commentary

milt thomas

While Florida is an embarrassment with its overwhelming surge of totally preventable serious coronavirus cases, Indian River County residents can take some degree of pride in the fact that 71 percent of us are fully vaccinated. However, doctors are overwhelmed treating COVID-sick patients, postponing non-COVID patient appointments because they are working up to 18 hours a day to keep up with those who are infected.

Yes, there are breakthrough cases of vaccinated people contracting the virus, but according to Cleveland Clinic, 90 percent of COVID patients are unvaccinated. We can only hope that friends and relatives of those patients have decided now is the time to go ahead with it.

The Pfizer vaccine is expected to receive full FDA approval this week, which should be enough to satisfy those vaccine skeptics who failed to get vaccinated because it had only been approved for emergency use. To those who still refuse the vaccine for conspiracy or politically related reasons, you risk your own health and the health of those around you. Just look around you for proof that holding out is, what one doctor noted, “stupid, stupid, stupid!”

To those who claim nurses told them most hospitalized patients had been vaccinated, that is irresponsible and selfish.

We are in the middle of a health crisis unlike anything in the last 100 years. Ignorance is no excuse for prolonging and spreading it when the collective health of fellow Americans must suffer because of that ignorance.