"Worst of Times"

When the vaccine was offered to hospital employees in India at the beginning of the year, many questioned whether it had been tested enough, and didn’t take it. After that, there were reports of many 60+ folks across the country not wanting to take it either. It was so easy to book a slot back then, even pick hospitals and dates! Today, everyone wants to get a shot but it’s so hard to get it…

 

The US is much worse than us on such behavioral matters. Remember the US was doing badly at the time the first vaccines became available. And yet, even then, there was a clear split along political party lines: one set was keen to take the vaccine, the other set was not keen. Even today, the US actually has to take measures to incentivize people to take the vaccine. For example, states like New York, Ohio, Maryland and Oregon have introduced (believe it or not) vaccine lotteries (if you take the vaccine, you get a lottery ticket, and a few lucky folks would win some prize). And then some local politicians introduced legislation to stop the lotteries in Ohio. Only in America…

 

Even as India struggles with a shortage of vaccines, we have COVAX provided doses in countries like South Sudan and Malawi being destroying. Why? Because they weren’t able to distribute the vaccine before it (unbelievably) expired. Kenya and Ivory Coast are headed in the same direction. And then there is Canada which sits on 6,00,000 doses of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine at risk of spoilage. They won’t authorize the use of the vaccine within Canada as they continue to debate if it is safe or not; but they won’t allow it to be exported to countries which have authorized it.

 

It reminds me of all the “worst of times” side of the equation in that famous opening line from A Tale of Two Cities: “it was the worst of times”, “it was the age of foolishness”, “it was the season of Darkness”, “it was the winter of despair” and the second half of “we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”.

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