Culling a few Republicans and all Anti-Vaxxers: Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, said the following a couple of days ago:
"The science tells us that vaccines are 95 percent effective. So if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not? I mean, what is it to you?"
Being an academician myself, Johnson’s statement makes perfect sense to me. One of our most trying tasks as university professors is helping librarians remove from our book stacks old and outdated books and manuscripts within our teaching fields. That is to say, we rid some sections of the library of writings whose observations are outdated or have been outstripped by new scientific hypotheses and theories. I bet you donuts to dollars that manuscripts teaching flat-earth theories or medicinal remedies based on the four humours must have been the first to be culled from the current shelves of libraries and were relegated to the shelves of ancient history!
Within the academic world we call the act of removing outdated texts “culling the library,” and a general call goes out to the faculty to help with that thankless task. Some discoveries move fast and furiously, so I help every year.
Therefore, having had the vaccine myself, I see no reason to disagree with Senator Johnson’s insistence not “to care” if a few of my neighbors are anti-vaxxers. Why should it matter to us if some people see “individual freedom” as a concept that supersedes the principle of “the greater good of society”? Isn’t “instant gratification” rather than “long term good” what has defined our North American culture for quite a while?
Senator Johnson’s view may be another way to achieve herd immunity other than trying to vaccinate everyone who doesn’t care. Maybe Johnson is giving us a cogent opportunity to move on with our lives without caring for the fate of others, as he suggests. It may be true that one result of acting on his suggestion may be that some folks will have to be dropped by the wayside, but who should care?
Those of us who have had to labor year in and year out culling outdated information from libraries would have loved to have had self-culling books. Why not self-culling people?
Maybe it is time to heed Senator Johnson’s statement as an opportunity to allow his anti-vaxxer followers to self-cull themselves from our existence. I wonder if he himself has been vaccinated?
By: The Professor