When I first saw this image on Facebook, I wanted to post a retort, but I decided to wait instead. The fact is that it made me angry but, having been around social media for some time now, I know the value of not responding in the heat of the moment. Instead, I downloaded the image and considered the issue in a calmer frame of mind.

Now, at first glance you might think that it is just a witty meme, something designed to raise a laugh, but to me it is not. Replace ‘the unvaccinated’ with something else, may I suggest ‘black people’ or ‘Jews’ or ‘Muslims’ or ‘gay people’ or ‘the disabled’, and you might see what I mean. Would this meme be any more acceptable using any of those labels? I doubt it.

The fact is that this meme promotes persecution and prejudice. It is that simple.

Some of the people who have reposted this meme might claim that it was never their intent to promote persecution and prejudice, but if they had both read it and fully comprehended its meaning then that is no defence. Neither is posting it in ignorance. The meme still singles out a portion of society as a target for missiles.

This is how prejudices form, and persecution follows.

It might be claimed that the types of people that I suggest as replacement for ‘unvaccinated’ did not have a choice in being  what they are, which is partly true, whereas some people are choosing not to have the covid vaccine, which I took as the real point of the meme. This is also partly true, but it leads to a logical conclusion that anyone who promotes the message of the meme is against freedom of choice.

I am of the opinion that a vaccine that does not stop a person from being infected by a virus that has as its most notable characteristic the fact that it is highly contagious is a vaccine that does not work!

Freedom of choice is inherent to any society that considers itself to be free. It should not be surrendered so easily because governments have a poor record of returning the freedoms that they convinced citizens to surrender for their own good, especially in a time of presumed emergency that had no obvious endpoint.

Individuals also have a responsibility, to themselves if no one else, in protecting things like free speech and freedom of choice. They also have a responsibility to challenge human natures that give rise to prejudice, which in its turn often provoke persecution. This is certainly true if they wish to live in a better world, both for themselves and their children. That better world, however, seems to still be nothing more than an aspiration, because people do not stop, in the disembodied world of social media at least, to consider the full consequences of their actions.