Blog Archives
We’re all in the same (sinking) boat
I heartily recommend an article in today’s New York Times entitled “Beyond Low Vaccination Rates Lurks a More Profound Social Weakness” (the original title, in the print edition, was “What Causes Vaccine Hesitancy?”). Authored by Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal, it makes non-vaxxers, who I still think are illogical and not looking out for themselves and others, a lot more understandable. It also makes a very important point about what’s lacking in our public health system (the same as what’s lacking in our system as a whole). There’s still some connection to Trump’s disastrous politicization of the pandemic, but that’s not the whole story. He was/is capitalizing on some big holes and weaknesses in our society as a whole, a result, I think, of the two-party political system dominated by the corporate elite (the 1%). A system like this that doesn’t work for so many can’t and won’t meaningfully address big things like disease, climate change, resource depletion, etc. And it’s a worldwide system, dominated by a few “successful” countries, as the global migrant crisis, criticized by Pope Francis this weekend, shows. What the 1% and those hanging onto their coattails don’t realize is that they and their families will eventually suffer from the big problems, too. We’re all ultimately one, standing or falling together.