Human nature is a peculiar and sometimes baffling phenomenon, and the pandemic has made that clearer than ever.

Almost a million of us have died — we all know someone — and it was totally unnecessary in so many cases. Sure, the virus itself was the ultimate cause of death, but human nature was at least a contributing factor too many times.  

For about a year, there have been effective vaccines that have provided strong protection against contracting the disease and then greatly diminished the impact of the illness.  What’s more, that protection has also prevented us from infecting others, particularly those who haven’t been vaccinated and have no defense at all against the consequences of their decision.

So, why hasn’t everyone rushed to get their jabs, instead of less than two-thirds of us, particularly when there’s been almost no one who’s suffered a life-threatening, adverse consequence from a vaccine? I submit, it’s human nature at work.

Americans are generous and courageous people, sometimes even at the risk of their own mortality, and those anti-vaxxers among us are often the same ones who jump onto subway tracks to rescue total strangers from speeding trains, who tackle armed terrorists firing on schoolchildren, who rush into burning buildings to rescue their neighbors’ pets and who may even donate kidneys to people they’ve never met. Then why don’t they all get vaccinated so as not to infect others with the deadly disease, people they might heroically save under other circumstances, particularly when there’s virtually no adverse consequence to themselves? No one’s asking them to dive on a live hand grenade to save their band of brothers.

The answer is the human nature of those same Americans, whose forefathers gave them the Bill of Rights and who’ve now run with it to the point that they recoil at being told they have to do anything. And the problem is, ever since the vaccine was made available, they’ve been told — sometimes even ordered — to get vaccinated and to wear masks. “Over my dead body” (and in that they’re accurate), they say, “I’ve got rights and I’m not giving them up just because you say so.” Clearly, those mandates have been the wrong approach for many of our national freedom fighters.  

What that last third of us would more likely respond to is not another whiny appeal from a scientist — or from a politician we didn’t vote for — but good old parent-teenager reverse psychology. My father worked for a tobacco company his entire career. When I was 14, he said I didn’t need to sneak around to smoke; I could smoke at home and he’d bring me the cigarettes. I was nonplussed, to say the least, and never took up smoking, even behind the garage.

What would have made a difference in the vaccination rate — and could still do so if correctly scripted — would be an appeal to the courageous American spirit of “coming to the rescue,”  like Sully Sullenberger, or those brave Western firefighters, or the Red Cross volunteers who rush to disaster areas to save lives — or Superman or Wonder Woman, for Pete’s sake.

So, how about “Getting vaccinated is not without significant danger, so beware of the risks, and whatever you do, don’t jeopardize your own health. Sure, you might save dozens of lives — even that nice old lady’s next door — but it could weaken your own immune system, or you might have a stroke or heart attack. What are you anyhow, some kind of reckless do-gooder, or Davy Crockett on the ramparts at the Alamo? Leave that to those lemmings who’ll do anything they’re told.”  

OK, maybe there’s not a grain of truth there, but the holdouts aren’t basing their decisions on truth anyhow, and spinning it like this would have them lining up like their patriotic grandfathers did the day after Pearl Harbor.   

After all, nothing else has worked, so what have we got to lose — except another hundred thousand or so of us?

L. Phillips Runyon III is a Peterborough attorney who was the presiding justice of the 8th Circuit Court.