vaccine

Last Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. Peg and I joined supplicants from numerous Oklahoma communities at the Grant County Health Department in Medford, Oklahoma, population one thousand. Medford is 105 miles from our home in Barnsdall, Oklahoma but there were pilgrims there from even further away. The convocation had the feel of a Hadj with the tiny health department being the Ka’bah and Medford being Mecca. Instead of seeking a later reward we were all beseeching the higher authority, our government, for salvation here and now from COVID-19.

The congregation consisted of a continuous stream of persons all of whom had the same color hair, were of similar size and shape and shuffled along as if in fear of falling. Because Medford’s Health Department is staffed with small-town Oklahomans who were born in the 20^th century they were unfailingly friendly and efficient. Peg and I arrived early, of course, as did many others and were welcomed in out of the forty mile per hour cold wind gusts into the 10’ x 20’ reception area. We were there about 45 minutes, most of that time being required to see if either of us had a bad reaction to the shots; we did not. However, since these supplicants were mainly friendly refugees from an Oklahoma of the 1940’s and 50’s, in that time we learned more about them and they about us than any government census worker ever would.

Our experience with the fine folks of Medford, most of whom were unpaid volunteers, was difficult to reconcile with America’s over all response to COVID-19. Whereas our federal government should receive praise for developing vaccines in record time, we have fallen way, way short in delivering the vaccine. Every day the battle we are in with the constantly mutating virus becomes more dangerous and ’Ole 19 has already killed over 450,000 of us.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) has her main character, Milkman, in her novel Song of Soloman thinking, “Perhaps all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?” Morrison clearly understood Franz Kafka’s (1883-1924) anguished frustration with the legal system in his novel The Trial. Kafka’s main character, Joseph K, cannot even get the legal system to explain what he is charged with or why. William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) Macbethsums it up: “Life is a tale told by an idiot”. Apparently Morrison, Kafka and Shakespeare were trying to get their governments to provide something as essential as a COVID-19 vaccination or whatever basic public service they needed then.

Whereas most of us are amazed that our government ramped up vaccines in about one year, the euphoria over discovery appears to have interfered with actually inoculating us. It is as if we have been so proud of finding a potential prevention of the plague that we have failed to develop a plan to employ the prevention. At the rate we are inoculating ourselves ’Ole 19 will mutate us out of existence. Supposedly millions of doses of vaccines will soon be shipped to CVS, Walgreens and Walmart. That is great but if our government has to use the existing Internet portal system, the virus will outpace us. We must be able to sign up “at the door” of the pharmacies or have the vaccine delivered and applied at our doors. We have already appropriated trillions of dollars to respond to COVID-19. We have spent enough taxpayer vaccination money to send a trained UPS, FedEx, Amazon worker or National Guard soldier to every one of our 330 million citizens with a needle and a vile of vaccine and the knowledge, training and emergency supplies to check for and respond to any bad reactions. Although in the millions of shots already given there have been virtually no deaths reported. We are allowing an extremely unlikely deadly reaction to the vaccination to interfere with the delivery of the vaccine and the almost guaranteed possibility the virus will continue to kill us in huge numbers if we do not quickly vaccinate a large percentage of our population. Another possibility would be to have the vaccines delivered directly to us and then allow us to contact medical providers of our choice to inject them. After all, millions of us receive billions of doses of medication by mail already.

We inoculated the whole country for polio without so much as a ripple. We all have had shots for smallpox, measles, TB, etc., etc. without this bottleneck. As Jonathan Reiner, Professor of Medicine at George Washington University, said back in January 2021, “The bottleneck is actually the logistics of vaccinating people (not the supply of the vaccine)”. And former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stated in The Wall Street Journal, “New variants of the virus that appear more contagious increase the urgency to deploy the vaccine as fast as possible”.

The craziness of signing up on Internet portals, waiting in lines of vehicles or waiting in lines outside in the weather adds another level to Dante Alighieri’s (1265-1321) Inferno. Americans can order everything from food to computers over the Internet and get them sent overnight right to our doors with simple instructions on how to use them. A packaged, pre-loaded syringe packed in dry ice is not a space shot problem. A looped YouTube video and public TV demonstration would get to 99% of our cell phones and homes for those who wish to DIY.

If our government does not think we, their bosses, are competent to give ourselves or our families shots then why not use each state’s National Guard or our 2 ½ million regular military personnel. When I joined the United States Air Force fifty-eight years ago, they gave us enough inoculations in one day to save the world from all known diseases and some not even thought of. Surely we can adapt from that system.

