Skip to content

Inoculation Station

What if a vaccine is just a vaccine and nothing more?

Robert Rackley
Robert Rackley
2 min read
Painting of Washington crossing the Delaware.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Paul Kingsnorth kind of lost me on his anti-vaxxer rant this week. He is particularly worried about the increasingly stringent measures in Austria and Germany to get everyone vaccinated. Historical events in these countries give him particular cause for concern.

Kingsnorth's rant does make me think about history, as well. Did George Washington's troops complain this bitterly about authoritarianism when he had them inoculated for small pox upon entering the Continental Army? My guess is that they probably didn't, because they were fighting to be freed from actual authoritarianism. They had stared raw state power in the face and knew what it looked like and it wasn't getting a jab (not this kind, anyway).

The whole, long think piece is predicated on the assumption that getting the vaccine is about so much more than the vaccine itself. Going beyond the medical advice, which is hardly ever exactly perfect, and really getting at core divisions.

Often, in an argument, what people think they are arguing about is not the real subject of disagreement, which is deeper and often unspoken, if it is even understood. So it is here. The divisions that have opened up in society about the covid vaccines are not really about the covid vaccines at all: they are about what vaccination symbolises in this moment. What it means to be 'vaxxed' or 'unvaxxed', safe or dangerous, clean or dirty, sensible or irresponsible, compliant or independent: these are questions about what it means to be a good member of society, and what society even is, and they are detonating like depth charges beneath the surface of the culture.

Kingsnorth reveals he remains proudly unvaccinated. He works to layer meaning on top of meaning to get to his point about how dangerous a situation we are in (this article is labeled part 1, so there's more coming). I have to wonder about this perspective, though. What if this isn't encroaching authoritarianism (history of Austria and Germany aside)? What if it's not even particularly egregious paternalism? What if it's really just about getting a vaccination that gives you a better survival rate against a deadly disease? What if it's just about coming together to mitigate a public health crisis in the best ways that we know how?

Robert Rackley

Orthodox Christian, aspiring minimalist, inveterate notetaker, software dev manager and paper airplane mechanic.


Related Posts

Members Public

Surburban Solutions

At the beginning of this year, I went through a bit of a thought experiment. I imagined that I had the power to call forth a new album from any band of my choice. What band would I choose? The two names that came foremost to mind were Wild Nothing

Surburban Solutions
Members Public

The AI Poison Pill

I have benefitted from the use of AI recently. When I wanted to buy a complementary DAC and speaker combination, I consulted the "Schiit Talker," Schiit Audio's chatbot. It helpfully steered me away from some speakers that were less compatible with the DAC (but cheaper) I

The AI Poison Pill
Members Public

Ubiquitous Therapy

As someone who in college majored in psychology and family and child counseling, I’m a proponent of therapy as an intervention in the case emotional difficulties. However, I am starting to question the potential overuse of therapy. Olga Khazan writes for The Atlantic about a study in which Australian