Editor, The Commercial,
Below is an unredacted version of a letter I sent via e-mail to a niece after she told me that her brother, my nephew, was in a hospital with covid pneumonia. Both siblings have been reluctant to get vaccinated.
THE VACCINE DOES NOT KILL PEOPLE!!!
Try to impress that on your brother, and on anybody else who has any doubts about it. I have had the shot; Norma has had it. Even her husband, Bill, who was hospitalized with coronavirus, has had it (and no doubt wishes it had been available sooner.)
I do not know where you are getting your information, but it is not accurate, and that misinformation can kill you! Do not rely on just any one source of information. Check several, and compare what they say.
This virus is its own god. It attacks Baptists and Methodists alike. It kills Christians and Jews with equal abandon. It cares not if its victims are Buddhist or Muslim, atheist or agnostic, Democrat or Republican, black or white. It kills all equally!
If Billy survives, and I most assuredly hope he does, it will not be because of any belief he holds, but rather through the actions of the physicians and clinicians overseeing his care, the advanced technology that has kept him alive this long. Politics has nothing to do with it; religion is a distant influence; our own hopes and wishes don't even play a part.
We know cancer. It took both of your parents, one of mine, two of my siblings, and will take me unless something else calls dibs. Cancer is a known enemy. Covid-19 is a new enemy. It is making its own rules as it goes, and though science has just barely caught up, it is barely able to keep up. This virus has been shown to infect not just humans but almost all known living mammals.
Left unchecked, it could reduce the planet to nothing more than birds and lizards, and cockroaches, lots and lots of cockroaches. OK, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. ... You are going to do whatever you want, and my words probably are falling on deaf ears. Just tell Billy that I love him, unconditionally, as I do you, and hope he survives this latest ordeal.
D. H. Ridgway,
Pine Bluff