The “carrot-and-stick” approach was used with donkeys pulling carts in the 1800s. Which works best? Beating the donkey with a stick, or having a carrot dangling on a string held in front of the donkey?

Approximately 9 of 10 people in hospitals and the vast majority of deaths with COVID-19 are unvaccinated people (non-vaxxers). Vaccinated people are 97 times less likely to die than non-vaccinated. These are very important statistics.

How and why?

The COVID-19 virus affects multiple organ systems. The virus damages the interior lining of blood vessels (endothelium) and blood carrying the virus can damage your entire body right down to the level of each single cell that is serviced by your blood, which is all of them. Lungs are significantly harmed as a primary site of infection.

There is damage to the brain (brain fog, headaches), heart, kidneys, liver, spleen, reproductive organs (blood vessels that cause erection are damaged and men can become impotent), women can produce damaged oocytes (eggs) and loss of senses of taste and smell. There also is immune system malfunction, impaired blood clotting capability, potential PTSD and other mental health problems.

Some people with COVID-19 develop abnormal blood clots, including in the smallest blood vessels, and these clots may also form in multiple places in the body, including in the lungs again. This unusual clotting may cause several types of complications, including organ damage, heart attack and stroke. And additionally, it all may end as the “long-COVID-19” syndrome too. This is really serious stuff with lifelong complications.

Further, the cost to society at large will be enormous, as millions of infected people experience those detrimental health problems for many years as they age. What about your “golden years”? They sound more like “lead-metal years” to me with all those health difficulties. Considering all these effects and the cost to your health now and as time goes by, is the “no-vax” stance a smart option?

Back to donkeys and sticks. Trying to beat those who will not be vaccinated into submission to do the right thing — for both themselves and for society in general — has not worked. All the begging and pleading with the vaccine denying contingent still has still left us Americans with an estimated 20%-36% unvaccinated people. That group will be responsible for keeping the pandemic rolling along for months and/or years with virus mutations and new variants popping up and threatening us even more, and all the things we have been doing to prevent infection, the masking and distancing and isolating and on and on will have gone to waste.

Are the vaccines safe? Yes. More than 9.87 billion of doses have been administered all around the world with negligible side effects, so safety is well proven. Do vaccines have side effects? Yes, of course — tiny ones. In relation to dying of COVID-19, those side effects are less than miniscule. You may have the right to die, but you do not have the right to transmit infection and kill other people as well.

Non-vaxxer (that is a technical term) people are plugging up hospitals and other people in need cannot be served. In a hospital and/or anywhere else, a non-vaccinated person is a threat to everyone around them and they should not be allowed to threaten everyone else in the medical facility.

Nationwide, more than 400,000 health care workers — let me repeat that — 400,000 nurses and respiratory therapists and physicians — have quit. They are burned out. 400,000 of them. What a horrendous number and loss of medical expertise. In addition to the stress, fatigue and potential for themselves being infected and then infecting their families, the emotional impact of working so diligently and then seeing so many people suffer and die needless deaths has left them devastated.

But here’s an idea — a carrot — that is easy to implement and gives the unvaccinated population a reason to reconsider their position. Medical facilities of all sorts admit only people who can show proof of vaccination. At hospitals, if a person is not vaccinated and has COVID-19 they are allowed entrance only once into the emergency room, are treated and sent home to quarantine there.

The option of telemedicine is offered for recuperation at home. This should be a law, but if not could potentially be an enforced policy for protection of hospital patients and staff. The carrot simply is availability — or not — of in-hospital health care. It is yes or no. But telemedicine is always available. I know denying people medical treatment is currently not legal, so this suggestion is spurious but laws are subject to change if need be.

The only exception to vaccination is acute life-threatening medical conditions, with appropriate documentation from the attending physician. To prevent frauds, before admission that physician will be contacted for confirmation. Religious exception is not allowed.

I am not aware of any basic religious book — the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, others — that says anything about COVID-19 vaccination, but the Bible does say things about your body being a “temple of God” and taking good care of your body. Anything said about religious objection to vaccination is from men who have concocted up spurious opposition that has nothing to do with religion.

Do I sound cynical? Of course I’m cynical. I’ve been state veterinarian of Oregon and that position is responsible for the exact same things for livestock as the public health officials are for humans — surveillance for disease, sample taking and laboratory diagnostics, epidemiology to understand the dynamics of the disease and where/how the disease is spreading, disease control in livestock it is either culling (slaughter) or vaccination and constant emergency preparedness for rapid response to disease outbreaks.

I know the amount of work it takes to make large-scale disease control programs work, and we all should be honoring our public health personnel and cooperating with them.

Vaccination is the most basic of all tools for establishing population-wide “herd immunity” (a veterinary term originated in 1894) and universal protection of the population. Cattle get vaccinated 100% because if the rancher wants to succeed he has to prevent disease and he does it. So, concerning COVID-19, if a person wants to succeed they will be vaccinated. If they will not participate in elimination of the disease and the disease eliminates that person, that’s fair play as far as the virus is concerned — viruses do not have souls that grieve and mourn at the loss of your life.

But it is very sad that spouses and children and friends will grieve and mourn, and in many thousands of needless deaths are doing so, right now as you read this message. The worldwide death toll stands at 6.04 million as of March 9 and 961,000 in the U.S. We in the U.S. have nearly 20% of worldwide death. How can this be?

May I suggest that you get vaccinated, please?