By the way, in a week or two after we get the promised email notices from the Oklahoma Board of Health, Peg will have to get back on the online portal to schedule appointments for our second shots at a location somewhere around the state. Hopefully it won’t take a month of checking daily/hourly to schedule the second dose as it did with the first. And, of course, we each have to get a separate appointment within the three to four week allotted period before the next dose is due. All this must take place while the virus continues to out fox us.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) sought wisdom in living simply on Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts just twenty-five miles from Boston. Thoreau spent two years there in a hut he built himself. Part of the wisdom he imparted then that speaks to our COVID 19 society now was the observation that government is best that governs least and less can be more in many aspects of life.

Since March 5, 2020 Peg and I have discovered that as long as the computers keep turning out our Social Security checks and Medicare continues to cover us a great deal of government is superfluous, at least for us. We used to dine out regularly and occasionally engage in person with friends and family. If the UPS driver is excluded, we are now as though on an unknown archipelago where armadillos play the role of giant sea turtles, coyotes stand in for killer orca whales, rattlesnakes imitate Komodo dragons and mooing cattle provide cacophonous concerts. We no longer commune in coffee shops and cafes but find ourselves quietly hiking up the rocky tor we call JPeg Peak or around the cloudy pond down from our cabin. Our interaction that once was among friends, family and general society is now almost solely between us. And while I have never considered myself misanthropic, I find solace in the absence of unlimited casual connections. Also, after lifetimes of sowing and sometimes reaping crops of worldly goods we are less compelled to further heed those siren calls. Our satisfaction is now found among non-speaking species and sweat producing projects where the rewards are temporary fatigue and long-term practicality. Netflix is our new opiate along with the rest of the socially distanced masses and George Orwell’s Newspeak dominates public discourse through the TV.

Our government that only a few months ago considered itself so essential to most aspects of our lives that it always took our tax tribute and sometimes rewarded us with services now declares its services suspendible until further notice but still collects the tribute. One might wonder if we could not permanently forego many of these costly bureaucracies whose only purpose may appear as “noisy gongs or clanging cymbals”, (1 Corinthians 13). When our government buildings lock us out for months at a time we may find there is no need to completely reopen them. Perhaps the trillions of treasure our government borrows from countries such as China could be reduced to levels that our grandchildren can afford to repay long after we have matriculated.

Neither Thoreau nor I call for a complete lack of government or society but instead better versions of both. As we gradually and carefully emerge from our individual Waldens perhaps we should take this opportunity to reevaluate what parts of our government and our general culture actually serve us. After all, what some may find to be the bitter medicine of isolation we are forced to take may not have just negative side effects if we properly apply the lessons taught by history.

It is not only our various tiers of governments, local to federal, that have exposed much of their avoirdupois by doing us the favor of shutting us out. Many businesses and other organizations have been forcefully confronted with the reality that much of what they do can be done better with less expense and fewer people or need not be done at all.

As we face the possibility that COVID 19 may give us few choices and all of those bad, perhaps we can salvage some good from our situation. Just as President Lincoln used the horror of the four years of the Civil War as the means to end slavery when he had not been able to persuade America to do so earlier, maybe we can take the harsh punishment of the Coronavirus and emerge with a more productive and more egalitarian society. Some experts estimate it will take up to four years to develop an effective, safe and universally deliverable vaccine. The most hopeful estimate is twelve months from January 2020.

When it comes to treatment we have a shorter estimated timeline but still will have several more months to go. Of course, any treatment has to be deliverable on a wide basis. If we soberly consider the scientific opinions, we probably have to conclude that our most reasonable currently available option is to institute and maintain social distancing for several more months and maybe for up to four years. Of course we can decide that approach is of more harm to us than the virus is. In that event we might concentrate on categorizing different at-risk groups and then apply different procedures to each one.

For example, Peg and I are in our seventies and our children, grandchildren and great grandchild are not. Maybe Peg and I should take the responsibility for our own health and proceed accordingly. If we were at war folks such as Peg and I would be the draftee soldiers and the rest of the country would support us with supplies and care as the non-soldiers, the less vulnerable members of society, carry on with their lives. As a country we have generally accepted that we are at war with this enemy. Perhaps we should address this fight as we would have in World War II. Peg and I have already volunteered by isolating since the beginning of March and believe it is our obligation to continue to do so until it is safe for us not to.

As the generation who benefitted most from the great sacrifices of the World War II generation, the Greatest Generation, we see it as fitting that we take our turn. And, frankly, a Walden Pond, or JPeg Osage Ranch, lifestyle is a lovely respite. We look forward to once again joining the rest of the less vulnerable society when science shows us the way. In the meantime we express our best wishes to those who can more safely join into all those social activities that Peg and I have already enjoyed for many years. That is, if that is their choice and they can safely do so.

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