A version of this will be posted to Instagram.
It could be a warehouse or a megachurch. A stadium. Arena. County fire academy. Sheriff’s officers en masse. Control the crowd. A civil crowd. A hopeful crowd. All masked. Keeping their distance. // Dozens. Hundreds in line. Moves quickly. Moves with purpose. ID. QR code. Scan it in. “Have you had COVID? Tested positive in the last two weeks? Allergic to any meds? Move along. // Sign in. Scan the code. Ask the question. Again. Again. The tech preps the syringe. Pops out the air. No pictures, she tells me. People post photos, and others complain that they jumped the line. // I’m 58. Surprised to get an appointment. But I got the email. Scheduled the shot. My wife got hers over the weekend. // A quick pinprick in the left shoulder. Twenty minutes in line, and now I sit for 15. They give me a card. Proof of vaccine. This is the first step. I go back for shot two in four weeks. // I have no illusions. I know there is no such thing as perfection. Know even the most effective vaccines cannot prevent all transmission. But COVID is worse. It has killed 2.5 million worldwide. More than half a million in the United States. One in 11 Americans have tested positive. New variants are spreading. South Africa. Brazil. The United States. //
And we know vaccines work. Vaccines are safe. Are necessary. Vaccines eradicated smallpox. Polio. Limited measles. Mumps. Rubella. // Still, there is skepticism. Not just anti-vaxxers. Too many say: “I’m not putting poison in my body.” Use imperfection as an excuse. “It doesn’t mean you can’t get it.” And too many think vaccines cause autism. Can cause the disease they’re meant to fight. // There is distrust. Of government. Of Big Pharma. Legitimate fear. Science has been used as a weapon against African Americans for centuries. Big Pharma has misled the public. Pushed opioids. Created a crisis that has devastated families. // “Many educated people in my family did not trust it, because of the many times we where used as Guinea pigs,” a mixed-race friend says. “But they are getting it.” // Another tells me she “was on the fence at first,” because of the “past practice of using people of color as test subjects without consent.” She did her own research. Got both shots. // One in six have received at least one shot, AP reports (https://apnews.com/article/afs:Content:9897232008). Most say they’ll get it. But one in five won’t. One in five. In the United States. Where we have access. The developing world is being left behind. Not getting doses. Leaves them vulnerable. Us vulnerable. // We must follow the science. Not because science is infallible. It’s not. It is evidence-based. Built on skepticism. A tool that provides us data we can use to make rational judgments. // A former anti-vaxxer told me she had been forced to reconsider her worldview when she found herself “between a rock and a hard place.” She followed “the evidence wherever it lead,” and now plans to get the vaccine, “not because I think it's 100% safe or because it's guaranteed to work, but because all evidence suggests that it's quite safe compared to contracting COVID-19.” //