Rettke: Vaccines are why we’ve made it this far

Between new and reinstated COVID-19 mandates announced this week, and confirmed virus cases popping up once again in our local schools, it’s understandable some may feel we’re back to square one in this pandemic.

I don’t think so. Not yet.

We have a vaccine for folks 12 and older (three viable ones, actually, including the Pfizer-BioNTech, which has full FDA approval). We have nearly 600 more days of knowledge and data gathered about the novel coronavirus than we did last year. We have endurance and experience and solutions to help temper the quiet persistence of uncertainty that seems to exist in the background, always.

This year, unlike August 2020, we have choices. We have decisions we can commit to that still allow us to have a much more reasonable shot at normal life than this time last year.

Vaccines are why we’ve made it this far. Historically, they are the reason we no longer have polio in the United States and can manage influenza, tetanus, rubella, Hepatitus A and B, chickenpox and measles, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And many are already required for your child to attend public school.

Vaccines are what allowed the return of DeKalb Corn Fest this weekend, of children back inside classrooms full-time for the school year, of a lift on capacity limits for things like live music and indoor gatherings, of the return of sports. Friday night high school football kicked off this week with the long-awaited rivalry game between DeKalb and Sycamore at Huskie Stadium.

Vaccines did that, because enough people got them last spring that the virus wave that we’d fought and suffered through in 2020 (during which we lost dozens of DeKalb County residents) was abated. We could all take a collective breath together, debrief, regroup and move forward.

The reality check here is that the pandemic rages still. We’re in the midst of a fourth nationwide surge that has been overwhelmingly brought on by people who have not yet been vaccinated, Gov. JB Pritzker and state health officials said Thursday. The wave of cases was trigged by the onslaught of the COVID-19 delta variant, highly contagious and more likely to put you in the hospital than the original strain.

It’s caused an uptick in hospitalizations (mostly downstate, health officials told us this week), where hospitals have not only run out of Intensive Care Unit beds, but they’ve, more importantly, run out of employees to staff them.

We do not want to see that at Kish Hospital. Or anywhere around here. Because what will happen if you or your loved one gets into a car crash, needs emergency surgery, has a heart attack? A bed and a team of doctors that could have helped them will instead be trying to save a person who has COVID-19.

This is our future if we don’t take steps now, heed the new mandates, and try and remember to be service-minded to those around us.

According to vaccination ZIP code data from the Illinois Department of Public Health, about 42.5% of DeKalb’s population is fully vaccinated, with 55.4% in Sycamore, 50.8% in Genoa, half in Cortland, 37.5% in Kirkland and 38% in Kingston.

I am fully vaccinated, and I’ve continued to wear my mask everywhere and eat outdoors. It’s a personal choice I’ve decided to make for my own sanity and to do my part to help others.

Per Pritzker’s announcements Thursday, a statewide indoor mask mandate will be reinstated beginning Monday, so anywhere you go inside, you’ll need to wear a mask regardless of vaccination status. And if you’re an educator (or a college student), a healthcare worker, or work at a nursing home, you’ll need to get your first dose of COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 5 if you haven’t already, or else face mandatory weekly testing.

These mandates have the potential to stir up even more division in what has become a seriously baffling and vitriolic debate between what some view as personal liberty and others, community service. It’s a strange juxtaposition which, frankly, I have limited patience for.

A mask is not the end of the world. It’s a piece of cloth on your face. A mandate requiring the public to take the same steps health officials had been asking, nicely, for us to do of our own accord for months is not a human rights violation or Nazi-occupied Germany.

Growing up, my parents attempted to instill in me a collective identity of service over self. I grew up in the Presbyterian church, and beyond attending Sunday school and helping my mom pass around the communion plate during service, we volunteered. We’d come to the church on the weekends and clean, or help set up the fellowship hall for events, serve food, dishes, chat with an elderly church member, collect canned goods for the food pantry, pass out the bulletins before service.

My parents taught me that it was important to think of others around you, how your actions have consequences, to be humble and follow the rules. And if you didn’t like something, we knew enough to discern whether it was actually something worth complaining about. I’d like to think I follow their teachings as dutifully as I can, perhaps more so as I age.

If you don’t like the mandates, and if you have the ability to do so, then get the vaccine. Have conversations with friends and family, calmly and as respectfully as possible address concerns, educate others on the topic to ease fears, drive someone to their vaccine appointment or offer to take their shift at work so they can rest the next day.

This pandemic is likely to pass the two-year mark. I hope by then we haven’t lost fully our ability to be kind, and accept that we all have a collective part to play.

Given what we know about current rates of hospitalizations in Illinois, especially among children, why would we not want to take as many preventative measures as possible to limit spread and preserve the health of our most vulnerable?