In a recent East Oregonian, Rebecca Patton of Enterprise claims that drunk driving is not the same as being unvaccinated because “the law” prevents one from doing the former but not so the latter. She bases her position on how the law school at Harvard defines what is “lawful.”

This argument is specious and cruel. What makes your position so inaccurate and harmful is the asymptomatic nature of the virus. If killing someone while driving in a drunken state — because drunk driving is against Harvard law — is not the same as willingly, but unconsciously killing someone else by flagrantly ignoring the deadly effect of my unknown transmission is both cruel and moronic.

To state that it is a (proven) supposition “that an unmasked/unvaccinated person poses a real (as opposed to theoretical) risk to others,” can only be determined with frequent testing from being an unconscious and unwitting asymptomatic carrier of the virus. Have you been tested Ms. Patton? The thrust of your white hyper-individualist argument would obviate against that conclusion.

There is no state or federal law that mandates telling someone you may carry a venereal disease either, but does passing it on to them, with or without your knowledge, make that right? As to your banal claim that “three quarters of new COVID cases arising from large gatherings in a Massachusetts town occurred in vaccinated people,” I am one of several in town who have been fully vaccinated and yet were victims of a “breakthrough” infection. At my age, it is only the vaccination that has saved me from your “right to infect others” as determined by “Harvard Law.”

To further state “that unvaccinated people are selfishly (and criminally) putting others at risk makes an appeal to emotion, but it lacks legal and evidential support” absolutely stuns me against the “evidential, untheoretical” deaths of millions around the globe. What more evidence do you need, Ms. Patton?

What you will never get is that being a willing asymptomatic carrier of this known killer is not and can never be a “legal issue” or one based on “personal freedom.” It is strictly and solely a moral issue. It is not one of “personal rights” but entirely of ethical compassion for everyone else with whom you come in contact. I beg of you and the rest of the unvaccinated possible killers, please have just a smidgeon of compassion and mature social decency.

The Rev. Matt Henry 

Pendleton