know better. Shame on them all.

Back to my point: conformity doesn’t work—at least not in a free and democratic country. The more we insist on it, the more pushback we’ll get–especially when shaming, and a president speaking to American citizens as though he were a father speaking to little children, are the techniques routinely employed.

Each new strain of the virus causes some anti-vaxxers to submit to the vaccine, but the number of new vaccine recipients is dwindling. No amount of coercion and no government mandate will change that fact.

Most people now hospitalized or dying are unvaccinated. There are personal and societal prices to pay for that choice. But why are we so hatefully divided?

There are personal and societal prices to pay for many behaviors: over-eating to obesity, smoking, drinking, and driving after drinking, to name a few. But we don’t write editorials and blogs, or cancel holiday and family get-togethers, over them.

The answer: politicalization of the virus, its management, and our national vaccine policy, or lack thereof. One party used it against the other, and then, when the party in power changed, the message also changed.

The result: many people see right through the duplicity, but some people get confused, become frightened, and then allow the government to control their behavior.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. I do, however, have an optimistic opinion on one thing: as the virus mutates, its virulence weakens. We’re seeing this with Omicron.

The day prior to the final iteration of this post, there were over a million positive tests recorded. The vast majority of these folks will be either asymptomatic or suffer relatively mild symptoms. And that is good news.

I believe we’re on our way to Covid 19 becoming endemic, not pandemic. Yes, some people will still get sick, and some will get very sick and die. This is also true for influenza and other lower respiratory tract infections–tragic, but we’ve always lived with such threats.

We just have to learn to live with Covid, too, and accept some degree of risk. That’s called life in the real world.

It’s high time to get back to that world.