Monday, July 19, 2021

Is The Alternative Laughing and Jeering...

...as they are carried away in an ambulance?

No, I know that's not what's meant, but what's actually meant is all those people who listen to Trump are stupid, and Trump is evil, and this is all Trump's fault.
Aside from the crude violence there (Batman is the good guy, so that makes Charlie Kirk...?), which is one of Trump's favorite go-to's (so long as it's not directed at him) and the insistence that "every last antivaxxing pol & influencer" is merely a puppet on strings ("but we're not!") (quick:  did you make a "rational" decision to get vaccinated, or does the virus scare the beejeebus out of you?), the idea that you shouldn't be nice to anti-vaxxers because it's a waste of time is...rather dismissive, don't you think?  Surely the Trump supporters (to repurpose a phrase) do as much?

This whole looming disaster is because (in part, not necessarily in whole) this matter has been politicized. I don't say "in part" lightly.  I mean it.  If you're on political Twitter, you think everything is politicized.  My guess is most people in America not getting the vaccine just figure the crisis passed and only people in the cities really got sick and besides getting two shots is a hassle (my son-in-law has to find a way to get off work to get the shots.* He's not a rube and he doesn't work 1000 miles from civilization, but still he's supposed to be "on call" at all hours. Time off is not an option, unless he's sick and literally can't answer his phone/drive his company truck.)  Let me put it another way:  I saw a sign today offering free vaccines (some people need to be assured they don't need to pay for it.  Still, they might not get that message.  These things are VERY complicated).  But you have to get to NRG football stadium to get one.  If you don't already have a car and plenty of time to devote to driving down there (Houston sprawls for literally miles), you might pass on that offer.

But, again, by the time my daughter and her husband got their first shots, they were finding the pharmacies around them were no longer distributing the stuff (they had reasons to delay other than his work schedule.  Everybody's life is complicated.  You do them damage to imagine everyone else's life is simpler and easier than yours).  And lest we forget, two of these vaccines require very cold storage.  And once the vaccines are open, they don't keep long.  If demand drops off, supply will rapidly evaporate (almost literally).  Then you are talking about largely rural areas, where delivery of the vaccine was sketchy back when it was seemingly available everywhere in urban centers.  Now?  I mean, literally:  what's changed? What makes it easier now than it was at first?

I know politicians are making hay on this, especially on the outrage machine that is Facebook and Twitter.  But does this really boil down to a one-size-fits-all problem AND solution?  We are supposed to have sympathies for the inner-city (as we used to say) poor; at least in keeping with the practice/teachings of Dorothy Day.  As I sit here and think about it, do we automatically offer that kind of understanding to people in rural areas?  Or do we more automatically label them "Trump supporters" and so to be treated with disdain?

Maybe we exaggerate the influence of the anti-vaxxers and the politicians, and overlook the logistical issues this vaccine still presents to people who don't live within walking distance of a CVS (which probably doesn't have any doses left, the problem of storage and losing supplies already thawed out to almost non-existent demand being what it is).  We paid attention to those issues once; then the vaccination program was so successful we began to think it was like taking an aspirin.  You can find aspirin anywhere, right?  Why wouldn't' you take it if it meant your headache would go away?

But we're not talking about aspirin now.  And this vaccine ain't even a sugar cube you can down in one gulp and be done.  The more we act like it is, and the more we act like the people who haven't gotten the vaccine deserve what happens to them (or worse, that they're harming us by their "bad politics"), the worse this situation is gonna get.

Maybe being nice to people is not the worst thing we could do right now.

*Yes, I know about the polls. Second quick response question: when was the last time you answered a pollster’s questions? Unless it’s somebody I know, I don’t even answer my phone anymore. Too damned many robocalls. I mean, how reliable are the polls?
And how representative is Twitter?
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