I had a hard time deciding whether to cover Bandcamp Friday or write this article but I think I'm going to for once, trust that you will spend some time on Bandcamp and hopefully buy a tune or two.
Instead, I'd like to write a short little piece about vaccines and share how I am thinking about them. I was motivated to write this piece because of this article someone shared in a group chat. It's from the LA Times and in all honesty, it reads like it came straight out of Los Angeles. But, I digress. The article's premise was to uncover a phenomena known as "Vaccine Anxiety" – a term that refers to the anxiety one experiences when witnessing other people in their life or periphery get vaccinated. The sensation, according to the article, stems from a belief of "what about me" and "when it will be my turn". I have some really strong, potentially divisive opinions about the contents of the article but they are mostly unproductive and as a result, will not be sharing them. However, I want to share how I am feeling about my upcoming vaccination and speak about where I feel vaccines fit into the larger public health response to COVID-19.
I am stoked to get my vaccine and while I'm slated to get either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, I'd be very happy – sorry Ashani – to get the J&J one too. I think all three vaccines exceed expectations, fare very well against variants, and continue work better over time. There are differences – and I can expound on them for days – but by in large, I think any discourse that prompts some sort of vaccine favoritism misses the point of why we are using them.
Vaccines are a public health response in the same way masks are: they get better with use. My reasons for taking the vaccine are rooted in self-preservation but I can't deny that a big part of my desire to get inoculated and why I would take a vaccine with a lower efficacy, lies in the fact that there are very few individual actions one can take over the pandemic to actually meaningfully shift the R-Rate. I'll explain.
The R-Rate refers to the reproductive rate of a disease and measures how many people one infectious individual will pass the virus on to. When the R-Rate is below 1, cases will drop and when it's above 1, they will rise. While the statistic is incredibly difficult to track, incredibly simplistic, and does not take into super-spreader dynamics, it is a very important measure to keep in mind when thinking about infectious disease. If you’d like to read more, here’s one of the best articles I’ve read all pandemic that completely changed how I thought about COVID.
Measures like staying socially distant through keeping your close contacts to a small number, masking, avoiding indoor spaces, and widespread testing help bring down the R-Rate. Yet, the most powerful of these approaches and the one that can compound the quickest are the widespread adoption of vaccines. These vaccines help create a lasting dent in transmission and unlike the measures I've listed above, don't have to be flicked on and off to achieve a goal. When enough people are vaccinated, the curve that we wish to flatten, starts to hit this inflection point where there is a critical mass of people that a virus simply cannot infect. Yes, these vaccines do save your life but I'm sure most of you reading this are far more interested in being able to go back to a bar, get carded and use a legal ID, and buy a drink without worrying about catching COVID. The mass adoption of vaccines is what gets you your life back.
With that being said, there are other ways to get to this point and one need only look to a country like Taiwan that took the right measures from Day 1 which have resulted in the lack of a need for a lock-down or any real distancing measures. Vaccines are the West's hail mary and thankfully, someone really prayed hard for these shots.
I'm telling you this because while I'm excited about getting my vaccine, I'm more excited about YOU getting yours. Yes, I probably want to see you and hang out with you but really, I'm interested in the collective reaching the inflection point where the scale begins to tip. If you want to look at an examples of this, the Navajo Nation's vaccination campaign has gone extremely well and their curve is looking pretty crushed.
It upsets me that there are multiple people I know on a personal level who have gotten their vaccine far ahead of what their expected timeline would look like and I can't help but wonder about the lives that could have been saved. However, I also know these things don't work that way and the solution here is to address society's inequities in a radical way. In the mean time, I'll celebrate and really allow myself to feel joy. With each person I know that is vaccinated, we are all one step closer to putting this behind us.
I've mentioned a lot of stuff here and I'd like to think I'm really well read on COVID so if you'd like to have a discussion about anything I've said, please comment, email, or hit me up on any channel we talk on.