Vaccinations, Science and Regret
Ohio’s Covid-19 vaccination rollout has left a lot to be desired. Mike DeWine and our state government have created a system of winners and losers all across the state. When considering vaccinating teachers, DeWine and the State Health Department seemed to just pick schools randomly without giving any sort of criteria or rubric that explained which schools get the vaccinations first and which do not. In the Greater Cincinnati Area, this created quite of bit of hostility between teachers of districts who were not first in line to get their vaccine. Some schools and school districts had to wait 1-2 weeks longer to get the vaccine than others. Many teachers who had been teaching in-person were snubbed while some school districts that were teaching entirely remotely were first in line. Personally, I was one of the Covid-19 vaccine “winners” and it all had to do with politics. The Superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools lobbied DeWine, publicly and privately, to ensure CPS was one of the first districts to receive the Covid-19 vaccine and it worked. Fast forward a month and DeWine is livid that Walnut Hills High School, a school with over 3,000 students, still has no plan to return to in-person learning; but alas, DeWine will have to suck it up and get over it since those students can’t maintain social distancing standards due to their large class sizes. He’s all about local control of schools by elected school board members until it doesn’t fit his agenda.
On February 20th, 2021 I was one of the lucky ones who received my second Covid-19 vaccine and am now fully vaccinated. For those that are good at math, I am one of the lucky 17% of Ohioans that have been vaccinated to prevent the spread of Covid-19. I feel a bit guilty knowing that somehow, I was able to beat out 83% of Ohioans just because I picked teaching as a profession. I worked from home for months, teaching out of the safety of my own home while countless others who work in service industries have been religiously going to work in-person day in and day out. And yet there is still no plan for the workers who work in restaurants, banks, factories and warehouses or any other service industry job. These workers are the ones who have been left behind by DeWine. I have a strong feeling that if those lunatics at the State House hadn’t ran Amy Acton out of a job, the vaccine rollout would’ve been much more logical and structured. Lucky for us, it appears we may have the possibility of casting a vote for Amy Acton in the near future since she’s eying a run for the Senate in 2022. It would be exciting to have a pro-science, pro-public health candidate running for the Senate that would pummel swamp creatures like Josh Mandel.
Recently, I have prided myself on being pro-science and looking at issues of public health through the lens of science and not through the lens of emotion. But I am ashamed to say that’s not always been the case. I was brought up Catholic and attended Catholic Schools from Kindergarten to 12th grade and teaching Science was always like walking on a tight rope for many of my teachers. Attempting to balance religion and evolution wasn’t always easy to teach or learn about in Catholic schools. And taking it a step further, abortion was always a hot button issue that has long been at the forefront of the culture wars and the Catholic Church had made their position pretty clear over the years. It was always a conundrum for me; should I look at abortion as a medical procedure or should I look at it as murder? Should you as a parent be able to deny vaccinations for your child even though the science behind vaccines says they are safe and prevent the spread of serious infectious diseases? As a 31-year-old adult who has two children, my head is mostly clear on the answers to these questions. But I understand these things aren’t exactly black and white for most people and I can accept that.
Since I became heavily involved in the political world in 2018, there has been some things I’ve done that I regret. One of those things that I will share with you was accepting an endorsement from an anti-vaccine group known as Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom (OAMF). When I ran against Bill Seitz in 2018 for State Representative, I was quite desperate to get any endorsement I could and became acquainted with a group known as OAMF. Just doing a quick perusal of their website, you will find that OAMF is a group of people who strongly believe that vaccines can give your child autism. I knew better than associating myself with a fringe group of science deniers but I was desperate to get any endorsement I could. If that meant appeasing a few science deniers, then so be it. I accepted their endorsement, but didn’t really shout it from the rooftops because I was embarrassed. This is one of those situations where a politician, and I use that term loosely, was trying to appease everyone and refused to actually take a stand on what they actually believed in. One piece of advice I have for any candidate or future candidate is this: be yourself and don’t attempt to appease everyone. It is virtually impossible to agree on every issue with every single voter you encounter. It’s not worth sacrificing your morals, character or ideals for a few extra votes at the ballot box. Eventually, those weird relationships you form with the people you don’t agree with, but accepted their support from, come to a head and things get messy.
I was an official OAMF “Verified Candidate”, although the quote attributed to me wasn’t so bad in hindsight.
In the end, I’ve grown to recognize that science is amazing and extremely helpful, regardless of who believes in it or not. In one of John Oliver’s best episodes of his show Last Week Tonight, he said “you don’t need people’s opinions on facts.” And the facts are that vaccines have progressed our society and global health immensely. If it weren’t for vaccines, we’d still have diseases like Polio ravaging our populace and many Americans would be spending their lives in those weird “iron lung” devices. Although I’m sure barely anyone noticed when this endorsement occurred, take this as my formal apology for palling around with the anti-vaxxers. In summary, be yourself, get your Covid-19 vaccine, get your kids vaccinated and be apart of something bigger than yourself by making our society safer for everyone.
