There have been many good reasons offered as to why Mississippians should get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Vaccination protects those who get the shots and those around them. Vaccination reduces the strain on the state’s health care workers and its hospitals. Vaccination helps schools and businesses stay open.
And, according to Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, it can remove a barrier that keeps companies and individuals from moving here.
As Hosemann recently said, there is no marketing advantage to Mississippi having one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation.
“Is that our selling point? I don’t think so,” he said.
The leadership of this state, both Republican and Democratic, has been working for decades to remove some of the barriers to Mississippi’s economic progress and its population growth. There are lots of areas that have needed improvement: from education to health care, from race relations to national image. Definite progress has been made in some areas; in others it has been a hard slog. We should not want to make it any harder.
When companies or people are looking to move to an area, one of the first things they want to know is, “Is it safe?” A low vaccination rate does not help answer that question in the affirmative.
- The Greenwood Commonwealth
