The Vaccination Drama
A true global pandemic in modern times is a rarity, especially one claiming so many lives, although the HIV/AIDS pandemic has claimed 30 million lives. Each brings humanity itself into a glaringly sharp focus hidden during calmer times.
AIDS is a nasty example of how we cheaply and cruelly protect our psyches. We compartmentalized and made it a gay man's disease and thus, those of us straight could conveniently set aside emotional trauma. It affects THEM, not us!
That cheap compartmentalization comes with a price, a price of bigotry and cruelty, a price of the loss of part of our human compassion. It is easier for those who have already compromised those qualities, but it is common to many. It is especially easier to cast evil and stress onto someone we already have decided was evil anyway, such as the judgment of evil on the gay man.
Covid-19 had an evil straw man in America, the entire Chinese population. Every time it is referred to by a leader as the China Virus, it is a reminder. I have noticed this is an aspersion not limited to America, but it really took hold here. The Asian Americans are a close enough target for the truly ignorant and they are being attacked physically and economically by so many of our white citizens. For others, simply not a conservative follower of Trumpian Republican beliefs is enough.
These attacks are bad enough, but these beliefs and attitudes have found a strange and destructive bedfellow, the antivaccination movement spawned in large part by a corrupt study from England that purpotedly showed a link between vaccines and autism. It turned out to be spurious at best, but the fuse was lit and a movement was sparked. Like the witch hysteria of Salem, there are those who believe no vaccine is to be trusted. Add to this early use of blacks in awful experiments like the Tuskegee experiment and you will find whole segments of populations rejecting vaccination.
Donald Trump has never found a conspiracy that wasn't to his liking and use. People who rejected his unscientific claims were easy to spot, for he refused to wear a mask, mocked those who wore masks, and it became easy to spot the infidels. They wore masks in public! Cowards and enemies of the economy. Libtards and tree huggers!
A poll last week showed 49% of Republicans saying they would not take a Covid-19 vaccine when it was available to them. The good part of that is that hopefully many are just trying to save face and will get their vaccination in private like Donald and Melania Trump did. Still, enough of them are probably going to become hosts to the virus and allow it the only path to viral victory, mutating within and between hosts to escape protection.
It is a race. The development of these vaccines and the technology is fantastic. I give credit to Trump's Warp Speed program, the only thing he didn't screw up in this pandemic. Still, give me the powers of the Presidency and I think I could have accomplished that feat, but nonetheless, give him credit where it is due.
Biden has finally got us on organized footing getting the vaccine distributed and into people's arms. We are racing against the mutation clock, for the more people inocculated, the fewer hosts for transmission and mutation. If we can get 75-80% of the population immunized, we should have national herd immunity. Then we need to keep pushing until we can get the poorer nations of the world just as immunized.
We were going to have drama no matter what the path, for backs to the wall of mortality tends to create drama. But we had known mitigation measures and it certainly didn't need to be so intense and fraught with peril. Viruses love when politics wins out over evidence.
Please check out my other blog mates' takes on the same topic brought to us by Maria, at their blogs:
Backs against the wall indeed. As vusual we are on the same page thought wise, you in the classic literary mode and me a mystery author LOL. I am waiting for the white right to call this evolution, naturalselection.
ReplyDeleteReading your entry, I think indeed that many in the white right consciously or unconsciously see this as Darwinism, never considering they may not be the survivors. They think themselves brave and honest, but I do not agree on either count.
DeleteThe numbers everywhere are simply mind boggling and yes, there is a lot of drama and we will see more in the days to come. Pettiness, coverups and heroism will all be seen as I am already witnessing over here. Blame games, inefficiencies and sheer callousness all are in view if one takes an impartial view. I have never seen anything like this before nor would I like to see ever again.
ReplyDelete