I wrote this last year, but like many posts, it sat in the hopper for a while. At this point my daughter has gotten her second shot and we’re just waiting for the under -5 vax to come out for our boy. Unlike other posts, I’m editing this very lightly.
I’ve been lucky.
I won the birthplace lottery and everything has played out pretty smoothly from there. As a government worker, I was slated for an early tier relative to other healthy adults. While standing in line for my second shot, I listened to the Michael Osterholm COVID-19 podcast update for the week.
The problem in America is not supply, it’s demand. That’s why so many states are opening up vaccines for all adults. The people who need it most have had plenty of opportunities to get it.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world, especially the less developed nations, haven’t even started their vaccination programs. Dr. Osterholm framed the issue as both a humanitarian and strategic problem. If we don’t get the rest of the world vaccinated, we’re gonna keep getting new variants that keep working their way back to the States.
There are a plenty of internal and external issues with the American Hegemony. It is not all roses to be a citizen of this singular superpower (I’m certain an ancient Roman could relate).
Maybe “too much” is one of our problems.
That’s an awfully nice problem to have.
While we strive to form a more perfect union, we ought to occasionally pause and be grateful for the easily overlooked perks of being American.