Past Pretty Please

One exception to the striped New York State rule is an ecdysiast who used to live in my park in central New York.  In early 2020, I noticed that she had a Biden-Harris lawn sign on her lot.  Downstate skews democrat and leftish.  Upstate skews Republican.  This resident was a small blue island in a red sea.  But then again, she was exceptional in many ways.  She had a tiny pop-up camper, a Volkswagon beetle, an email address that that read, Johnnalovesboys@whgq.com, and a string of men who paid her lot rent for her. 

In the course of running my parks, I often find myself engaging with people with political ideas unlike mine.  Generally, this is a good thing.  It gets me out of my echo chamber.  Even though we are polarized, we are still one country, and we have to engage with each other if we are going to run it together.  The best answer to hateful or ignorant speech is not insults or repression; it is more speech.  It may take some time, but in the end, logic, reason and data should overcome irrationality as water wears away stone.

But I find that I have to dig deep when I deal with vaccine skeptics.

Here are some responses I have received to my question, “Have you gotten vaccinated” on a recent visit to the parks:

“Vaccines are chemicals.  Since chemicals cause harm, I will not put them in my body.”

“I prefer not to talk about issues of private health.”

“I don’t take vaccines!  You know why?  Because they don’t work!”

The first of these is from Dee Dee, the manager at my park in central New York.  The second is from a guy who works for the water department of the town where my northern New York park is located.  The third is from a middle-aged guy who lives in that park and works in nursing homes.

At first, I lost my temper, but after the second or third person told me that they refused to get vaccinated, I just grabbed my ankles and tried to enjoy it.  First come denial and anger.  Capitulation comes later.  I don’t think acceptance is in the cards.

Dee Dee is smart, good with people, hard-working, and endowed with good judgment.  She recently asked me for a LinkedIn reference.  I wrote something like, “Dee Dee has managed my property for eight years.  If she were to leave, all of the common sense would be sucked out of that piece of land”.  I am genuinely lucky to have her manage that park.  Her weaknesses are that she is too nice to people and she subscribes to a bunch of crazy theories about wellness.  My attitude to the latter is usually that, if it makes her happy, it’s fine so long as she doesn’t talk about it too much, but her freedom stops where my nose starts.

I asked her if she had been vaccinated.  She said, “No”.  Our conversation went something like this –

“Get vaccinated.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think about it.  Do it.”

“But –“

“Stop.  It’s selfish for you not to do so.”

“But –“

“I love you to death, but you have your head up your ass.”

“But-“

“It’s not your choice.  It’s my health.”

“But-“

“You want polio?  We never would have eradicated polio if you wing-nuts were around then!  What about smallpox?  What about MMR?”

By this time, I was shouting.  It was not my finest moment as a manager, but I was angry that she put our residents’ safety at risk.

“Will I get fired if I don’t get vaccinated?”

That made me pause.  She has some crazy ideas, but she has a great track record, and I need a manager.

“No, but new residents need to show proof of vaccination to move in.”

In her day job, Dee Dee works for a non-profit that helps special needs kids.  She hangs out with them, shows them how to interact with people, and shuttles them between school and doctor appointments.  For much of this time, she is in an enclosed space with them.  That is the ideal environment for aerosol transmission.  By refusing to get the shot, she puts some of the most vulnerable people in the county at risk.  I wish that I could do more about this than lose my temper or shake my head.  In a better world, the government would mandate that everyone who does not have a medical reason not to get the shot get vaccinated.  But this world is flawed.

In The Third Policeman, one of the cops advises the narrator not to ride bicycles too much.  Because of atomic theory, you see, your atoms become part of the bicycle, and the bicycle’s atoms become part of you.  There are people wandering around the county who are more than fifty percent bicycle, and vice versa:

‘The behaviour of a bicycle that has a high content of humanity’, he said, ‘is very cunning and entirely remarkable.  You never see them moving by themselves but you meet them in the least accountable places unexpectedly.  Did you ever see a bicycle leaning against the dresser of a warm kitchen when it is pouring outside?’

‘I did.’

‘Not far away from the fire?’

‘Yes.’

Near enough to the family to hear the conversation?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not a thousand miles away from where they keep the eatables?’

‘I did not notice that.  Do you mean to say that these bicycles eat food?’

‘They were never seen doing it, nobody ever caught them with a mouthful of steak.  All I know is that the food disappears.’

I would reproduce the rest, but that would raise copyright issues.  Readers can buy the book at dalkeyarchive.com.  In the story the narrator is in hell, being punished for a murder, although until the end of the book, he thinks he is in a police station in rural Ireland.  Living anti-vaxxers don’t have that excuse.  How do you engage with people who make statements that are not right and not even wrong?  We don’t have eternity to figure it out.  There’s a COVID-inspired eviction moratorium on.  People are getting sick and dying.  The clock is ticking.