COVID Roulette

Everybody, I assume, has heard of Russian Roulette , the game you play with a revolver pistol for thrills (in this case the thrill of risking your life).   You need a revolver, a bullet and at least two players (I suppose you can play with one but in that case you might as well load six bullets and get it over with).   You put the bullet in one chamber, spin the cylinder, then the first player puts the barrel to his head and pulls the trigger.  The odds are 1 in 6 that the gun will fire and end his life.  At this point there are two variants of the game … the gun can be passed to the the next player without re-spinning the cylinder, in which case his chances of blowing his head off is 1 in 5.   You can see where this goes … on each turn that the gun doesn’t fire, the odds of the next player dying increases.   OR, the players can spin the cylinder before each turn, in which their odds of dying are the same each time.

I bring this up because it seems to me that many people in this beautiful country of ours are playing COVID Roulette, a game in which you choose not to not be vaccinated, risking illness or death for no good reason at all.   Yes, I know the odds of dying are much smaller than with a bullet and I know that it is your fundamental right as an American to risk your life if you want.   But here’s the thing … unlike Russian Roulette, COVID Roulette risks the lives of others.   What?  You say they can get vaccinated if they want to reduce the risk.   That might be a pretty good argument if it weren’t for the COVID variants you’ve probably been reading about.   Let me talk to you about variants for a moment**.

As viruses reproduce, they sometimes don’t do so perfectly … there are very occasionally small deviations in their genetic structure.  These variations are completely random but they change the characteristic of the virus.  A variation may have no effect or it may make it weaker or stronger or more contagious or less so.  Or more or less resistant to vaccines.  Changes in genetic structure occur only once in millions of virus replications, and because the changes are random, it is very unlikely that any change will make the virus stronger … unless there are millions and millions of replications, as occurred when the virus ran rampant during the pandemic.   The Delta variant is the result of a random genetic change that happens to make COVID more contagious, hence it has become the dominant strain.  The danger of another major surge such as the one that seems to be building among the unvaccinated is that it can potentially provide billions of virus replications and the resulting genetic variations.   The larger the number of cases, the higher the odds of a variant that makes the virus more dangerous … more contagious, more resistant to vaccines or even greater damage to the human body.

This country has a history of coming together against outside threats.  If COVID was an invading army instead of a mindless and microscopic organism, I have no doubt we’d do what it takes to protect our nation.  Flying a flag doesn’t make one a patriot … nor does voting Democratic or Republican.  Sometimes being a patriot requires putting aside our cherished individualism and doing what it takes … together … to stop a threat.   I have absolutely no doubt that getting vaccinated is what it takes right now.  Please, vaccinate.

** If you want a more scientific explanation, look here.

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Tags: COVID-19, patriotism, perspectives, senior health

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