Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Vaccinate! Vaccinate!

A Pandemic Quiz

When did smallpox vanish?

a) when people practiced better sanitation

b) smallpox just disappeared — poof!

c) smallpox was never as virulent as “false history” proclaims

d) people got a vaccine.

The answer is “d.” So many people got the vaccine that smallpox in effect disappeared. (The virus lives, but the World Health Organization stores the samples in laboratories.) Today it is a footnote in a history text.

We haven’t yet eradicated polio or measles or chicken pox or diiptheria or shingles or pneumonia, but the key doesn’t lie in sanitation, nutrition, or the vagaries of fate. Instead, look to science. Kudos to scientists that developed vaccines that may not totally protect from the ravages of those disease, but mitigate them.

With COVID, scientists have done their part: we Americans have three vaccines; other countries have developed variations. The world can staunch the spead of this too-often fatal virus. And our government has done its part: we now distribute the vaccine widely. Maybe the pace is not rapid enough, maybe the outreach not wide enough, but the bureaucrats-in-charge are struggling to meet an ambitious goal of getitng the vaccine into most adult arms by the summer.

Here is the challenge: getting enough of us vaccinated to achieve “herd immunity.” The United States government cannot “mandate” vaccination. Nor can employers, including hospitals, require staff to be vaccinated. Because the vaccines fall under the rubric of “experimental,” the timetable for them to meet the standard of “accepted” is in the future.

Hence, Uncle Sam can only urge. And he must urge gently: not for us the “green bracelets” that Israel issues to citizens, making those non-wearers into pariahs, barring them from gyms, restaurants, events.

But our government is urging. To their credit, the past presidents (excluding President Trump, who did not broadcast the moment when he and his wife got vaccinated in January) have aired a public service plea, urging “Vaccinate.” State Departments of Health are urging: “Vaccinate.” Physicians are urging “Vaccinate.”

Still, we are a govenrment-distrusting people. While the newly vaccinated wax euphoric as we embrace, literally, family members, as we reconnect with friends, as we swear off “zoom” to eat in restaurants, we are far from herd-immunity.  The “vaccine-hesitant” join with the “vaccination-scorners” to work against herd-immunity.

We can nudge those hesitant, who want to wait, who see no urgency.

So spread the word to friends and friends of friends and people six degrees of separation. Offer to drive people who cannot easily get to one of their community’s sites. Offer to help people befuddled by the computerized sign-ups (occasionally like signing up for scarce tickets to a rock concert). Volunteer with your community’s emergency management system, if not for COVID, for the crises-to-come.

Use your buying power to nudge vaccination. Employ people who have been vaccinated; go to restaurants that boast vaccinated staff (restaurants in many communities post “A,” “B,” and “C” ratings from the Health Departments). Ask nursing homes to post the percentage of staff who are vaccinated. Insurers charge higher premiums for enrollees who smoke and who are obese: since they are at risk for more diseases, they drive up the health care tab. Those insurers can levy a similar surcharge charge on people who refuse the vaccine.

After all, the unvaccinated remain a danger. Pre-vaccine, roughly half of us were asymptomatic carriers. And we saw that a few people who contact COVID can within weeks multiply at warp-speed. Wuhan’s case load began in single-digits. If only to protect the hospital staff which has been smothered in “personal protective gear,” remind the vaccine-hesitant that the life they risk is not just their own.

We used to think of ourselves, or, more accurately, liked to think of ourselves, as a compassionate community, bound by a spirit of helpfulness — the spirit de Toqueville admired 200 years ago. We must resurrect that spirit, to relegate COVID to a footnote in a history text.

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

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2021

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