The Bad News First
Amidst a looming surge in a more transmissible and/or dangerous Covid variant, prompting our CDC director to warn of “impending doom,” many politicians are still throwing caution to the wind. With a 40,000-plus, potentially super-spreader crowd for the Texas Rangers’ baseball season home opener and Governor Greg Abbott banning any sort of “vaccination passports,” Texas is racing to win the state equivalent of the Darwin Award.
Other nations are displaying even more deadly silliness. Brazil takes the cake, as its quasi-authoritarian quack of a president (ring any bells?) presides over 4,000 daily deaths due to his Covid denialism – this in a country that was once justifiably proud of its responses to public health challenges.
Inequity transcends even such stupidity, in terms of being closer to global in scope. Much of the world has yet to see many if any vaccinations, or supplies are proving inadequate. India, for instance, is being particularly hard hit. Here at home, the shots have been far more likely to benefit the white and well-off (admittedly, myself included).
But Better News…
We have a president taking the situation seriously and ramping up vaccinations accordingly, reaching more than four million on April 3 alone. Over 40 percent of Americans over 16 have been jabbed at least once. As noted in a fine Vanity Fair analysis of Covid policy challenges Biden faces, his administration has made the largest financial commitment of any country to international efforts to combat the plague; it also is exploring ways of vastly increasing our manufacturing capacity here to at least one billion shots per year, so as to increase world supplies.
That article documents in some depth how Biden’s aides are grappling with legal and policy constraints that are largely a legacy of its predecessor’s decisions. But even such problems are a relief in an odd sort of way: We’re back to some semblance of normalcy in dealing with tough policy challenges. What a contrast with fighting a pandemic back when we had two hands tied behind our back, courtesy of our previous president’s lethal narcissism.
The awareness of the emergency is not limited to the administration’s public health team. A big shout-out to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for highlighting how it’s in our own economic interest to combat Covid in all countries as soon as possible.
And Finally…
There’s this great essay by award-wining science journalist Robin Marantz Henig,* in The Atlantic, substantially about the joys of post-vaccination hugs with her grandkids. The article’s significance stems not just from what it says but from who wrote and published it. If a magazine that’s done an admirable job of covering Covid feels fit to put out a piece on safe hugging by a well-regarded science writer, that’s a good sign – even as many Americans still anxiously await that feeling and reality of relative safety.
So even as Covid winter abounds, there are also signs of spring in the air. Or, as Henig’s post-vaccination brother declared when the two first hugged again after over a year, “We made it.”
*Disclosure: Henig is a friend.
I feel greatly relieved to be vaccinnated. My whole family here in Benica, except my 2 year old grandson, has now been vaccinnated. I feel like we made it. We will all be continuing to wear our masks.
Same here. We’re vaccinated and I’m hopeful that we’ve made it through the worst. I do still have this slight worry that a new variant, not only more transmissible, but also resistant to our current vaccination products, could emerge from one of the areas where covid-19 is still spreading wildly. I hope that won’t happen. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Thanks, folks. I agree with the concern about possible new variants, so am still opting for caution in various respects. But as we learn more about both the virus and vaccinations, and refine treatments and vaccinations, the degree to which we must remain concerned hopefully will diminish.