Leading Them to Water

This is Ellie. 

After a brief visit outside in the Georgia heat, she came in panting.  I thought, "This dog needs some water."

So, I called her over to where the dog's water bowl is.  She stares at it for a minute, looks at me, and then walks away.

What's the saying?  You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink?

Don't worry.  Ellie is fine.  She eventually drank water, on her own time and impulse.

Not so in some cases. Sometimes there are dire consequences in refusing to drink the water.

And such as it is with the unvaccinated.

It doesn't matter how easy the access to vaccination is.  They will refuse to follow the path.

It doesn't matter how you talk to them.  You can be persuasive.  You can be friendly.  You can appeal to them based on your friendship and love for them.  They will listen to other, darker voices from their highly filtered and conspiratorial news sources and highly stacked social media feeds.

And sadly, it doesn't seem to matter that, in many sections of the country where the vaccination rates are low, cases are surging again.  That 99%+ of the hospitalizations and deaths are of the unvaccinated. For them, personal liberty trumps social responsibility.

Yes, Biden is President, and he bears responsibility for resolving this crisis and leading us out of this mess.  Our rollout of the vaccine has been among the best in the world.  Finally, we're number one at something again! His COVID bill has focused big dollars on vaccination and support for the medical community. Unfortunately, it has shored up weaknesses in our economic system.

But in the end, Biden and for those of us who care, we can lead people to the vaccine, but we cannot make them take it.

And that puts all at risk, as the virus continues to spread, and unchecked variants take over, variants that are more communicable and deadly.  Variants that may eventually break through the vaccine barrier.

We are in a race between vaccination and variants.  And if we don't achieve herd immunity through vaccination, we are going to lose that race.

I'll end with a plea that if anyone has successfully led someone to the vaccine and persuaded them to take it, please share your story and tell us how you did it.  We all need a little bit of hope right now.