Why I am Getting Vaccinated

Somewhere during the middle of this crazy pandemic, I found myself at a small dinner party where it turned out that I was the only one in the room willing to be vaccinated. Many people at dinner that evening were strongly opposed to the idea of getting vaccinated, for several different reasons. One of them challenged my willingness to get vaccinated with a question: “What are you afraid of?” A simple, five-word question, and yet I could not answer. I was speechless.

Since then, I have contemplated both where this question was coming from and why I could not answer it. This article is not about convincing anyone that vaccines are a good idea – I am not going to present evidence one way or the other, or argue any of the typical points on the pro-vaccination side of this debate. If you have spent any time at all on the Internet, or even discussing life with friends, you probably know both sides of the argument already. Whether you want to get vaccinated or not is unlikely to change whether you read the rest of this article or not.

The point of the article, then, is to show why I found the above question unanswerable and to dig a little deeper into the ideas behind this deceptively simple question. The first keyword in that question that I want to consider is afraid and its mother concept of fear. I think that fear is a key driving force that few people want to admit to feeling when deciding whether or not to get vaccinated.

Some are afraid of the virus and its impacts – contracting it, getting sick, losing their livelihood due to related economic issues, or even dying. Others are afraid of the vaccine – what is in it, whether it is safe, and which nefarious entity or institution might be using it for sinister purposes. Not everyone fears either of these things to the same degree, but I think that some level of fear is present in our decisions one way or the other.

When my anti-vaxx friend asked her question, she was asking why I was afraid of the virus. The first reason I could not answer is because I have no fear of death, by Covid or anything else. As a Christian, death is just stepping into eternity to be with God, which is a wonderful thing. Christians do not seek death, however, because the reason we are alive right now is to serve God on this earth (Phill. 1:19-26). He will keep me alive on this planet for as long as He wants me to be here. Regardless of what finally kills me, I will not die without His consent.

Just like I do not seek death, I have no desire to get sick either, particularly because this virus is infectious and my getting sick will make others around me sick, too. There is a far greater chance that I will be killed or severely injured on the roads than I will die from either Covid or the vaccine. Although I am not afraid of dying in a car accident either, I have no desire to be in one. Again, that is both for my personal comfort and others who might be in the accident too.

I thus view Covid in the same way as any other potentially dangerous thing – I will avoid it if possible, but have no reason to fear it. The vaccination, on the other hand, is another potentially dangerous thing. Although statistically speaking, the chances of dying from a vaccination is vanishingly small compared to the chance of dying from Covid itself, this is still a reason why some people may fear it. For the same reason I do not fear dying from Covid (or car accidents), I have no fear of dying from the vaccine.

Although death-by-vaccination is highly unlikely, there is a good chance that I might feel sick for a while after getting vaccinated (my first shot came with zero side effects, but there is a chance that my future second shot will produce side effects). But I have just said that I avoid getting sick if possible, yet taking the vaccine seems to be volunteering for feeling sick, since some sort of sickness for 24 hours or so is a fairly common side-effect of any of the vaccines. Am I being inconsistent?

This is where the other keyword in that five-word question comes into play: “What are you afraid of?” Whether one is afraid of the virus or the vaccine is strongly linked to their possible effects on yourself, with potential knock-on effects for those around you. The key issue nonetheless seems to be a personal one – e.g. “I don’t want that stuff in my body,” or “If people don’t get vaccinated, my livelihood is at risk,” or “I don’t want to be controlled by the people who made the vaccine (or the virus!)”, or “When other people don’t wear their masks or refuse the vaccination, they are putting me and my family at risk.” I have seen examples similar to these on both sides of the vaccination fence – but it all really boils down to what I want and how either the virus or the vaccination will affect me.

In my case, my willingness to be vaccinated really has very little to do with me, which is why I couldn’t answer the question, “What are you afraid of?” I might get sick from the vaccination itself; alternatively, if I get Covid after being vaccinated I might be less sick than would have been the case before the vaccine. These two possibilities will affect me in some way, but neither of them played a major role in my decision. While it would be unpleasant to have 24-hours of feeling sick after the vaccination, or it would be nice to have a ‘gentle’ bout of Covid, it really makes no difference. The thing that played the biggest role in my decision was the antidote to fear – love (1 John 4:18).

