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Dear Editor,

As an unaffiliated voter, I am totally appalled at Rep. Lamborn’s recent editorial (Nov 5 The Mountain Mail) regarding the COVID vaccine mandates. On the plus side, I am certainly happy that he is vaccinated and encourages other people to get vaccinated. However, most of the article tries to reframe the anti-vaccine argument solely as a matter of personal freedom.

Before we get into the fine points of personal freedom, let’s look at the COVID facts:

  • Over 750,000 Americans are already dead! This compares to the total combined American wartime losses in WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq of 642,000, according to Wikipedia. In other words, COVID-19 is a National Emergency of wartime proportions!
  • This is a planet-wide pandemic. A global public health emergency that affects individuals, families, communities, corporations, in every country on the globe.

In times of national emergencies, we look to our presidents for leadership, and President Joe Biden is giving us exactly that. It’s true that former President Trump did start the warp speed program which has been very helpful, however, he left Biden with not enough doses of vaccine for a full nationwide rollout. However shortly after Biden was in office, he ordered many more doses and used the national defense production act to ramp up production and distribution of these vaccines.

For months and months, President Biden has been using the carrot approach rather than a stick regarding vaccines encouraging and pleading with Americans to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their neighbors and jobs, and our future. This voluntary effort has certainly helped in getting many people back to work, back to school, and back to socializing with our friends. However, many Americans are still dying daily and we have way too many folks unvaccinated who are now filling up our hospitals and overtaxing our fine healthcare employees.

In short, we have a national emergency on our hands, actually a global emergency. So President Biden is doing the right thing requiring employees of companies over 100 to get vaccinated, as well as the military and our healthcare workers. This all makes good sense under the current emergency scenario. Many readers may be too young to recall the many wartime sacrifices that were required during World War 2, as we fought Hitler and the Axis powers. Gasoline was rationed, food was rationed and scores of individuals were drafted and died serving our country. Those in the military were required to get vaccines. All of these things went against what Mr. Lamborn calls individual liberty, but it was for public freedoms and the global good.

As for those that wish to make a political statement about their personal freedom with regard to vaccines, they still have options. They can quit their job if they work for a large company and find work with a smaller firm. When they get sick they may choose to stay home and save those hospital beds for people that really need them – those that have been vaccinated and have other illnesses that require medical attention.

Contrary to Rep. Lamborn’s claims, increasing the number of vaccinated Americans will only boost American productivity, raise GDP, lower healthcare costs, protect our national security and get more Americans gainfully employed. I’m also very happy to report that because of the new Colorado re-districting boundaries, Chaffee County will no longer be in Mr. Lamborn’s district and we can look forward to the absence of his editorials in our local papers.

Roger Cox,
Salida

Editor’s note: The guest opinion by Colorado Congressional Representative Doug Lamborn that is referred to in this letter was not distributed to Ark Valley Voice.