You are probably reading this on a computer or a tablet or phone. Every single one of millions upon millions of devices all connected to the internet is the reason why the internet works so well. Likewise, the system that it was built to parallel, the telephone network, also works and depends on millions of people being connected.
Network effects are seen in a lot of things, such as physical infrastructure like road and rail which connects places, communication systems which not only includes telephony bit various social networks, and even the vaccine rollout.
Telephones, the internet, train systems, and the vaccine rollout, all follow the basic principle of the network effect which basically means that every new thing which is added to the system, increases the overall effectiveness of the system. It is almost self-evident that a telephone network can not work all that well unless lots of people have a telephone. At absolute minimum, you need two people connected. When a critical mass is reached, the system really sings.
The network effect also applies to other things such as gun ownership (which explains why the United States will remain relatively unsafe compared to the rest of the OECD) as well as insurance.
A mass vaccination rollout is actually the answer to an insurance question and as such it also follows the network effect. The thing with insurance questions is that because they are subject to negative self-selection, which means that people only tend to buy in if they expect to be paid out, that it is the people who chose not to buy in or whom are excluded from the network who actually make the network less effective.
It is for this reason especially that we're already starting to see data where unvaccinated people are getting Covid-19 and then infecting people who have been vaccinated.
Vaccines can only prime someone's adaptive immune system to fight off the virus. They do this by alerting your Memory-T cells that there is a pathogen in the world which needs to be fought off. What a vaccine can not do, is prevent an unvaccinated person who has the virus from passing it on, because as far as the virus is concerned, people are its environment and that includes others whether they are vaccinated or not.
The choice not to get vaccinated is actually a choice by an individual to deliberately make the overall vaccination network less effective. I have written quite a lot on this blog over the years about human rights but in this case, I simply can not admit that someone's right to choose to endanger others because of their own selfish fears, is worth more or a better good than the collective public good of vaccination.
Notice how I used the word 'good' in the singular. Vaccination as a public good is a singular item (albeit a very massive one); and is subject to damage through the deliberate choice of individual inaction.
This all leads me to question the base motivation of someone who refuses to be vaccinated. I can understand a fear of needles, I can understand that they might fear introducing a substance into their own body and I can even understand some kind of notion of religiosity here but it really boils down to whom the individual considers as the most important.
Whether you live in a Commonwealth or a Republic, the common wealth is a public thing. That already implies that as part of living in a nation, or a state, a city, a suburb etc. that you are already inside a civic community and whether you admit it or not, owe other people obligations as part of that civic community.
That also suggests that the civic community does its best work and highest good, when there is the most amount of civic philos. Sometimes this is wrapped in a flag and shows itself as patriotism but most of the time its going to display itself in the more boring civic products of peace, patience with others, and kindness.
The highest outworking of civic philos demands of an individual that they esteem others more than they esteem themselves. You can see that in the basic workings of a family as community in miniature. In the broader context of society generally that means that in humility someone needs to value others above themselves; not looking at the selfish conceit of one's own immediate interests but the interests of others.
The interests of others also happens to include those people who for actually legitimate reasons can not be vaccinated. Those reasons are almost always because of complications of other medicines, other medical conditions, or being pregnant. By you being vaccinated and making the network effect most effective, you are carrying their burdens. Remember, those people are also more likely to have been vaccinated against Polio; which means that they have always paid forward a different burden.
It used to be that sacrifice of the individual in order to create a greater good for the welfare of others was seen as a virtue. The collective suffering and the deaths of 200 million people, through two world wars, the 1918-20 flu pandemic, and the Great Depression, created a generation of people saw public welfare as being a collective good because it is good. The last 40 years especially, have relentlessly elevated the individual to that highest place; so that welfare is demonised, anyone who might receive the benefits of that welfare and care are also demonised, and any sense of rationality and civic philos is destroyed.
This is where I ask that most banal of questions: who do you love? A great deal of popular media had been generated about that very subject, indeed the music industry practically revolves around it, but while that might be incredibly good at selling product, it does very little at selling the idea of public virtue.
A verb is a 'doing' word. Doing something involves action. Action involves performing work. Putting love into action, in this case civic philos, might be easy to do with people who love us back but appears to be harder in the abstract, when it means doing it for people whom we do not personally know, or even people who dislike us, or whom we suspect want to hurt us. Who do you love? If you refuse to be vaccinated and thus refuse to take action, then what exactly are you demonstrating?
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