Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Welcome, COVID-Submicrobes, Class of 2027

Welcome, micro-baby COVIDs, lying dormant, waiting for your turn on Planet Earth. What havoc can you wreak, you ask? Will there be room for more COVIDs, after Earth has conquered COVID-19, COVID-20, COVID-21?

Don’t worry, You will have as fertile a field as your virus-forbears. Right now you are fretting: will Earth defeat COVID, as it defeated smallpox, the plague, polio, measles? Well, not measles, not yet.

Your future is promising: just look to your human foes. So dumb. So confused. So slow. For a primer, read about the worst state in the worst country — Minot, North Dakota. Even when we made a local official very sick, he still scoffed at us, discounting masks.

The United States of course had as its chief honcho a leader who spurned “science.” What a gift to viruses! Truly if every country had had such a leader, the COVIDS-20 might have decimated humans.

You worry that humans were smart enough to create not just a treatment, but more crucially a vaccine. That has been the death knell for a lot of viruses - like garlic for vampires. Vaccines protect. And even if not everybody gets a vaccine, humans will gain from herd immunity. You, COVID-27s, will be sunk.

But hopeful news from the United States: They have been so slow, so inept at vaccinating their population that “mutant” COVIDS may gain a foothold.

The history of COVID vaccination in the United States is another primer, this time in government stumbling. First came poor timing (for humans): the vaccine was launched at the same time as a floundering president focused only on his impending defeat. That delayed the “campaign” by months. Next, that president simply sent the vaccine to the states: it was their responsibility to distribute it. The mechanics of refrigeration and transport were difficult. Some states had little experience with public health; most had less experience with vaccines. So the hodgepodge began, with some states simply handing vaccine to cities and towns. Pharmacies came to the fore. Strangely, physician practices didn’t, maybe because the United States has no overarching healthcare “system.”

The rollout was slow. States had months to prepare, but didn’t. Once they got the vaccines, the clock started. States rolled out their “campaigns,” but slowly, cautiously, targeting doses to the oldest, the most vulnerable, the most computer-savvy. As the months passed, some states had arsenals of unused vaccines. When “non-eligible” people started to clammer, states opened up their registration systems, which were dogged with the kind of computer glitches that would have sunk Amazon. Then came the Monty Python-without-the-humor ploys, where health departments did mass mailings urging people to get vaccinated while there were no slots, the mailings about testing when testing was no longer crucial. Indeed, the politicians and bureaucrats clung to the adage: slow and steady wins the race. Not true for this battle.

On your side, COVID-submicros, is a general leeriness of vaccines. The United States not only has people who reject science, but people who reject government-led health campaigns. In a racist past, the United States government experimented on black men with syphilis, withholding treatment to watch the disease progress. Understandably, black Americans are not lining up enthusiastically for the vaccine, even though we COVIDs are killing poor people who live in crowded homes. And the millions of immigrants, documented and not, hesitate to enroll on any government register, even for a vaccine.

In this battle, time is on our side. The vaccine may save humans from COVID-20, even COVID-21. But if we mutate faster than humans gain “herd” immunity, we may prevail. The scientists on Earth may fine-tune their vaccines to match the mutants, but then the earthlings will have to rev up their vaccination campaigns more efficiently than they did for COVID-20s. Also, remember that you roam the planet: If vaccine-rich countries do not share with the countries they dub “less developed,” you  will have lots of people to infect. Even if countries erect barriers, you, COVID-27s, will leap over them just as your ancestors, COVID-19, did.

So, COVID-class of 2027, you may yet shine.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2021

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