Groups long marginalized by health systems continue to have limited access to vaccines and this is heartbreaking. But what about those—as many as a third of the US population—who can be vaccinated easily, but simply do not want to. How do we understand their vaccine refusal?
Herman Melville’s 1853 short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” reckons with the possibility that freedom can be realized through a refusal to submit. Bartleby is the hard-working, dutiful scribe of a Wall Street lawyer, who, at a certain point, refuses to do the tasks that his life demands. When he is asked to do his job, he responds, “I would prefer not to.” Thereafter, he refuses everything, eventually food and water, until he dies of starvation.
“I would prefer not to” haunts the story because Bartleby (and Melville) offers no reason for his refusal. We want to know why we would prefer not to, but there’s no reason. He doesn’t need to give a reason.
In addition to the 15% of Americans who avoid all immunization, Covid-19 refusers continue to claim there is not yet enough real-world experience (despite hundred of millions of doses administered), or that any new vaccine could produce late side effects we don’t know about, or that Covid-19 is mostly a mild disease, or that they will be fortunate or careful enough to avoid infection. But none of these reasons are in and of themselves sufficient explanation.
Read the full post on The Turning Point.