I can’t help thinking that Jon Caldara might have come up with some better analogies to refusing the COVID vaccine than skydiving or riding a motorcycle without a helmet.

First of all, unless I happen to hold stock in the insurance company that insured the dead or critically injured skydiver or helmetless motorcycle rider, that person’s foolishness doesn’t harm me. And second, I have yet to see hospital ICUS overwhelmed because of such large numbers of bikers or skydivers on ventilators or otherwise needing critical care that beds are at a premium and the staff has to consider rationing care.

Last month, when my husband and I were visiting family in southwestern Idaho, the hospitals in Boise were swamped with COVID patients, most of whom hadn’t been vaccinated. The Gazette even had an article about overburdened ICUS from COVID patients that featured photos from one of the two major hospitals in Boise. The hospital personnel either were close to or had arrived at the point where they would have to make unpleasant decisions about who would receive aggressive treatment and who would be allowed to die of whatever brought them to the ICU.

Both my husband and I have been vaccinated against COVID. So the unvaccinated population didn’t present a major risk of infection to us. But fortunately, neither of us, who are both in our eighties, had a heart attack or a stroke or sustained critical trauma while we were in Idaho. If we had, we might have found ourselves being left to die because an unvaccinated 40-year-old stood a better chance of surviving a critical illness on account of his younger age.

At some point, whether we like it or not, the government might have to step in and mandate COVID vaccines for the common good. But in the meantime, we need to make sure that the “Give me liberty or give me death” saying doesn’t become “Give me liberty and give someone else death.” Doris Stanford

Colorado Springs