Have you ever stepped out of the house, looked around and realized just how much trust we place in total strangers?
You could be standing at a crosswalk, waiting to step onto the road, and a driver slows to let you cross. What if he or she decides, “nah, I’m running late, he’s getting run over today.”
What if you’re behind the wheel and the driver on the opposite side of the road, coming towards you, decides driving on the left is more convenient and smashes into you head-on?
Public hygiene? How many times have you sat on public transit and watched people cough and sneeze into their hands and then touch the seat in front?
And then there’s touching raw fruit and vegetables in a supermarket or the doors at a shopping mall, trusting that the people before have washed their hands and are not carrying a potentially deadly and communicable disease.
Our daily routine is proliferated with examples of handing our lives over to random people, with little or no question.
Why do we feel comfortable with such apparent abandon of our fragile mortality?
It could be because there are, for the most part, rules in place for all the above (aside from wiping hands on the bus).
Most, I’d hope, know to drive on the right side and not accelerate at a busy crosswalk – because there are consequences.
We’ve kind of agreed to drive on that side of the road and to stop when a sign tells you to do just that. It’s an arrangement we’ve made with all (OK, most) of the other drivers.
So it’s disconcerting that we don’t have the same rules in place when it comes to being vaccinated for potentially deadly — and contagious — diseases, such as measles, which has reared its head in Richmond and Vancouver recently.
It’s startling to see how many places in our city were potentially at risk, just from two infected people’s movements.
People born before 1970 are said to be immune (due to getting the measles in childhood), but why are we trusting strangers with the health and lives of vulnerable, at-risk people?
If I held the door for you at Lansdowne Centre, should I have to say, “it’s OK, I’m vaccinated”? Should I have to prove it? Or show my birth certificate? No, I shouldn’t, because that’s ridiculous. So it leads us to mandatory vaccinations.
I’m all for freedom of choice and I understand, to a certain extent, the reservations of parents with the MMR vaccine and the albeit flimsy links to autism.
But at what point do people’s freedoms impinge on my right to walk out the door, use the Canada Line or browse through the apple section at Langley Farm Market, without fear of contracting what should be an eradicated disease?
The B.C. government is in the process of bringing forth a mandatory registry at schools to track vaccinations.
It won’t make it mandatory for students to get vaccinated, but at least parents can then see what the picture looks like.
For the greater good, we have rules for the road that keep us and others alive as we go about our everyday business.
It’s time the same restrictions were placed on potentially deadly diseases.
