Progress Hangs on Question We Ask
Terry H. Schwadron
Feb. 15, 2021
Complaints about getting Americans vaccinated against coronavirus are suddenly spreading again faster than the vaccines themselves, surprising only because, indeed, updated information shows that vaccinations are widening at a good clip, and hospitalizations and death rates are falling.
News headlines are focusing on conflicts rather than on progress, though the rate of inoculation has turned markedly in just three weeks of a new Joe Biden administration. We’re at 1.7 million vaccinations a day, even as the supply and delivery of vaccines remains bumpy, the government has bought enough vaccines to promise vaccines for those who will want them by July, and deliveries are starting to reach neighborhoods where they had been slow.
We’ve straightened out some necessary planning information for states and we’re working with international health agencies again, even if China is seen as still dragging its feet on the origins of the disease. The FDA is allowing more Moderna doses per vial. Weekly supply of all vaccines is increasing by up to 20 percent, we now have a Centers for Disease Control guideline for school re-openings and federal vaccination centers are up and running.
Of course, there are still problems, especially with mutations emerging, but this is all good news, right? Still headlines were about timing controversies over when schools will be fully open, specific forecasts for “herd immunity,” over travel restrictions, about the recall campaign against California Gov. Gavin Newsom over unhappiness with continuing pandemic effects, or the nursing home death counting scandal involving Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York.
Assuming we share aspirations for the same “normality,” I wonder about whether we’re asking all the same questions.
Blaming the States and Cities
Obviously, as court challenges show, Californians will object if Newsom is unfair about what stays open and what is forced closed or for Cuomo hiding correctly categorized death figures after sending COVID patients to be housed in nursing homes, apparently to avoid any kind of federal questioning during the emergency.
Clearly, in the name of transparency and efficiency, we need good journalism on what’s actually happening to judge progress and guard against perception of political gain. But just as clearly, seeking to recall Newsom over closed churches and restaurants or knocking Cuomo over forthrightness to the feds is not going to make the overall death counts change or make the pandemic stop or get people vaccinated more quickly.
Indeed, the real question during the early months of the coronavirus, when no one knew quite how to deal with the sudden deluge of hospitalizations and deaths, was whether to send transportable quarantine patients to supposedly sealed-off areas of nursing homes to make room in hospitals, as Cuomo ordered. In retrospect, that decision resulted in deaths either in nursing homes or in hospitals, in part because the disease was being carried by staff members. The specific listing of death sites hardly seems the key issue, even acknowledging that the numbers were fudged to avoid federal questioning by a Trump administration that was looking to avoid any responsibility and insisting that states deal with the real effects of pandemic.
The nursing home deaths need real investigation. But rather than turning public anger on those who refuse to wear masks and take obvious precautions, let’s recognize that once again we are insisting on looking for bogeymen to blame for unpopular temporal economic and health problems.
Likewise, the schools debate is largely about which pandemic statistic to heed without looking at the whole, without considering whether school districts have money to address ventilation and class sizes, or whether they have assessed the difficulties of teaching simultaneously to some students in the room and others by Zoom.
What’s wild here is that the most vociferous criticisms are from the political right — the same people opposing mask orders and more aggressive business shutdowns, even in the past.
We’ve Got Problems
A persistent question at White House briefings is When Will We Be Done, along with whether Biden favors teachers over students or vaccines for left-handed people over right-handed recipients. The dumb answer to the dumb question is always the same: We’re building up supplies and deliveries, everyone should get a vaccine as soon as possible, but in the meantime, wear masks.
At least the question gets an answer, unlike during the Trump presidency, where any useful information on the subject underwent partisan political washing first.
Only the hard, tedious work of delivering the hundreds of millions of vaccines — or the achievement of herd resistance to disease — is going to address the bigger problems that include directing some practical racial, geographic and class equality in vaccinations.
None of this is simple: Complaining that we lack sufficient information on racial or occupational information nationally is overlooking that we depend on individual vaccine recipients to supply the data; prioritizing teachers and educators makes sense, but so does vaccinating bus drivers, subway workers, restaurant and grocery workers and meatpackers.
Cuomo remarked this week that in New York, 10 million are jostling for 300,000 vaccines.
It’s not as if real problems in manufacture, delivery and actual vaccination have disappeared; getting an appointment remains miraculous when it happens for the individual persistent enough to keep refreshing computer searches. There are fraudsters aplenty out there, there are racial and economic disparities, and, until Washington finally stops stamping its feet and acts, there is the question of a big coronavirus-related stimulus package still pending.
Yet, amazingly we’ve gone from No Plan to bumpy to more reliable expectations fairly quickly. An end to this phase seems within imagination — certainly a balm if only we could see it.
Instead, we allow our impatience at this point to boil over into politics, education, and endless discussions about government aid that is supposed to arrive as manna from heaven.
Vaccine for Impatience?
You can hear the impatience at rallies against state officials caught between holding business back and rising coronavirus hospitalization, leading to the curious, weird overlap of pro-Donald Trump politics, anti-vaxx thinking and anti-institutionalists. Of course, effective delivery of vaccines and the sufficient reduction of pandemic numbers to allow more economic re-opening is the ultimate expression of institutional planning and execution.
You can hear that impatience in the stories of those who are taking extraordinary steps to try to get an early place in line, some more appropriate than others.
Perhaps we should be developing a vaccine for impatience. Or one that delivers doses of reality about the disease along with coronavirus antibody stimulants.
We insist on dramas that end within the hour, on sure answers to open questions over which we have only continuing mutations and questions, on leaders who know exactly what needs to be done without asking anyone to make accommodations to a global contagion.
We finally have a medical foe that refuses to play by the rules. Hmmm. Not so different, actually, from our politics and health policies in general.
Maybe we should be asking what we each can do to make things go a bit better rather than blaming others when it inconveniences us.
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