Opinion: Personal choice has been weaponized to undermine public health
“Public health isn’t the sum of individual choices. It’s our collective agreement to protect the most vulnerable among us,” writes MeiLan Han.
I recently came across a reel on Instagram that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I saw it. A pastor in Texas stood before his congregation and proudly announced that their school had the lowest vaccination rate in the state. With balloons and celebratory T-shirts, he praised their community for what he called “freedom of health.”
As one of many pulmonary and critical care physicians in this country who served during the pandemic, I had a difficult time wrapping my head around how we could get to this place where public health is the enemy, that opting out is strength.
