My Hour of Vaccination & Voting

 

Within the past hour, I got vaccinated and then I voted.

After work, I stopped off at the CVS in my neighborhood and received my second Moderna booster. Last March, the CDC recommended that all adults 50 and over receive a second booster. As those of you familiar with the space are aware I turned 50 back in September so this was very much on my mind. While I'm sure some mild side effects will follow, I am glad I got this done.

I must confess that I did not intend to vote in this election. There are political factors at play in Massachusetts than there are in Georgia as was the case when I voted for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the Senate runoff vote in January 2021. Their election was the difference in attaining additional stimulus relief, vaccinations, infrastructure spending as well as funding for climate change and health care subsidies, the appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, stronger gun control measures and student loan relief. These are good things and unfortunately the country appears on the verge of not wanting good things. 

Whatever the case, Massachusetts is one of the few places which is reliably progressive and in the grand scheme of things my vote is less likely to make a difference. But with the democracy and Democratic blues I have been feeling, I concluded in the minutes after obtaining my vaccination that I had to least make some modest contribution to our polity. If nothing else I can revive the Nixon era slogan, "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts".

Now one can make the case that by connecting vaccination to voting that I am turning vaccination into a political act. I reject this argument out of hand because those who oppose vaccinations are the ones who turned into a matter of political identity rather than a public good. I am old enough to remember when scarcely anyone questioned the merits of vaccination as there were still a good many people who remember iron lungs. There were a few people who didn't get vaccinated on religious grounds, but they kept it in the religious sphere.

To the extent that vaccination and voting have anything in common is that they are a public good which benefits a large number of people regardless of their station in society. In other words, I get vaccinated and I vote just as much for the other person as I do for myself. I don't wish other people to suffer. 

Of course, not everyone thinks in this way. Indeed a great many people do not look at the world beyond themselves and their families, if even that. Yet I am equally sure that I am not alone in my outlook in that a jab of a needle and the stroke of a pen can do a great deal of good even if you don't get everything you want.