To emphasise my previous points: if I die from any cause, I will go to heaven. If I get sick (from either cause), it will be just as severe and as long as the Lord allows it to be. This knowledge leaves me free from the usual considerations about what will happen to me, and thus allows me to consider more seriously what will happen to other people. This is also what makes the possibility of feeling sick after the vaccination a small price to pay for the potential of helping others.

There are other people I may come into contact with, whether friends or total strangers, who are more physically vulnerable to Covid than I am. More critically, many of these people will not go to heaven if they contract this illness and die. On an economic level, while my own ability to make a living is not directly linked to international travel or other Covid-related restrictions, there are many others whose livelihoods are closely linked with these factors. If I can do anything at all to prevent other people from contracting Covid, or to be part of allowing travel to open up and restrictions to ease, then I will do it.

Now, some who doubt the efficacy of the vaccinations may ask: “What if getting vaccinated doesn’t reduce the risk of infection, or what if the government keeps the restrictions regardless of whether or not people get vaccinated?” Then it would seem that I got a sore arm and (potentially) felt sick for a day for no reason. Yet these things are out of my control – I did not develop the vaccine, nor do I make the rules about travel and public gatherings. The best I can do is to control what I can – getting myself to a vaccination centre – and leave the rest of it up to virology and politics. If it turns out that I have to get another vaccination at a later date, so be it. If I have to keep my mask on everywhere I go in public and avoid large gatherings even after I have been fully vaccinated, then so be it. Even if there are currently unknown long-term side effects of this vaccine and I suffer from them some time in the future, so be it.

One final thought – I have come across the idea that Christians who are getting vaccinated are not trusting God to protect them. Yet this argument is logically flawed – trusting God does not mean that you live recklessly. Not fearing death is not the same as seeking death. Being fearless (i.e. not being afraid to die) and being reckless (i.e. putting oneself in harm’s way deliberately) are two different things.

Going back to my comparison with vehicle accidents – I trust that God will keep me safe on the roads, unless He chooses a vehicle accident as the means to get me to heaven. Either way, I am 100% safe in His loving hands. Nonetheless, I still wear a seatbelt and obey the rules of the road. These are both manmade things that are designed to keep one safe on the roads (the car itself is manmade, of course). Is doing either of these things going to provide 100% assurance that I will never land up in a fatal road accident? Not at all, but I do not rely on them to do so.

Even if the virus is manmade (like my car), the vaccine and the recently invented social rules are designed to increase our safety in this Covid-ridden world. Being vaccinated doesn’t give me any assurance of not dying, but I do not rely on it to prevent my death. Only God can do that, and He does not only protect me from one cause of death, but from any cause of death – until He calls me home.

For those of you reading this who do not want to get vaccinated, or who cannot get vaccinated (e.g. due to health complications), this paragraph is for you. Regardless of what you believe about this virus or the vaccinations, I want the very best for you. While I know that I will go to heaven when I die, I don’t know if you will. If my getting vaccinated will reduce the chances of just one of you getting Covid, then that alone will be worth a sore arm or any other side effects, both short and long-term.

The reason for what may seem to be a strange attitude to you is rather simple for me. I serve a God who willingly died for me, knowing just how stubborn, disobedient and ignorant of His love I would be (He did the same for you!). He sacrificed everything for me, and gave an explicit command that I should imitate His love for me towards others (John 13:34-35). My microscopically small inconvenience from a vaccination is not even worth being in the same sentence as His immense love and self-sacrifice displayed on the cross. Yet it is in the same spirit – as a tiny little imitation of His love – that I choose to get vaccinated.

If I were able to re-live the dinner party recounted at the start of this article, I would answer my anti-vaxx friend’s question: “What are you afraid of?” with a more thoroughly considered answer: “I love you.”