Alex Kent: Columnists points about unvaccinated are easily refuted

Guest columnist James Boddy’s plea for tolerance of unvaccinated individuals (“We dismiss freedom of choice at our peril,” Feb. 2) is easily refuted.

With the exception of the very small number of people who are unable to receive vaccination for health reasons, those who refuse vaccination simply as a matter of personal preference violate the first principle of liberty: one individual’s liberty must not violate any other individual’s liberty.

As I have said on this page before, if refusal of vaccination had negative consequences solely for the unvaccinated, that would be one thing. In fact, however, the overwhelming majority of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID at this point in the pandemic are among the unvaccinated. Thus, people who are exercising freedom of choice by refusing vaccination are placing an enormous burden on the health care system such that hospitals and health care workers are overwhelmed.

Mr. Boddy also sets up a false and offensive equivalence between vaccination refusers and communists and Mormons. Individuals have every right to subscribe to beliefs that are at variance with our own. Another’s belief in communism or Mormonism does not adversely affect me and is not my concern. But if people who have refused vaccination are occupying beds in emergency rooms and ICUs, imperiling my ability to get treatment if I am injured or sick, that very much does concern me.

Alex Kent

Amherst