The Colonel #48 The Cost of Freedom

A New York Times article recently alerted me to the fact that I could get money, a cruise or a trip to the Super Bowl if I would just come get vaccinated for CoviD19. I like money and cruises, I’m less enthusiastic about professional sports. I’d consider going to the Super Bowl if I couldn’t sell the ticket to someone else. However, none of these things is sufficient inducement to dabble with drugs again.

I’m not here today to rant about the omnipotent vaccine. Not directly, that is. But consider, for a moment the unstated truth in the article’s headline. How is it this altruistic vaccine requires expensive inducements? And more to my point, where is all the money coming from to provide them?

I’ve never priced Super Bowl tickets—no point, I know I cannot afford them. Which tells me enough about that. The states of Ohio, Colorado, and Oregon are putting up one million dollars each for the lucky vaccine taker. The city of Detroit will give you a $50 gift card just for driving some to be vaccinated. There’s probably someone in the city who could hire an Uber to transport the intended victim and still turn a small profit.

Admittedly I don’t know the gross profit from a single dose of vaccine. I know from the article CVS has 25 million but has only managed to administer 17 million of those doses. I also know they are charging $40 a dose for the administration of an injection. A minimum wage person off the street could give it with ten minutes of training and another ten minutes to administer.

Let’s see 17,000,000 times $40 comes to $680,000,000. That’s giving the shot. Let’s be conservative in our guess at the profit per dose and say it’s $100. Wow! Getting close to two billion dollars. Now you see why a measly one million dollars is worth paying for promotion (to be written off later)?

It’s for the good of all, and even more for the good of giants like CVS.

The part I find really dismaying is not how many people are being duped by promotions like this. It is that. Like all healthcare in this country, no one cares about the cost. We only want to know, “Is Medicare/ Medicaid/my insurance paying for it?” Like that makes it free.

This old man is here today to tell you nothing is free. More than that—you pay for what you get. You may not reach in your pocket and pull out dollars, but you are paying just the same.

You are paying with your taxes, with that monthly fee Medicare or your gap insurance charges, with a growing national debt, and the rising price of each of these. You are paying with your ability to choose the next time (and there will be a next time) the government wants to inject you with whatever is good for you.

You are paying with the multitude of businesses that closed their doors to create the market for this drug. You are paying with delays in cancer, cardiac, and diabetic care generated by the media, doctors, and governors guilty of pedaling fear rather than peace.

Worse than that, you are forcing everyone else in the country to pay those unseen costs right along with you—and you damn sure gave them no choice.

Enjoy.