{"id":21056,"date":"2021-05-19T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=21056"},"modified":"2021-05-26T20:56:20","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T03:56:20","slug":"student-editors-letter-your-vaccination-status-is-none-of-my-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2021\/05\/19\/student-editors-letter-your-vaccination-status-is-none-of-my-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Editor\u2019s Letter: Your vaccination status is none of my business"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a sort of pre-requisite, I feel like I need to say that I\u2019m no anti-vaxxer. Before a trip to the Caribbean a couple of years a go, I got over $1,000 of shots, including a rabies vaccine (a rabid bite is almost surely a death sentence without it). When it came time to make the decision to sign up for my COVID vaccine, I took out a pencil and paper and made a list of pros and cons. Truth be told, there was almost as many cons as there were pros, at least for me.<\/p>\n

And what seems to be forgotten here in the era of \u201cvaxxies\u201d is that vaccination is a personal choice. The lengths that some people, and organizations, go to to make it next to impossible to not be vaccinated needs to stop.<\/p>\n

Camosun\u2019s choice to tell students that vaccine info is their personal and sensitive medical information was the right one, but that message gets a bit foggy viewed next to Camosun\u2019s recent Instagram post showing the college\u2019s vice president of student experience with a vaccine needle in her arm.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Immunization information is personal, argues Nexus<\/em> student editor Adam Marsh in this editor’s letter (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) entering vaccinated students into a contest for prizes leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and the CCSS certainly isn\u2019t the only post-seccondary-related organization doing this.<\/p>\n

People seem to be utterly unquestioning of strangeness when looking at the prospect of normalcy. Vaccination is such an incredibly personal choice and no one should be made to feel that their choice is at all wrong. Do you want to live in a society with mandatory vaccinations? Maybe you do, and by all means, I would be interested to have a conversation with you\u2014one based on science, politics, religion, economics, philosophy, and all the other things that keep the wheels of society turning\u2014to find out more. We need to listen, to communicate kindly, and to listen some more.<\/p>\n

Then we need to listen some more. Because we\u2019ve stopped doing that.<\/p>\n

Just make sure you\u2019ve thought about why you have the beliefs you do. That\u2019s all I ask during this entire flaring, fuming\u2014sometimes ridiculous\u2014debate. It\u2019s a debate that has severed friendships and created tensions in marriages, workplaces, and playgrounds. It\u2019s a debate because vaccines are a choice. It\u2019s a debate because we are all so desperate to get back to normal. But let\u2019s not put each other through the wringer any more than we already have been over the past year and a half.<\/p>\n

Your vaccination status is none of my business, and mine is none of your business. As well-intentioned as most of us are, it feels like that\u2019s been forgotten when friends, colleagues, and institutions shove their choices\u2014on both sides of this argument\u2014in your face for the thousandth time.<\/p>\n

Now, if the reason for institutions and for people doing this is that there are fears that not enough people will be vaccinated, let’s talk about that. There is fear everywhere, and the fear is unprecedented, because social media didn\u2019t exist in the era of the Spanish Flu. How do we scale back that fear? As populations continue to rapidly increase, it makes sense that the occurrence of disease will as well, and what this means for us in the long term remains to be seen. Can our healthcare system handle the next new virus or is it time to start putting serious thought into expanding the system?<\/p>\n

Yes, the vaccine is a vital step in getting back to normal, so if you want to take it, take it.\u00a0Just remember, it\u2019s no one\u2019s business but your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a sort of pre-requisite, I feel like I need to say that I\u2019m no anti-vaxxer. Before a trip to the Caribbean a couple of years a go, I got over $1,000 of shots, including a rabies vaccine (a rabid bite is almost surely a death sentence without it). When it came time to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20731,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21056"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21061,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21056\/revisions\/21061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}