How Much Empathy for the Unvaccinated?

I heard an interesting story on NPR today over lunch.  It was about COVID-19 hospitalization rates for the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated.  The reporter was interviewing a doctor and was trying to get to the reason some people get more severe cases of COVID-19 than others.  It kept coming back to the fact that the most severe and life threatening cases were primarily among the unvaccinated.  He tried several times to get the doctor to say that vaccination status wasn't a determining factor in the severity of the disease, but it kept coming back to the fact that the unvaccinated have more severe cases of COVID-19 and are more likely to die from it.

At some point in the interview the reporter asked the doctor if he was likely to provide better healthcare to a vaccinated patient because he knew that their outcome was likely to be much better than if the patient was unvaccinated.  He was asking if the doctor showed more empathy for a vaccinated patient than an unvaccinated patient since the unvaccinated patient made a conscious choice to put him/herself at risk when he/she refused the vaccine.  As you might imagine, that particular question took the interview down an entirely different path.

I've had many friends, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, who suffered the ravages of COVID-19.  Their experiences were exactly what you would expect.  The vaccinated ones were uncomfortable for a week and recovered easily while the unvaccinated ones paid a high price for their decisions to decline the vaccine.  A couple of the unvaccinated ones are still suffering some long lasting effects of having the disease.

It was relatively easy for me to reconcile the differences in outcomes between my vaccinated friends and unvaccinated ones.  I know that several times I thought to myself "Well, you're the one who decided not to get vaccinated.  The disease kicked your ass but now you're OK so maybe you'll rethink that strategy now."  I genuinely felt bad for all of them and would have done anything I possibly could to help them regardless of their vaccination status.  The thing is, though, they all recovered and life goes on.  Except for one.

In college I had a fraternity brother named Art.  I never liked him much because, quite frankly, he was an asshole and he was happy knowing he was an asshole.  Art was obnoxious and I did my best to avoid him for the four years we were there.  Unfortunately Art didn't feel the same way about me and would gravitate toward me at parties, social functions, and when I went out to bars with my fraternity brothers.  In the spirit of brotherhood I did my best to be gracious and tolerant, but it didn't always work out too well.  

The thing I found most annoying about Art was that he would argue about anything just for the sake of arguing.  If you happened to say something like "The sky is a beautiful shade of blue today," Art would make it his mission to convince anyone who would listen that you were color blind and had no idea what color the sky actually was and it was likely due to the fact that your mother was a dirty crack whore and your father was a heroin addict.  It was like that with everything that Art touched.  Somehow he felt the need to contradict everything and he was good at it.

After college Art worked for the EPA for awhile doing whatever the EPA actually does.  He got into public health statistical analysis and lived in the Washington, D.C. area.  He made a good career out of that and was an expert in public health policy.  Make no mistake, Art was very intelligent.

I had not had any contact with Art for about 40 years when out of the blue he sent me a Facebook friend request.  Normally I would have just ignored it but I felt that I couldn't do that to a fraternity brother.  We exchanged pleasantries for a few days and caught up on family, careers, and plans for retirement.  

Inevitably, our conversation turned to politics.  Art was an avid Trumper and if you've read this blog for very long you know that I think Donald Trump is the Antichrist.  We argued politics for several weeks and finally just agreed to disagree and maybe revisit the whole subject toward the end of Trump's term as President.

Then along came the coronavirus.  Art posted something negative about mask mandates in his area and for some reason I decided to take the bait.  For a full week we argued day and night whether coronavirus was actually a pandemic or just something manufactured by the Democrats to seize power from our idiot President.  Art insisted it was nothing more than a bad cold and that the US would reach herd immunity in just a few months.

I work in healthcare and had experienced caregivers crying in the hospital cafeteria because they had just spent the last twelve hours watching a mother of four drowning in her own mucus and eventually welcoming death rather than continuing to suffer.  True story.  That vision still haunts me every day and night and I wasn't even on the front lines.  I'm serious.  Every day and every night I think about this.  Based on that I was pretty sure it was more than a political trick.  

Art and I continued to argue for the better part of two weeks.  He cited figures from the CDC and WHO and they were very credible until you really dug into them and discovered the details.  At that point his argument collapsed but it still didn't deter him.  Anyway, we eventually decided that neither of us was going to change our opinion so we stopped arguing about it.

When the vaccines came out Art asked me if I was going to get vaccinated.  When I told him I would take the vaccine he mounted a series of attacks on my intelligence that lasted for over a month.  By this time I knew arguing with him was fruitless so I didn't waste my time or energy on it.  

The next thing I heard regarding Art was on our fraternity's Facebook timeline a few months later when his son posted a message saying he had passed away from COVID-19.  This is where we get back to the empathy part.  On one hand I wanted to say "I told you so and you got what you deserved" and on the other hand I was truly heartbroken at the suffering my friend must have endured toward the end of his life.  I still can't quite figure out what to make of this.  I know it's wrong to not show any empathy, but geez, he was a really smart guy and should have known.  On the other hand, I should just set that aside and feel sympathetic to any human suffering regardless of whether he could have prevented it.

So I'm still conflicted over this and I probably will be for some time.  It feels like unfinished business that I need to take care of before I can move on.  Maybe eventually that will fade and I won't think about it anymore, but maybe it won't.

So that's where I am on the whole empathy thing.  It angers me to see people choose not to get vaccinated but I feel like I still can't shut them out entirely when they do contract COVID-19 and then suffer for their poor decision.

Anyway, I hope none of you are in this position and that you and your loved ones have made the right choice for you.