Letters to the Editor: Hey anti-vaxxers, ‘My body, my choice’ doesn’t apply to infectious disease

To the editor: The anti-vaccine group Defeat the Mandates decided to co-opt the abortion rights slogan “My body, my choice.” There’s a big difference between deciding to get an abortion and deciding not to get vaccinated against COVID-19: A person who refuses vaccinations can more easily contract the virus and spread it to others. A woman getting an abortion doesn’t affect anyone else.

I wish these anti-vaxxers would consider others in their community. Of course, when they get COVID-19 and are hospitalized, they will insist that they are helped.

It’s ridiculous to politicize healthcare. Vaccinations have saved millions of people around the world. Now all of a sudden they’re considered a bad thing.

These people don’t like to be told what to do by government even if it saves lives. These generations after World War II are the selfish generations — very sad.

P.S. Hayes, Long Beach

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To the editor: Pregnancy is not contagious. Pregnant people cannot endanger the health of others in their community. Careless, thoughtless, COVID-positive people can.

Ellen Knopf, Tustin

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To the editor: Apparently, the BA.5 coronavirus variant is the most transmissible variant yet. Reinfections are possible and vaccinated folks can definitely catch it.

It was almost 2½ years ago, before we became fully aware of the impending pandemic, that we read the startling opinion of noted epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch in the Atlantic magazine that 40%-70% of the world’s population — between 3 billion and 5 billion people — would get COVID-19.

The World Health Organization says there have been more than half a billion reported cases worldwide, with credible estimates of unreported cases at five to 10 times that number. And the total continues to mount as new, even more communicable variants arise.

Can it be the that original February 2020 prediction of 3 billion to 5 billion cases, which seemed preposterous at the time, was completely accurate? We will probably never know the answer. But that doesn’t really matter, especially compared to the follow-up question: What’s next?

Nicholas LaTerza, Calabasas