In workplaces and living rooms across the country, people are having hard conversations about the Covid-19 vaccine. And with Thanksgiving around the corner, we'll soon be navigating these vaccination questions for family get-togethers and holiday gatherings. Talking about vaccination can arouse deep-seated anxieties related to safety, health and autonomy.
High-stakes conversations like these can unravel quickly. Wrong words or bad assumptions can thrust a relationship into repetitive cycles of defensiveness, mistrust and antagonism. If you've ever seen Thanksgiving dinner devolve into a shouting argument about politics, you know what this looks like — and you know how painful it can be, not only for the people involved but for a whole community.
The conversations we have in private are also microcosms of our public discourse, where some people bemoan "anti-vaxxers" who "don't believe in science" while unvaccinated people who are anxious about the government or the medical system might feel that their concerns aren't being heard at all. This dynamic serves no one. It generates even more mistrust and makes us no safer or healthier.
How do we do better? We can begin by drawing out the individual experiences that lie beneath a person's values and perspectives. The intricacy and subtlety of a person's own story can interrupt these toxic cycles — without asking anyone to compromise their core beliefs.
Let me offer two pairs of examples to help illuminate this idea.
I have a friend who got pregnant during Covid-19. Weighing the risks and benefits with her doctor, she chose not to get vaccinated. She and her partner had struggled with fertility for so long, they were terrified to complicate the pregnancy. Another friend, with the same basic background and the same information, got vaccinated the second she was eligible after getting pregnant. She was terrified of complicating an already high-risk pregnancy with Covid-19.
These two friends began, more or less, in the same place. They arrived at different decisions through a series of values-based choices. They made the best decisions they could at each step, trying to protect themselves and their pregnancies.
I have another friend who has a compromised immune system. After the vaccine was approved, she drove for 10 hours from Colorado to Kansas to get vaccinated — it was the closest available appointment. Yet another friend, with a congenital kidney disorder, has yet to get vaccinated. The doctor said that they truly could not predict the side effects of the vaccine, or its effectiveness, for people with the disease. Balancing the risks, they decided that it is safer to follow other precautions, like masking. Now my friend is worried that, at some point, they'll be mandated by their employer or by the government to get it anyway.
These and many, many other individual stories explode the public debate over vaccinations, which oversimplifies the decisions people face and villainizes those who disagree with you. Few people would enter honestly into a conversation where they expect to be demeaned. Those conversations are pre-determined to fail — they fail to persuade, they fail to make us all safer, they fail to sustain our relationships and communities.
As long as we're engaging in toxic, polarized, zero-sum debates about COVID-19 vaccinations, we're going to struggle to build effective policies and public trust, both of which are needed for public health.
We can begin to change the national conversation by having better conversations about vaccination in our private lives. It's not easy, but it's not impossible. If you want to engage in a deeper, more meaningful dialogue about vaccines, especially with someone who might disagree with you, here are three questions to ask yourself before you start the conversation:
- What is my goal for this conversation? Before you dive in, make sure you have a goal that the other person would sign up for. Instead of trying to change a person's opinion, try to learn more about the values or personal experiences behind their choice. Or enter with the goal of helping them feel heard and seen, especially if they're in the minority in your community. You may find that the conversation leaves you both changed in ways you couldn't predict.
- Where do I feel conflicted and where does my thinking defy expectations? Most people hold nuanced views about the issues that matter most to them, but rarely get to share those perspectives in all their complexity. Start by thinking about the areas where your own view is less clear or certain than people might assume. Decide what you're willing to share. Maybe you have mixed feelings about bodily autonomy and mandates, or you don't completely trust pharmaceutical companies, or you worry about spreading Covid unknowingly. Opening up about your own reflections, feelings and values will make it possible for other people to do the same.
- How can I ask a question that invites a personal story rather than an opinion? Questions can open people up or close them off. Try to ask questions that invite a personal story or experience, or to share what's at the heart of the matter in regards to their perspective. Ask questions like: "What do you wish people understood about your decision?" or "What in your decision most resonates with a value about how you want to live your life?"
People are always changed by what they hear in a deeper, truer conversation with someone else in their community — even if their view or choice remains the same as it was at the start. There is no way to know the outcome of a genuine, open, curious conversation until you actually have one.
But one thing is certain. Without better conversations, without interrupting the toxic cycles of polarization, we will not be able to meet the challenges that face our communities today. Better conversations are crucial if we are to live and work in community, to thrive in community and to survive as a democracy. If nothing else, the Covid-19 pandemic has reminded us all that our futures are intertwined.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.