This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

“You don’t have to like it.  Just do it.”

That was a quote from my late father.  And, if you asked any of my four siblings for one of my father’s favorite sayings, they likely would come up with this one.

I clarify that my father was a great, positive influence on my life and, the quote above does not do him justice for his role in bringing up five children, including me.  I remember him fondly every day.

Still, the quote resonated with me this weekend as I thought again about the virus that plagues us.

The solution?  Get vaccinated.

Simple.  Yet, so controversial.

“You don’t have to like it.  Just do it.”

Finding health care policy equilibrium rests both on medical statistics and on public perceptions. Doing so involves three groups in society:

• The largest group is the fully vaccinated. For most of us, the new variant is a serious nuisance, like an especially virile flu, but not much more than that.  It’s unpleasant (I know, because I have it), but, if this were the version of covid that hit everyone who got infected in 2020, no school or business would have closed.
• The second group is the immune-compromised, even if they are vaccinated — including people with underlying conditions and the elderly. The risk to them remains high, and the extra care they have to take can be isolating.  But that’s the case with every contagion, including the flu.  We don’t re-order the society around it.
• The third group is, of course, the unvaccinated. (I’m not including children under 5, who are still not eligible for a coronavirus vaccine.) Unvaccinated persons have now had a year to absorb all warnings and weigh all the arguments.  They’ve seen high-profile vaccine deniers — talk show hosts, Trumpian candidates — needlessly dying from a virus they chose to exploit.

The unvaccinated are like unrepentant smokers.  The U.S. has spent decades telling smokers they might get lung cancer.  We’ve plastered warnings everywhere.  Still, many persist.

To move citizens from group #3 to group #1 above, all that’s necessary is for everyone to heed my father’s axiom:  “You don’t have to like it.  Just do it.”