That is indeed the question, and against all urging and advice, a fair number of Americans are saying ‘not’; for valid and wholly understandable reasons, after having made a carefully considered decision. Such be the case of the Daughter Unit and I. The Daughter Unit spent most of last year being pregnant and did not want to risk anything that would possibly damage Wee Jamie in utero. Her medical team did not do anything more than make a pro forma suggestion; that they did not mention it after she declined likely hints at their own doubts about the safety. We both had to get yearly flu shots when we were on active military duty, and honestly, I would routinely get sicker from the shot than I usually did from the flu itself. Towards the end of my active-duty time there was a great push to get all active duty to be vaccinated against anthrax, and I was in two minds over having to get that vaccine, before my retirement rendered the point moot. I remembered very well how so many of those deployed for the first Gulf War later developed serious health problems, problems that it was speculated, might have been because of the array of vaccinations they were given, in combination with exposure to various environmental hazards and contaminants. (I’ve always thought that the Gulf War Syndrome was a kind of multiple chemical sensitivity/allergy, caused by exposure to a range of triggering compounds or combinations, to which some people were more vulnerable than others. Not a medical or sciency-person; just my own opinion from what I have read and knowing veterans who were affected by deployment in that war. But that’s a whole ‘nother rabbit hole.) To get to the point, it was not entirely unknown for reluctant military personnel to be ordered to take vaccines, over their own doubts and objections.

Just this week, the Daughter Unit received a form letter from the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, addressed to Dear Veteran:

Thank you for your service to our Nation. Your commitment to our country’s long legacy of service has protected us, and our Nation owes you a debt of gratitude we can never repay.

We must once again ask you to volunteer to serve. COVID-19 has affected all of us in unique ways. We have lost far too many former brothers and sisters in arms, family members and friends over the last year. It is time for this pandemic to be over, and I ask for your help in protecting this Nation and completing the last part of this journey. Our greatest hope in defeating this deadly virus is for each of us to get vaccinated as soon as possible…” (Letter continues for another four paragraphs in this vein. Totally calculated to play “My Country Tis of Thee” on the patriotic heartstrings. Yes, the VA – which as the current meme has it, “Offering veterans one more chance to die for their country.)

After my retirement from active duty, I declined the yearly flu shot, and only caught the flu twice in 22 years, a circumstance which leads me to believe that the offered vaccines were not all that effective and that I had a fairly robust immune system. The worst case was something that sidelined the Daughter Unit and I for almost a week, late in 2019, a crud that matches many of the reported Commie Crud symptoms. I’m certain in my own mind that we had it already. We’ve never been sick since, in spite of not being particularly assiduous in mask-wearing, hand-sanitizing, or social-distancing. One way and another, we both have decided that we have developed or always had natural immunity. So, why risk a bad reaction to the Crud vaccination? Pretty pointless, and that’s our decision.

The inescapable fact remains that the whole vaccination project for COVID-19, or as I call it, the Commie Crud, was rushed and even experimental, in the face of what was claimed by practically everyone in authority and in the establishment media to be as horrific an epidemic as the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Some of the first reports that the Daughter Unit and I tracked were enough to give us concern, and an excellent reason to quietly add to our stock of over the counter flu and cold remedies, bleach, sanitizer, handiwipes, and yes – masks – very early in 2020. The reports out of China, with people dropping in the streets, overcrowded hospitals and crematoria going night and day were a reason for worry on our part. But somehow, as spring turned into summer, the Wuhan Flu/ COVID-19/Commie Crud never quite delivered on the promised horrors in the United States, for all that certain big-city mayors and blue-state governors with a taste for draconian control over citizens confidently expected. No mass graves, no funeral homes overwhelmed with bodies, no regular hospitals swamped with the sick and dying; nothing like that happened at all, in spite of every hysterical prediction in the mainstream media, once they discovered the existence of the Commie Crud. Nothing on that scale ever happened in the United States, not even in super-congested New York, where a US Navy hospital ship came and went without treating a handful of patients, and emergency wards set up in public places stood empty, awaiting a flood which never materialized. If the Wuhan Flu/Commie Crud had turned out to be all that the mainstream media had predicted, everyone would know first-hand someone who had died of it, possibly even more than just one. Every single family would be grieving, whole communities and congregations would be practically extinguished – just as happened in 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

The Wuhan Flu/Commie Crud turned out to be a damp squib in comparison. For all that the local Texas Public Radio medical/scientific reporter and practically everyone else hyperventilates about the dangers posed by the Commie Crud ‘Delta’ variant … nothing much is happening. No mass graves, no overwhelmed hospitals. Most people who caught it barely noticed. So … why the all-hands-to-the battle-stations push for everyone to get vaccinated, and after you are, to still wear the face diaper? What gives? Any speculation at all?