EDITOR'S LETTER

I was in the morning queue at Kiva Elementary when my daughter handed me her mask. Like Forrest Gump in Monument Valley, when he suddenly decided to stop running, she was done. She didn't say anything, but her expression was her proxy. Enough is enough. "What's going on, sweetheart?" "It's not fair, Daddy. Half the kids in my class don't wear masks. Why do I have to?

She's right, I thought, as I tried to muster strength and shutter so many emotions. But there wasn't time to explain herd immunity. How we're not there yet. And how a mask can help keep her safe. I didn't have to explain it, though. She's smart. And she understands. I think she was just wishful thinking - craving the innocence that kids are supposed to take for granted in the fifth grade. Like the rest of us, she wanted to feel like things were back to normal. But they're not. Because not enough people have been vaccinated.

There are reasons for that. Lack of confidence and complacency among them. And some people just don't like being told what to do. Scientists have a term for it. It's called "psychological reactance." According to Dr. Elizabeth Dorrance, a professor at Michigan State University, it's our brain's response to a threat to our personal freedom. "People who strongly feel reactance," she writes in Psychology Today, "feel an urge to do something. That something can be restoring one's freedom by rebelling against the advised or prescribed action."

It's human nature, I guess, but sometimes, for the greater good, we do what needs to be done. We stop at red lights, we slow down in school zones, we obey fire restrictions, we sneeze into our elbows. And now, the smartest people in the scientific world are telling us to get vaccinated. For the greater good. Even politicians, from both sides of the aisle, are advocating the jab. But not enough people are listening.

When I sit down to write this column every month, I have no idea what direction it'll take. Like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin, I usually stare at the screen for a while, hoping for something to emerge. I suppose I expected to see autumn leaves this time around. Or maybe some flashback to trick-ortreating as a boy. I certainly had no intention of writing about the coronavirus. But then I got an email from photographer Jack Dykinga.

Jack and I had been going back and forth, trying to schedule a podcast interview. I figured his email was a return volley. Instead, he dropped a bomb. "I've been diagnosed with COVID," he wrote. "Just found out and wanted to give you an early warning. I'll be getting intravenous treatment, because of my compromised immune system. Stay tuned."

Those 29 words scared the hell out of me. In 2010, Jack was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an uninvited guest that led to a double lung transplant. Just like that, the ominous statistics about "breakthrough COVID" were attached to a name. And it was someone in my family. The next day, Jack opened up: "We did everything right," he wrote. "We isolated early in 2020, we dutifully wiped down our groceries, and we got two doses of Moderna's vaccine as soon as possible. Yet, during a routine check prior to a procedure at the Norton Thoracic Institute in Phoenix, I learned that I had COVID.

"I was prepped for the procedure when word came that they needed to abort because my test was positive. My wife, Margaret, and I left the operating suite in stunned silence. The only option was to return to the emergency room.

"After approximately two hours, I was ushered to a cloth-curtained cubicle in a suite full of desperate people in life-or-death battles that many will lose. It's hard to overstate the trauma of being in the middle of a war, where heroic nurses are doing battle with an unseen enemy. Many of the best have quit with the medical equivalent of PTSD. It's not the COVID, I'm told; it's the apathy of the unvaccinated who fill the wards in a hopeless cycle."

"It's easy to say that people have made bad decisions, and now they're suffering, but when you hear their fear and their humanity as they face the incomprehensible, you realize we must be committed to a universal solution. The thought of a sea of unvaccinated human being hosts fostering yet more vari-ants cannot be an option. Like it or not, we're in this together."

Van Gogh said that "great things are done by a series of small things brought together." Benjamin Franklin was more direct: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

As I write this, the night's headline delivers the somber news that three Arizona police officers have died this week from complications related to COVID. I don't know whether or not they were vaccinated. But I do know that they're gone. And their friends and families are suffering. And so are so many others. To date, COVID has claimed the lives of 4.3 million people worldwide, including one of my family members in Seattle.

Herd immunity might have saved their lives. It's textbook: "When a large portion of a community becomes immune to a disease," Mayo Clinic says, "it makes the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. And that protects the whole community - not just those who are immune." Unfortunately, we're not there yet.

Meantime, my daughter is still wearing a mask. And doctors and nurses are still risking their lives to save those of others. I tell my daughters there are two ways to be: "You either care about the people you don't know. Or you don't."

I don't know the doctors and nurses who took care of our legendary photographer. But I care about them. And their wellbeing. And I care about my friends and family, including Jack Dykinga. That's why I'm vaccinated. For the greater good.