Introductory philosophy students endure unsettling readings and discussions. Most learn to expect and occasionally embrace discomfort. But I counted on one exception every time—an excerpt from The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan heatedly rejects heaven’s eternal harmony, a promise that dares justify the suffering of children. “I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child.” His brother Alyosha falls silent as Ivan hammers away: “But these little ones!” Student heads bow, eyes stare, bodies slump. All quiet.

Prior to vaccine availability and during its gradual rollout, groups tumbled into the disposable category. The elderly and physically-limited, living communally, died in big and sometimes underreported numbers. Frontline workers succumbed—bus drivers and sanitation workers, grocers and nurses, caregivers and teachers. Those who lack affordable and / or accessible health care fell by the wayside. Black and Hispanic populations grieved clusters of loss.

Come April blooms, high vaccination rates coupled with mask wearing allowed a slow coming out—some travel, patio dining, safety even in more numbers. Hope inched up. But July revealed this country’s dangerous underbelly—the anti-mask, anti-vax, careless spreaders of the virus. The 1918 pandemic now ranks second in pandemic lives lost.

The madness of misinformation makes vaccine hesitancy understandable, especially given Black history. I know physicians and nurses involved in successful education and vaccination programs. I know business owners who required proof of vaccination as soon as it was readily available, both for employees and patrons. I know people with pre-existing conditions who can’t take advantage of the vaccine, and they struggle carving out a new way of living. I know teachers lecturing through masks, smiling with their eyes, doing everything right with all their might.

But with the opening of schools, another heretofore unthinkable group of disposables fills hospitals. Children. Parents refuse the vaccine for themselves and for their eligible children. Children under 12, currently ineligible, suffer. Children die.

What dire nonsense, this self-absorbed, anger-propelled vaccine refusal. Disfiguring rage. Soulless disregard. Indiscriminate diss. Imagine the relief provided by the smallpox vaccine. I have friends, polio victims, who have devoted their lives to eradicating the disease. Kindergarten entry vaccines, college admission vaccines, international travel vaccines. Tetanus. Mumps. What advances, such advantages.

Maybe children’s plight will change hearts and help us turn a corner. Maybe more and more businesses mandating the vaccine will help us. Maybe the smallest moment of awareness will help the pro- life / anti-vax dissonant chorus members. Maybe this lone sobering reality will roll up sleeves—the clear meaning of the refusal to mask or vaccinate: I do not care about other people. I do not care, even about children.

Speak up. Say these words. I do not care about other people, including children.

Enough Dostoevsky! A pair of frequently tried and ever-true poets ring out in this moment. “We better take time out,” Maya Angelou implores, and “take a minute, feel some sorrow.” Then, awake and positive, anyone can rejoice that “I’m a Rainbow in Somebody’s Cloud.” Robert Frost dreams of youthful tree climbing, “Birches” his summertime partners in sway. When does he long for bygone days as a swinger of birches? “It’s when I’m weary of considerations / And life is too much like a pathless wood.” Still, Frost quickly adds, earth remains a fine place for love.

One song, performed more than four decades apart, sparks a warm fire. “No more backward thinkin’ / Time for thinkin’ ahead,” Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes rally in “Wake Up Everybody.” John Legend and the Roots repeat Melvin’s plea for the children: “They are the ones who’s coming out.”

Two moon snails, different and the same, light our paths. And how about this addition in Legend’s newer plea for everybody to wake up? “Only love love love can reboot us.”