I recently wrote about the incredible irony of Americans spurning Covid vaccines that billions abroad would figuratively die for and that millions are literally dying without.
The fury-filled eloquence of Indian journalist Barkha Dutt, addressing her country’s Covid-fueled agony, illuminates the matter far better.
As she observes, “When I hear about the Biden administration’s call for states to pay $100 to anyone getting a coronavirus vaccine, I feel a surge of rage, disgust and bewilderment that it has come to this…The cash-rich Western countries that have not set vaccine mandates are displaying the worst sort of White privilege and unacceptable self-indulgence.”
She paints a couple of portraits of pain:
I think of Mashkoor Khan, an elderly man who speaks with a tremble, lying almost paralyzed on his cot in a small town of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. He pointed me to an empty spot near his bed where his wife used to sleep before she died of covid-19. A clutch of passport photos is all that remains with him of his son and daughter, both of whom also died of the disease. The family says it mortgaged jewelry, sold land and dipped into life savings to pay the hospital fees. In just 19 days, almost an entire home was wiped out. “I have nothing left to live for,” Khan says.
And when I see some American states go to war against mask mandates, I think of Sherchand, a daily wage worker in the capital city’s municipal administration, who earns a salary of 13,000 rupees a month — less than $180. He sold a plot of land to be able to pay the hefty fees for his wife, Manju. She died when the oxygen supply in an overburdened health system ran short. “I am left with neither wife, nor land,” says Sherchand, now a single father to three children.
Multiply these stories by many millions, and we begin to grasp the reality racking so much of the world while so many Americans cling to their self-absorbed fantasies.
The analytical part of me yearns to calmly grasp the blend of disinformation, misinformation and ignorance that drives our non-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers. I want to perceptively probe their blind faith in the heavens, politicians, quacks and pseudo-journalists, which crowds out confidence in science.
Yet, day by day, I can’t help but agree more and more with Ms. Dhutt’s rage, and reject our indulging the self-indulgent.
Those Americans’ vaccination antipathy is so clearly not about rights or freedom. It’s about ignorance, or fear, or selfishness or all of the above. The same applies to their tolerance for spreading Covid.
But particularly against the backdrop of the global nature of the plague, of what India and so many impoverished peoples are suffering, it’s about something else.
As Ms. Dhutt emphasizes, it’s about privilege.
Agreed.
So what should one do – any suggestions?
I have to confess this post was more about venting than constructive solutions. But some of what should be done is slowly happening: businesses requiring employees to get the shots or customers to show proof of vaccination; other institutions putting rules in place that encourage the shots; some right-wing leaders, such as the governor of Alabama, calling for constituents to get shots; and tragically, people’s Covid deaths forcing friends and relatives to reconsider their anti-vax stances.
Thanks Steve for pointing out what disgusts me about America. Our perception of rugged individualism snd manifest destiny that some folks wave in your face when discussion about the vaccine comes up. We have lost our way as a collective force. It ended when WW2 ended a and we began a slow but steady decline in our collective culture and we descended into political theatre add to the politics of division. As you so we’ll point out, people would die to be in the USA and have a vaccine available. But trump and the Republicans have opened Pandora’s box and empowered the ignorant and and political ecosphere to make living or dying a political act of some sort of statement of freedom and American personal privilege. We no longer are the United States We’re blue, red or purple.
Thanks very much, Terry. I might quibble just a bit about when our national identity slide started. JFK’s 1961 inaugural preached, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” There was still some sense of national purpose and sacrifice then. To my mind, Reagan ushered in the “government is the problem” credo and cemented the justification for selfishness. Regardless, thanks for some really valuable insights.
I agree that the selfishness began around Reagan and a recent article – Mother Jones – summarized the significant divisiveness and loss of trust in facts, faith in government and major polarization at the same time as Fox News. See the latest issue and follow how they dissect social media and other suspects and conclude with a 20 year time line that points directly to Fox News.
The recent Carter biography clearly shows the contrast between that administration in advocating and practicing compassion and decency along with concern about the environment and materialism. Reagan said “don’t worry, its morning in America”, took the solar panels off, reduced taxes and reduced government services – literally saying that government was the problem – notice how our water facilities declined, road and bridges have little maintenance and a host of other problems that government is needed for.
Business is just that – business, not public health, safety and welfare.
Send them a boatload of vaccine, ASAP!
That’s where the next variant is going to come from that will be even worse than Delta!
Walls are not going to work. We’re all in this together.
me, I haven’t got a boatload.
Well, really many thousands of boatloads. But that’s what we have to do.
American Entropy.