Under the baobab: These are confusing times, but the decision to vaccinate, mask up is simple

These are confusing times. We are emerging from the storm, witnessing a new normal. It is good to be with people again, to touch, to hug, to love. Yet even as the clouds dissipate, we see other gales circumfusing in the gulf. We look to our leaders to use science and good judgment to guide our ship to safe harbor. Instead we are often given instructions that guide us to lifeboats seemingly skippered by fools.

Happy Valley seemed to be resuming its course. President Eric Barron held a town hall to affirm that vaccinations were not going to be mandatory this fall at Penn State. The implication was that the pandemic was being managed. Then a few hours later, before the opening of the Penn’s Woods Music Festival, the situation changed. There was a rise in COVID-19 infections. It mandated that all people, vaccinated or not, would have to wear masks indoors on all university campuses.

The concert was delightful even if we had to wear masks. Cathy Herrera on flute and Brent Register on guitar rendered several pieces in “A Latin American Mosaic.” The Kilar Pennsylvania Quintet with Naomi Seidman on flute, Andreas Oeste on Oboe, Anthony Costa on clarinet, Daryl Durran on bassoon and Lisa O. Bontrager on horn performed Wojciech’s “Quintet for Winds.” The evening concluded with a stunning rendition of Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49 by Mendelssohn, performed by Sally Minnich on Violin and Stephen Feldman on cello. Pianist I-Lin Tsai enthusiastically and passionately executed complex piano riffs and brought the house down, or in this instance up, to a standing ovation.

I first met President Barron when he visited our exhibit, “Africa and Diaspora,” organized by Prof. Grace Hampton and myself using our combined collections of African American art. President Barron requested a special tour so that he could better understand the subtleties of the exhibition. Later I saw him join the students in front of Old Main in a Black Lives Matter demonstration. He stood up for the rights of students to legitimately protest and took a lot of heat for it. So, what are we to think of these inconsistent and divergent instructions?

Barron is not the embodiment of Penn State consciousness. His is only one head of a multi-headed hydrae which include: the trustees, the deans, the faculty, the alumni, the donors, the Happy Valley community, the state legislature and the students. All have a say in policy making. Penn State is like a lake fed by many streams that converge but do not necessarily merge into a single body of thought.

Most people in our community have been vaccinated. But some of our neighbors believe the pandemic is not real but a political conspiracy. They refuse to use vaccines, masks, or social distancing. I have a couple of anti-vaxxers in my own family.

I am a polio survivor. I caught the disease as a child at summer camp and spent much of the rest of the season in a hospital. I was fortunate. I recovered when Jonas Salk gifted the world with his vaccine. It probably saved my life and millions of others throughout the world. It is incomprehensible to me that so many people foolishly value their own misconceived idea of their civil rights over arresting the destruction of this disease that has already killed 4,270,000 people worldwide.

Another name for polio was infantile paralysis because it affected children most severely. History sometimes repeats itself. Unvaccinated children seem to be the primary victims of this new delta strain. People are entitled to hold and espouse their political beliefs but not at the cost of the lives of our children. Wear the mask, get the shot. Like Marvin Gaye said, “We have got to save the babies, all the babies.”