Jesus and Uncle Sam Agree: They Want You to Get Vaccinated

Images adapted from U.S. Library of Congress (left) and photo by Arturo Rey (right), courtesy of Unsplash

Not long ago, it felt like life was returning to normal. By late May of 2021, half of all Americans had been at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19, and the Biden administration’s push to make several safe and highly effective vaccines widely available looked like a stunning success. But then two very bad things happened.

The first bad thing is that the virus evolved. It mutated into a different strain that is much more contagious than the original version. This is the case because many, many more copies of the delta version of the COVID-19 virus hang out in the noses and throats of infected people. And when such delta-infected people talk, sneeze, or just breathe heavily, many more live viruses make it into the air and onto other people. In fact, the CDC reports that the delta variant is not just more infectious than the original COVID-19 virus. It is more infectious than the common cold and more infectious than chicken pox. The new variant is also more likely than the old one to infect children, who were relatively hard to infect with the original, wimpier version of the virus.

If Americans had all rushed to get the free vaccines that the U.S. government so quickly made available, this distressing development wouldn’t be such a disaster. This is because the vaccines that have been widely distributed in the…