There I was, lost in thought, as I sat outside on a perfect summer’s day last week, when suddenly the voice of an old friend popped into my head. And just then my phone rang. Has that ever happened to you? You think of someone you haven’t heard from for a while and then minutes later they call you?
Rod, wow, I said, I was just thinking about you. What’s happening? Of course, he’s working on a new episode for his series, the “Twilight Zone,” and wanted my help to nail down the scare factor. OK, I told him. So, what’s the plot?
You remember that show we did last year about a pandemic that swept the world? Well, this show will take the viewer back to that country I called Waymore, but 18 months into the future. But, Rod, I said, by then everything will be back to normal. Why a show about that? Well, he responded, I’m thinking of a story where the virus is not yet under control, even though there are new vaccines to fight it. And despite what scientists tell them about the vaccines’ safety, a large segment of the population is swayed by the lies being told by certain authoritarian-leaning people in politics and the media, and they refuse to get the vaccine. Not only that, they refuse to wear a simple mask to protect themselves and others from spreading the disease.
I started to get the plot angle at that point. Seemed very scary, though unlikely. I mean, if there’s a vaccine that actually works, is readily available, and there’s proof that it’s safe, why wouldn’t people get the shot? Rod told me then that there’s more to his story. It turns out that there are so many unvaccinated people, the virus takes advantage and mutates into ever more transmissible and dangerous variants.
Let me guess where you’re taking this story next, I said to Rod. I bet that in Waymore, there are fairly large pockets of unvaccinated people, and a new variant is running through them like a hurricane. Am I right? Yes, he said. Take one particular state, let’s call it, hmmm, Diflora. In that state, the governor and legislature have passed laws that prevent their local cities and counties from passing their own mask mandates or shutdowns to control the surges of the infection they are experiencing. Hospitals are filling to capacity with the unvaccinated, but the governor refuses to respond in any way, except to cast blame on others for the huge increase in infections. It’s just some seasonal increase, he says.
Rod, where did you find this truly insensitive, callus, ignorant character for the governor, I asked. Oh, he said, there was this other episode about Waymore which was led by a character very much like this guy. Do you remember that one? Oh, yeah, that other guy. Who could possibly forget him?
Being reminded of the other guy just served to push me further into this new episode and I found myself overtaken with horror. You mean people are dying because they refused to be vaccinated? Yes, Rod told me. And to add to the alarm, Rod has Diflora’s governor declare that when schools open in the next month, the administrators cannot mandate that everyone wear a mask. He has the governor threaten to cut a school’s funding if they act against his wishes to protect their students and staff.
What is this with mask wearing, I asked Rod? It’s just a piece of cloth or paper, annoying, sure, but worth that small bit of annoyance. It protects a person from getting or spreading the virus. That’s when Rod explained to me that it’s all about freedom. People in this story have been convinced that individual freedom is the most important thing there is in life, and if that results in their own suffering or even death, or that of other people, well that’s just too darn bad.
But here’s an interesting part of the story, Rod said then — as the unvaccinated freedom-believers become infected and end up dying in the ICU, some express, at the very end, their sorrow and regret for not getting the vaccine. Of course, some others refuse to even believe they have the virus because that was fake as well. But they die just the same.
This is certainly a very Twilight Zone-y story, I told Rod. Here’s a deadly virus for which there are very good, safe vaccines, free and available to all. That virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people in your made-up country and sickened many more. Getting vaccinated and wearing a simple mask would save many more lives. But the people in your world refuse to get the shot or wear the mask?
Rod, I said, I think you have achieved your goal with this episode, this world of yours has given me the creeps. Thank goodness this could never happen outside your crazy head; people in the real world would think of others as well as themselves and would line up for the vaccine. And they would all wear masks for as long as required.
That’s the world we live in, right?
Karen Gardner, of Haydenville, can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com