The drive we made from Norwalk, Connecticut to Patagonia, Arizona, a month ago was very different from the one last June in the opposite direction. The people we met along those 2500 miles were taking the pandemic more seriously, obeying mask requirements posted on the doors of most restaurants, convenience stores, and gas stations, maintaining social distancing in lines — or at least attempting to. One exception was the incongruously named Liberal, Kansas (Home of the Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy), where red-blooded Americans seemed to make a point of going about bare-faced while siting or standing shoulder to shoulder. But the most noticeable distinction between the two trips was the mood; it was more relaxed almost everywhere, happier, with a return to normality glimmering on the horizon. Tens of millions had received jabs in their arms. Herd immunity now a realistic hope rather than a fantasy. Contributing, non-medically, to my own upbeat spirits was the blessed absence of deranged tweets blasting from the White House.

Not that all is well in the land of the free where very little is free. Far from it. The lead story in last Sunday’s Arizona Daily Star was headlined, “VACCINE TEMPO TAILING OFF HERE.” The gist of the article was that as the pace of vaccinations slows and the spread of a more contagious variant accelerates, herd immunity is getting harder to reach, and may never be reached. That is, the aforementioned hope might not be realistic.

Ideally, according to Arizona State University researchers quoted in the story, policy-makers should keep interventions like mask wearing and limited capacity in crowded bars, nightclubs, and restaurants in force until infection rates slow to below the virus’s effective reproduction level. But that’s not happening in Arizona. Governor Doug Ducey (who seems to be in a race with Florida governor Ron DeSantis as the anointed heir to the Trump crown) has lifted every single mitigation measure except for vaccinations. However, a lot of people have decided not to get their shots. I know of three in this small town of 900 — an elderly woman, a middle-age woman, and a young woman. I don’t doubt I could find a few men as well if I conducted my own personal survey. So why the reluctance to get jabbed? Elderly woman (89) said, “Oh, no, I’ve read about what’s in those vaccines and I’m not letting that into my body.” She would not, or could not, tell me what the toxic substance was, nor where she’d read about it. I suspect the Internet, font of most mis and disinformation. I learned about the middle-age woman (44) from her husband, who also told me about the young woman, his 22-year-old daughter. The former is refusing the vaccines because she is a libertarian, while the daughter rejects them because they cause infertility. I’d never heard that one,  so I researched it, and….

IT’S FALSE! Another myth super spread by social media. It was started in a letter to the European Medicines Agency (the equivalent of the U.S Food and Drug Administration) written by two antivaxxer propagandists. For details, click on: https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/25/infertility-myth-covid-19-vaccines-pregnancy/.

I’d argued with my older son, who also has declined to bare his arm, that he owed it not only to himself and his own health but to his fellow citizens and their health to get the vaccine. I might as well have been speaking to a rock, and I assume I would get the same reaction from the three women.  I don’t know how widespread opposition to the shots has become. The Star article suggests that it’s significant in this state. Do a little extrapolation and you’ll probably come up with hundred of thousands nationwide. We live in an age of extreme individualism. Whether it’s the right to own military assault rifles, the right to have as many abortions as you wish for any reason you wish, or the right to imperil public health, it’s all about you.