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ARE YOU?
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DECEMBER 4, 2020
AIKEN-AUGUSTA’S MOST SALUBRIOUS NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED IN 2006
We know what you’re thinking: Am I what? Good question. One clue to the answer is provided by the caricatures on this page. Do you know who they depict? His name is Groucho Marx (1890-1977), and he was considered to be one of America’s greatest comedians, with a successful career on stage, in movies, and on radio and television that began in 1905 and spanned nearly 75 years. For our purposes, we’re looking at perhaps his biggest exposure in that long career, a TV quiz show he hosted that aired on NBC from 1950 to 1961 called You Bet Your Life. With a title like that, it’s an even bet that some alert reality show producer is already working on a pilot for a new TV show by the same name. Since any new version of the show would be released in very late 2020 or early 2021, maybe it will show its up-to-the-minute relevancy by having people bet their lives by hosting huge parties or family reunions without a single mask in sight. Or maybe they’ll assemble teams of people who refuse to take the COVID vaccine once it has been fully tested and gets the stamp of approval from health agencies around the world. The teams will attend crowded events like concerts and professional sports games. The team
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with the fewest infections and deaths wins a nice prize. The losers are forcibly given the vaccine. Looking at this on paper, maybe it’s not such a hot idea after all. It’s probably never going to be green-lighted. But even if it isn’t we can watch it play out in real life all over the country and around the world on a daily basis. Ignoring health and safety guidelines is definitely a roll of the dice, but it’s one that people get away with all the time. You could drive around without wearing a seatbelt for decades and never get a scratch on either yourself or your car. You could refuse to wear a mask or get a vaccine and sail right through this pandemic with flying colors. On the other hand, some people do the right thing and still pay the price: they have never smoked, but somehow they wind up with lung cancer; they wear a mask every day and still have tested positive for coronavirus. Almost nothing is completely guaranteed to provide the same results for every person every time. Even the best and safest drugs warn, “Your results may vary.” As Groucho might put it, you bet your life every day. We all do. When the COVID vaccine becomes available, those who take it will be betting their health and potentially their very lives on it. Those who refuse will likewise be betting their life and health on the stand they take. What each of us has the obligation to do on any important decision is to weigh the risks and the quality of the information we have about that risk, and make the best decision possible. Please see ARE YOU? page 3