Bob Gilchrist: If you don’t get vaccinated, and you get sick, it’s not all on you

I would like to believe we can defeat COVID. But despite prayers, doing the Utah right thing, lottery chances and federal mandates, COVID continues to get worse.

So to quote the Rolling Stones:

“You can’t always get what you want,

you can’t always get what you want,

but if you try sometime you find

you get what you need.”

What we now need is to get realistic about COVID and figure out a way to live with this new disease. The Utah Legislature is always ready to set the framework for all our decisions. Regarding Utah’s position on COVID vaccines, state Rep. Paul Ray, a Republican from Clearfield, summed up the Utah Legislature’s position as follows:

“If you choose not to get vaccinated, you get sick and you die. That’s on you. That’s your call.”

The problem is that the results of someone not getting vaccinated currently are not all “on you.” It is not so because of the following:

Because these problems are the result of “your call,” they should be solved “by you” by doing the following.

The Legislature should mandate that hospitals must establish a special COVID section, and also a non-COVID section. The COVID section will have a certain number of beds. When this section is full, it is “on you” to either stay home or search for your alternative care. Hospitals now list emergency wait times; they could also list available COVID beds. And it will be “on you” if there are no open beds.

Health care workers who work In the COVID section should receive double or triple their usual rate of pay. In addition, as there are a set number of COVID beds, the health care workers can rotate, and will not have to work double shifts. It will be “on you” to pay for these increased amounts paid to health care workers.

If health insurers have to pay for COVID treatment they may need to increase their rates. They should do so by determining a monthly surcharge for coverage for COVID treatment. This amount will be assessed only “on you” (the unvaccinated), as a monthly charge on “your” insurance premiums.

I personally have no problem with people who do not want to take the COVID vaccine. I am, however, tired of them making the public suffer the results of their decision.

It has been stated over and over again that the decision to not get a COVID vaccine is a matter of personal choice. No one could disagree that every personal choice must come with personal responsibility for the results of that decision. To do it any other way means that you are really not stepping up and making you own “call.”

As Rep. Ray said: In Utah, if you don’t get vaccinated, ‘”You get sick and you die.” That’s “on you,” not on me.

Bob Gilchrist, Millcreek, is a fan of the Rolling Stones who is responsible for the results of his own decisions, like needing more than one body part replaced because it is worn out by just playing one more game of everything when he really should say enough.