Are we the victims of our own success when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine?
There wasn’t much Donald Trump did right in dealing with the pandemic, but he did push for a vaccine to be developed as quickly as possible. That a vaccine was developed and brought to market in less than a year is at least partly due to his efforts.
But …
Combine suspicions people have of a vaccine developed so quickly with the anti-vaccine crowd and we have an awful lot of folks saying no thanks to the vaccine.
In fact, in mid-September, a survey done by the Pew Research Center showed just 51 percent of Americans would definitely or probably take the vaccine when it became available. More than three-quarters of those polled said they were afraid it might be rushed to market too quickly.
That was five months ago, but now that the vaccine has been available for months, we have seen that roughly a third of active duty military are refusing to take the vaccine.
What does this mean when it comes to our battle with a virus that has killed roughly half a million Americans?
Well, in a nation of 330 million people, half a million dead is just 1/660th of the population.
Of course, that’s just the beginning, and by the time this is over, we’ll be lucky to get away with less than a million dead. And there are many more people who get the virus and survive, although many of them are left with chronic respiratory conditions.
It isn’t as if vaccines are a new thing. They’ve been around since 1796, when Edward Jenner developed the first one and used it to fight one of humanity’s most dread diseases — smallpox.
Maybe the most famous vaccine was when Jonas Salk developed one for polio in 1955. Until then, there were roughly 35,000 cases a year in the U.S. Parents were afraid to let their children go swimming in the summer, but Salk’s vaccine — and Albert Sabin’s six years later — essentially eliminated polio in the United States.
So what happens if a third of Americans refuse the vaccine because they’re afraid of it for one reason or another? Certainly it means more cases, and if it was just the folks who refuse the vaccine, that would be one thing.
But of course these people will come into contact with others yet to be vaccinated, making it that much more difficult to end the pandemic.
If you’re an anti-vaxxer, there’s nothing to be said to you.
For those who are just antsy about it, do us all a favor. Put on your big boy pants — or big girl dresses — and get your shots.
The odds are very much in your favor.
And you’ll help all of us by doing it.