Nuptials and the Unvaccinated

Twilight wedding feast: Pemberton Valley, 25 September 2021

So we're back from our back-to-back wedding weekends, one an hour north of the city, the other way over on the west coast in the beautiful Pemberton valley.

Both ceremonies were touching, featuring heartfelt I-wrote-this-myself vows, beautiful brides, handsome grooms, etc.

And both had unvaccinated people in attendance. 

Toronto has a vaccination rate among the highest in the country, but even 84% vaccinated means two people in ten are still a potential target for COVID Delta. Outside the city, the count gets higher with every excuse a person might offer. Excuses like, "I don't go out much, so I don't have the exposure risk," which position is rendered nugatory at a wedding with 70 people at it, fourteen of whom, if they're from Toronto, could be unvaccinated. 

One charming fellow I spent half an hour talking with about his art gallery casually let it slip that "he hadn't gotten around" to getting the shot. I imagine he prepared himself in other ways to travel six hours from Powell River to the wedding, so I wondered why not.

Another person, about whose unvaccinated status I had been already told, showed off her daily "vitamin-pill," a grotesque, weedy jarful of various dried fruits and plants in mud-coloured liquid, evidently conclusive proof that vaccines are for losers. 

Both weddings took many COVID precautions, being either entirely out of doors (see photo above) or generously socially distanced, masked, and so on.

There are articles written once every hour or so attempting to explain the mindset, motivations, and desperate rationalizations of the rabidly unvaccinated. I suppose for the lazily unvaccinated, their perception of the risk is too low to overcome their tendency not to act. Or, if they are convinced of the risk, then they still can't get over their deeply felt belief that they are personally harmless.

Whatever. I don't have any more weddings this year (that I know of) so I can put all this behind me, except for the fact that, now that I have travelled on airplanes and attended weddings, I would like to take a COVID test, just as a precaution against any risk I might pose to Bruce's dad.

Here's the prevailing irony right now in Toronto: vaccinations are free and readily available, but Bruce and I have already waited two days just to hear if we can even get a COVID test.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

The B&G make their getaway.