"We're Just Haggling Over the Price."

I think you know this joke, but on the off chance you don't, I'm going to tell it to you.  A well-dressed and distinguished-looking man walks into a bar, and he sees a gorgeous woman at the drinks counter.  He approaches her, takes a good look ("up and down"), and asks her if she'd be willing to have sex with him for $1M.  She takes the same look back at him, and says she would.  He then asks her if she'd be willing to have sex with him for $20.  She's taken aback, and glares at him, asking self-righteously "what kind of woman do you think I am?!"  He replies, "oh, we've already established that.  We're just haggling over the price."

There's frankly a population of people in this country who resist getting vaccinated against the coronavirus.  And they have all kinds of excuses, sometimes reducing to the frankly psychotic, like that the vaccine is a government plot to inject into them liquified "chips" by which they can be tracked.  Or some nonsense.

The coronavirus has been a huge and disruptive, not to mention destructive, worldwide problem, and most of the world is doing what it can to contain this pandemic.  We've relied on isolation, social distancing, and wearing even nothing more complicated than cloth masks.  But finally, there was the development of vaccines.  To date, there are about four of them.  And they're mostly very effective, except for the people who tell themselves they can construct reasons not to take these vaccines.  These people represent some danger to everyone else, and they represent a considerable danger to themselves.

In this country, focused as we are on what interests us, various jurisdictions have devised incentives for people who resisted getting vaccinated, so that they'll go forward with it.  The big prize that's come to my attention is $1M, given out on a lottery basis to the "winner" of a population of people who agreed to get themselves vaccinated.  Smaller prizes include things as mundane and unimpressive as beer.  (Do you remember when you were a kid, and your prize for visiting the dentist was a small plastic toy?  Yeah, kind of like that.  But apparently, that does it for some people.)

So the question is, if you would get vaccinated for a chance at $1M, or for some beer, why wouldn't you just get vaccinated?  Do you think you're not that kind of woman?

Getting vaccinated against the coronavirus is a really good idea.  Even if you don't care about anyone else, you should care enough about yourself to take advantage of this protection.