About a month ago, while in Italy, I went out to dinner with a few friends. We walked down streets filled with people, sitting indoors and outdoors at various bars. A few people had masks on outdoors, but most did not. We put on our masks when we entered the restaurant, and before we were seated the greeter asked us to show our vaccination certificates, either electronic or paper. Once seated, we removed our masks and ate.
The next day was a holiday and the streets were busy. When the crowds got really tight, some people put on their masks, but there was normally no crowding, as people tried to keep a comfortable distance. I went to a museum, where they checked my vaccination status and gave me a time to enter. Once inside, everyone was masked and enjoying themselves.
When I went to see some of my friends in their shops and offices, everyone was masked and had to be vaccinated in order to work. On a trip by high-speed train to another city, everyone had to be vaccinated to board, and had to keep their masks on for the entire journey.
As I opened the paper every morning, there was only an occasional article about people protesting the mask and vaccination mandates. A demonstration opposing the mandates was held in Trieste, but very few people came. The right-wing Trump wannabe who is a member of the coalition government captured headlines opposing the government’s policies, stating that no government could tell him what to do, and he couldn’t be forced to get vaccinated. When the prime minister was asked to comment about this, he called the minister an idiot, and the next day the minister admitted he got vaccinated.
Italy’s is a tranquil, almost normal society, with truly minor intrusions on individual life. The adaptations needed to obtain this occurred because the citizens of Italy accept science, are willing to tolerate minor inconveniences to live a full life, and are concerned about their health and not infecting others. Then I returned to the United States.
I had breakfast at Mom’s in South Egremont, where the town requires that everyone be masked indoors. Two women came in and were politely asked to put on their masks when they weren’t seated. They left, yelling that they were Trump supporters. I thought how comfortable I was in Italy, where all my fellow diners were vaccinated or had recovered from the virus, and political affiliation did not enter into medical science.
The New York Times that morning noted that only two-thirds of Americans are vaccinated (over 80 percent are in Italy), and was full of stories about lawsuits against mandates and whether COVID is real. Republican governors were suing their state’s school boards for requiring masks, and social media is convincing people that the vaccines are being used to control them with computer chips. Normal here is chaos.
Each state and locality has their own rules, often dictated by its majority political party. Heavily Trump counties have a death rate three times that of counties that voted heavily for Biden. People are dying unnecessarily, being sacrificed on the altar of right-wing Trumpian political correctness. Our economy has suffered dramatically from our medical stupidity.
Why can’t we call this civil war off? Science is science. How hard is it to get a few injections over a period of a few months to make sure you, your loved ones, and the rest of us are as safe as we can be. That said, I don’t care if one-third of our population is too stupid or politically-infused with bizarre ideas to do the right thing — it is time to compel those who will not get vaccinated to do so. It is time to do what Italy has done.
For years we have mandated in every state in the Union that our children be vaccinated for polio, measles, and other diseases to go to school. George Washington required his troops to be inoculated against smallpox. If anyone is worried about being vaccinated, they should select any nation in the world and go to any public health agency or reputable hospital website in that country and follow their suggestions about what to do. The advice is the same throughout the world: get vaccinated!
Enough is enough: there is no dispute about what must be done, our country should do it.
