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LETTER: Reader says one person's freedom doesn't trump someone else's

'It is unconscionable to think that not getting a vaccine is your right when it’s just as much of my right not to be infected by your sense of freedom,' says Barrie resident
Freedom Convoy 2-11-22 4

BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter from Barrie resident Andrew Tomarin is in response to the ongoing convoy protest and vaccine mandates. 
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I’ve had the biscuit with this pandemic as much as anybody else. I, too, am tired of the lockdowns, masks, sickness, and the inability to feel safe, hugging and shaking hands.

However, I also know that it’s not my government nor our scientists that are to blame for these conditions. It is an aberration in nature. The only way to get through this is to follow common sense and the directions of the science table and the mandates which we know work.

It is our government's job to protect us and that is what they are doing. Why are there mandates? Simple, because there are people like these of the “freedom“ protest who are only thinking of themselves and not the whole of the country. 

I am also afraid of needles as much as the next person. But now I know how important the vaccination process is.

I also know, without being a scientist but being of scientific mind, that the implementation of a vaccine mandate is necessary. For those of you who say 'my body, my choice,' you should probably find an island to live on. It is unconscionable to think that not getting a vaccine is your right when it’s just as much of my right not to be infected by your sense of freedom.

It is my right to go somewhere knowing that everyone around me is doing their utmost not only to protect themselves but to protect me and my family. They seem to think it’s “my choice” to get infected or infect others. No! No, it’s not.

Add skewed views on fighting a pandemic is somehow akin to the Holocaust. This sickens me. The appropriation of the idea we are suffering as the Jews during the Holocaust of the Second World War. Being born Jewish but not practising now does not lessen my disgust and vociferous anger when I found out a group of these so-called “freedom protesters” were wearing Stars of David as the Jews had done by force of the Nazis in the Second World War. 

These are people who have either never understood nor studied the Second World War and the practices of the Nazi regime on those they considered lesser human beings. They would not compare themselves to those who were forced into concentration camps to die versus being forced to wear a mask so you don’t spread or receive an airborne disease ... a disease that will kill you and not a people or government. 

Delusional righteousness is their platform which I thought was only possible in the U.S. The politics of our neighbour has infested and culled them from the good sense that is Canada and the Canadians they purport to be. How can anyone compare being asked or told to get a vaccine, wear a mask to protect others and yourself to Nazism?

Feel free to not get a vaccine, not wear a mask, not close your business, and attract people into your unsafe environment. But when we can’t get control of this pandemic because of supposed encroachment upon your “freedoms,“ consider how many less patrons of your business you’ll have when they’re dead for your delusional idea of lost freedom. 

You want to compare the Second World War to now? Try this  “keep calm and carry on.” 

Together we will get through this and back to normal. 

Andrew Tomarin
Barrie

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