There was a point around a few months ago where it seemed that being vaccinated against COVID-19 was about to become a minimum requirement for holding a good job in America. I started writing a post about this idea, which analyzed it through the lens of various helmet football incidents at the time, but I eventually stepped away from my draft. In my mind, the key point was that being unvaccinated meant a given player was more likely to miss a game - to miss work, in other words - and surely this risk would have some effect when teams were making decisions about signing players. However, I soon concluded that the effect would be almost impossible to identify and essentially abandoned the post. It may have worked out to my benefit - rereading the draft now, I don't see anything in the four paragraphs that I wish I'd posted a year ago.
All that said, I still suspect my idea remains true to some extent. My perspective today is far more cynical than it was a year ago, when I was essentially trying to make a logical extension on current events - if Aaron Rodgers is going to miss one game per year due to COVID, would you prefer having him or a slightly worse quarterback whose vaccinations will rule out such a consideration? The way I see it now is that since America is a country that finds a way to discriminate against anyone for anything at anytime, why would this situation with the vaccines be any different? I suppose I should wait and see before jumping to any definite conclusions, especially given that unforeseen mutations could mean that sometime in the near future the fact of being vaccinated will have no bearing on your likelihood of becoming sick. But if the initial data regarding the benefits of vaccination prove durable over time, then I have no doubt vaccination status - essentially, a way for an employer to factor in someone's risk of missing work - will soon become just another way to silently discriminate against individuals.
I think at some level it's too bad that I feel compelled to write this post. To me, anyone who spends some time with either a healthcare professional or a reliable dataset will overwhelmingly conclude that getting vaccinated is the best decision available to an unvaccinated person. It's also the best decision for someone thinking communally, given the way it lowers the risk of transmission to those who either cannot be vaccinated or who remain at high risk despite getting booster doses. But today's society isn't at the point where everyone always does the best thing, for themselves or for others, so here we are having to accept the situation. I can understand why someone values this decision as a specific expression of freedom. As individuals, we have a responsibility to accept what others choose and we should be careful, very careful, before criticizing choice, or legislating against it.
I'm not interested in telling people what to do, but I think I can offer an idea about what will happen as a result of one choice or another. The way I see it, we're talking about a decision where someone freely chooses to make themselves worse off, not just in terms of health but also finances, and I can't quite understand it. Am I the only one who thinks that ten years from now vaccinated people will be far better off than those who turned down the shots? There are organizations, including mine, where being unvaccinated rules you out from employment, so such a choice eliminates the possibility of pursuing one of the many good careers available in our line of work. The industries that have standards based on commissions or work volume punish you for absence, though perhaps not in a life-changing way, but enough to create some strain if you have shaky finances. If you factor in consequences such as long COVID, then you might be healthy enough for work yet impacted in such a way that it lowers your performance quality, which will surely impact bonuses or promotions. The way I see it, the vaccinations are basically just free money, making you more likely to land a good job or be available for work, so why not just get one and stay on track for that picket fence? I don't feel that doing things just for the money is always a wise strategy, but it does pass for wisdom in this country.
