{"ops":[{"insert":"Critical thinking enables us to reason with skill and responsibility through the issues, problems, and opportunities we face. Critical thinking helps us reason with discipline through significant questions. When we have developed critical thinking skills, abilities and characteristics, we recognize that every question we reason through requires that we achieve intellectual tasks "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"specific to that question"},{"insert":". But this is true only if we have internalized the concepts and principles embedded in a rich conception of fairminded critical thinking.\n \nOnce we have achieved understanding of a rich concept of critical thinking, and when we are actively committed to critical reasoning, we can effectively reason through questions such as: Should I get the COVID 19 vaccination?\n \nYet, the question: "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"Should I get the COVID 19 vaccination?"},{"insert":" has been treated and is being treated by some as a political question. It is also being treated as a question of personal preference or as a question pertaining to one’s individual rights. This question is neither a political question, nor a question of personal preference, nor, fundamentally about individual rights. Instead, it is a "},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"scientific question"},{"insert":" with an important "},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"ethical dimension"},{"insert":". First, the question calls on us to gather the relevant scientific information needed to determine whether vaccinations significantly diminished the power of COVID19 and hence keep us significantly safer. For this scientific information we must rely upon the best scientific thinking about the vaccination, its benefits and its risks. Unless you are a scientist who specializes in COVID19 vaccinations, you will need to rely on the best expert thinking being done by the scientists who know the most about these vaccinations. Further, because we can easily spread the COVID19 virus without even knowing we are doing so, and because we interact with other humans who may easily contract COVID19 from us should we be carriers, we are ethically obligated to consider how our decision to vaccinate or not may affect others with whom we come into contact. Some naïve or close-minded thinkers have argued that we cannot rely on scientists for guidance because they “keep changing their minds.” A critical thinker recognizes this as a matter of course, when new information is obtained that requires scientific experts to change their minds.\n \nThe COVID19 virus should remind us of how intertwined we are as human, one with another. We face a public health crisis and a public health tragedy of tremendous proportions, due to misinformation on COVID19 – both its effects and its vaccinations, and do to the stubborn arrogant nature of the human species. Many will continue to die, primarily according to the principle of "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"the individual’s right to choose"},{"insert":". It must be said that, indeed, everyone has a right to die by avoiding that which would keep them alive, but not if that right infringes upon the rights of others to live and to remain healthy. In other words, when our decisions necessarily affect others, we are ethically obligated to consider those others, whether we want to do so or not. Critical reasoning requires it of us. No amount of hiding under the banner of individual rights will stand under such circumstances.\n \nUnfortunately, many humans are either willfully ignorant or fall prey to sociocentrism in following the thinking of those who, though they reason poorly, can effectively convince others of their views.\n \nIt is a sad day in the life of humans when we cannot make simple critical thinking moves that would keep us alive and healthy. But this is nothing new. Many people willfully ignore information that would lead them to a higher level of health and well-being. That apparently is their choice, even though it may be costly in medical terms for which we all pay. But when these same people refuse to become inoculated for the common good, to protect not primarily themselves, but to protect everyone, they show themselves to be both narrowminded and callous to the rights and needs of others.\n \nWhat we need is a world filled with people committed to ethical critical thinking, and who are willing to do the work to become critical thinkers. Our schools, colleges and universities still largely ignore fairminded critical thinking, whatever their rhetoric. Therefore, it is no surprise that many people are swept along by superstition, group think, conspiracy theories and all manner of bizarre ideologies.\n \nCritical thinking theory, which blossomed in earnest in the late 1970’s, offers us many tools for improving our thinking. It is time we take these tools seriously, for the good of all people and all other sentient thinkers.\n \nFor more on how to approach questions with discipline, read:\n"},{"attributes":{"color":"#0563c1","link":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/viewDocument.php?doc=../content/library_for_everyone/52/Thinker__sGuidetotheArtofAskingEssentialQuestions.pdf&page=1"},"insert":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/viewDocument.php?doc=../content/library_for_everyone/52/Thinker__sGuidetotheArtofAskingEssentialQuestions.pdf&page=1"},{"insert":"\n"}]}