Krispy Kreme is giving one free donut for the rest of the year to anybody who shows proof of vaccination. People are celebrating this. But what if Marlboro gave a free pack of cigarettes to anybody who shows proof of vaccination? Would we be concerned then?
The reality is Krispy Kreme is running a marketing campaign to make money. They want you in the door with a free donut not because they’re benevolent but because they want you to spend more money. Some companies are leveraging the pandemic to better people’s lives. Krispy Kreme is using the vaccine as a way to make more money for themselves–at the sake of your health.
But they don’t care about your health. It’s clear COVID disproportionately affects people who are overweight and obese, as well as individuals with diabetes, but we’ve yet to have a public conversation about metabolic health. Hand sanitizing, masks, social distancing, and vaccinations are the only topics allowed.
By getting a free donut, you are enabling industrialists to take advantage of your health and the health of our population for their own personal gain. It’s a bad precedent, a dangerous precedent. I don’t think you can be serious about wanting to change this broken system of capitalism-gone-wrong and get a free donut at Krispy Kreme. It’s one or the other. It’s principle or submission.
Krispy Kreme would do more good by giving a free donut-a-day to people who are homeless, hungry, dispossessed, or in financially challenged positions. Or perhaps they could take the money for all these free donuts and start a fund for people who need help. But they didn’t do this. Because they want to take advantage of your personal medical history for their own short-term financial gain.
Do not go to Krispy Kreme. We cannot continue to enable this system.
P.s. Donuts are not bad. I love donuts. Making free donuts an incentive to get vaccinated (or vice versa) is a fundamentally flawed, unethical principle.