Our View: Simply put: Get vaccinated

Well, here we are again. Before the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control this week for mask wearing, there were already telltale signs that the pandemic we prefer to talk about in the past tense just isn’t over yet. Because of the Delta variant that has been spreading among mostly unvaccinated people in pockets across the country, including in Minnesota, masks are back in our lives.

It didn’t have to be this way.

The dangerous variant is feasting on the unvaccinated. And it is leaving our children who can’t yet be vaccinated ever more vulnerable to Covid-19 and its unknown long-term effects.

It didn’t have to be this way.

Carlton County should be proud that its population was one of the first in the state to reach a 70-percent vaccination rate among those who could be vaccinated. And we’ve mostly kept up, despite the pool growing wider for those who can get a shot, now including those as young as age 12. All of this vaccination news is welcome, but it doesn’t mean much when we still have too many people without vaccinations hosting Covid and spreading it around. In short, the unvaccinated are putting their own lives at risk — as well as those of others, including children. They are keeping the Covid scourge, and its variants, hanging around. They are almost assuredly going to put us back into mask wearing, almost undoubtedly for schools in the fall if trends keep up.

It’s pretty simple. Get vaccinated.

Drop your conspiracy theories from the politically motivated anti-vaxxers — who we are learning are mostly the same Russian and foreign agents that have been polluting American social media for years in an effort to create dysfunction and mistrust.

If it eases your soul, have a long talk with your doctor. Medical professionals are the ones we need to trust to get us through what has unfortunately been a continued pandemic.

If you think you are being controlled by those who are telling you to get vaccinated, so be it. We need to conquer this virus as a whole, not as some red and blue cogs repelling each other in a manufactured state of division.

At some point, any long-form explanation on why one should do the right thing just feels exhausting and unnecessary.

Do the world a favor.

Get vaccinated.