View from the North 40: It's time to show that you mean it: Skin to win

Not since the Renaissance has Italy led the world so clearly in the culture wars, but this time we’re not talking about arts, and certainly not sciences, we’re talking about the great COVID vaccine resistance of 2021.

Those Italians put some skin in the game.

Even with a pretty high 73% full-vaccination rate in the country, on Dec. 6 Italy started requiring a health pass to prove vaccination for some professions and for entrance into many venues.

The Thursday before the law came into effect, a 57-year-old man opposed to the vaccine showed up at an inoculation clinic in northern Italy for his vaccination, a Dec. 4 Associated Press article says, but the nurse noticed that the skin on his arm was clammy and rubbery. A quick peek under his shirt revealed that the man had his actual arm held tight to his body and a silicone arm sticking out his sleeve in hopes that no one would notice the prosthetic and his shot would be injected into the fake arm.

Curiously, the man is a dentist who had already been suspended from work for not being vaccinated as already required of medical professionals, so he was not only risking his job but also, well, he is a dentist. I would think that a dentist, of all people, would want to be vaccinated against a pandemic disease that is transmitted through respiratory droplets.

Dentists are one of the few doctors who aren’t just at the front line of the disease’s super-spreader source, dentists literally put their faces up to the gaping maw of danger. Seems like they would want all the protection they could rally to their aid.

I can see arguing to skip the COVID vaccination if you are, say, a gynecologist or, better yet, a podiatrist — and, come to think of it, this is the one time in my life I see a positive to being a proctologist. Any other day that profession would be a nope from me — and it’s a nope-to-the-tenth-power during a norovirus outbreak — but with COVID, the proctologist is literally safely positioned behind the front line of contagion while on the job.

This particular vaccination-protesting dentist may yet end up facing charges — as are three of his anti-vaccination countrymen arrested in Sicily for their part in an elaborate ruse to fake the system.

Reuters reported Dec. 21 that “three people, including the nurse and a local leader of the movement known in Italy as 'No-Vax,' have been arrested and face charges of corruption and forgery.”

Police, aware of a devious plot, had a hidden camera set up to catch the nurse at an inoculation clinic draining the vaccine syringes into a tissue before jabbing the participating “recipients.” About a dozen people, who each paid the nurse a $450 bribe, were caught with their fraudulently obtained health passes. The other participants could also face charges.

What have anti-vax people done worldwide to equal this?

Gotten rowdy in public? Any 2-year-old can have a temper tantrum. These Italian No-Vax people were thoughtful and inventive, and they showed they were willing to cooperate with one another and put their own money into the effort, all while not endangering the public. … Well, except that they want to be pandemic spreaders, but you get what I mean.

I can’t speak for the anti-vaccination people of all countries, but the anti-vaxxers here in the U.S. ought to be ashamed of themselves in comparison. What do they have to do to protest vaccinations? Nothing. Literally. They just don’t have to take time out of their lives to go get a shot.

You couldn’t even tell the difference between someone who is a true vaccination protester and someone who’s just too lazy and directionless to be bothered to take the time to get vaccinated — if they would just shut up about it.

All the arguing and the whining and the chest-beating and the Q-sign flashing and the sharing stuff on the internet is so blah blah blah and it doesn’t even show a true commitment to the cause.

Anti-vax people don’t even pay for their own lawyer to argue their case in the Supreme Court. It’s true.

They're all about “The government can’t tell me what to do and needs to stay out of the lives of independent, self-made, American individuals. And I want the state attorney paid for by taxpayer dollars to argue my case in front of the judges paid for with federal taxpayer money.”

Do they irony much?

If anti-vax people want to impress people with their commitment to their cause, perhaps paying for their own lawyer would be a good place to start.

Also, they can take a hint from their Italian cohorts and put some skin in the game while showing off that home-grown sense of irony: Demonstrate that they also can’t be told what to wear, like masks, by holding a rally where everyone marches around naked.

Getting arrested for public nudity would show some real commitment to the cause. Trust me.

Even I would donate to their personal legal fund to see that show.

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