A friend received an email from his favorite golf course. It announced that proof-of-currently-boosted-covid-19-vaccination will be required of golfers in 2022.
“Can you believe this %$#@!?” he wrote. “It’s tyranny!”
I sympathized but also noticed what he didn’t say: “I’ll never golf there again.”
He didn’t say it because he will golf there again. He loves that course. It’s three minutes from his house. His friends are there, it’s inexpensive, and at the club house they call him by name. He recently had a Pfizer booster, and in all probability he already has an app on his phone to prove it.
Speaking of phones, another friend confessed how embarrassed she felt fumbling with her iPhone to enter a restaurant. “You could have left,” I said quietly.
“You have no idea,” she riposted, “how bad things are here. You can’t go to any restaurants without proving you’re vaccinated.”
There’s only a tiny minority who are really determined to defy vaccine mandates. I can’t tell how many—perhaps 1 out 50 here in New Hampshire?
There’s an opposite group, likely bigger, who are terrified of covid-19 and strident, aching for scapegoats, and truly committed to enforcing vaccine mandates and mask mandates and distancing rules and remote learning and rapid-testing and involuntary-quarantining and heaven-knows-what-else for this and all future diseases forever.
The bulk of us are in the middle. Some are mildly supportive of the extra rules, and some are mildly opposed. We don’t like undergoing the medical equivalent of a credit check every time we enter a business, but we do want to enter. Complain to a friend about vaccine passports?—Sure. Sign an online petition?—Maybe. Vote in a local election to recall the neighborhood busybody?—Probably not. Pass up golf or Thai food?—Never.
How many us would need to oppose vaccine mandates in order to shut down this silly-yet-sinister collecting and storing and scrutinizing of all our personal risk factors?
Not many, I think.
What would happen if just 10% of a restaurant’s patrons politely turned around and walked out? If just one out of ten golfers didn’t renew their memberships in 2022? If one tenth of the movie-watchers, hotel guests, students, cruise-passengers, churchgoers, or employees, said, “No, thank you. I’ll find someplace that respects my privacy a little better.” What would happen?
Camille and I are hardly revolutionaries, but we confront vaccine passports in little ways.
We buy groceries 50 minutes away from our mandate-heavy, Ivy League town. It’s tiresome to shop infrequently and far away, although the lower prices make up for the extra gas.
When we go out to eat, we choose a diner where there’s no visible hint of a pandemic.
After the local kitchen and bath store introduced a slew of covid-19 mandates, we canceled our order and told them why, although switching to a competitor delayed our repair.
We usually stay away from corporate chains where covid-19 policy has been dictated company-wide.
Generally we avoid wealthier, white-collar neighborhoods. The covid-obsessed mindset is mostly a high-end fashion. People who have to work on-site and with their hands are more accustomed both to risk and to ideas unlike their own.
If just one out of ten of us shunned businesses that enforce covid-19 mandates, what would happen?
No business accepts a 10% revenue drop: they would flip overnight! Soon the local governments would hear from the chambers of commerce, and the municipal mandates would disappear. Imagine that several Fortune 500 CEOs were to tell the president tomorrow: “This just isn’t working. We’re losing too many people.” There would be a volte-face on vaccine fiats.
Just a little would be enough. If my golf-addicted buddy were to show his proof-of-covid-vaccination only at the golf course, but not at the grocery store, movie theater, or bar—if he canceled the cruise reservation and the winery tour—even that might be enough.
But the more accustomed we get to showing our papers, the less likely we are to resist at all.
“Tyranny,” he called it. We can see it coming, and we’re inclined to fight it.
But will we give up our tee times?
Well thought out. My husband and I are both in our early 70’s . We absolutely refuse to shop, etc any place that requires masks or vaccines proof. It is time for people to stand up and say NO MORE !
Kudos, Michael! Excellent piece….very well said👍😘