We Oregonians were maybe smug that early moves to mask and distance worked. As in many places, it seemed that things were easing, that a corner was being turned, and a vaccine was just around that corner… But we’ve not been immune; and as with contagions across the country, crowds at weddings, church events, fraternity parties, and rural food processing plants have ignited and fanned Oregon flames.
After a couple of small bumps—a bump anything more than one positive in a day, or positives three days running—Wallowa County seems settled at the low end of Covid. That’s some comfort, just as the big numbers all around us are discomforting.
But it’s not personal fear—even after my mask-saved brush with it. I fear the country’s continuing tangle with it, fear that widespread misinformation and the people who gobble it up and pass it on are dangerous, and fear more the pervasiveness of the virus and the growing distrust among us.
The vaccine—the advertised ticket out of this, seems both more hopeful and iffier by the day. The difficulties of production and distribution are shown on the nightly news. I believe the military and the left overs from the Trump administration can mesh with Biden’s crew to handle things, but it will take time. How much time? A friend said she did not want to be the last case before the vaccine arrives.
And where do you and I fit in the prioritizing for the vaccine? Do we have the patience to keep distancing and masking? Will enough people vaccinate? And what about counterfeit tests and vaccines?
Most troubling of all, the concerns of Dr. Atul Gawande, a member to Biden’s Covid task force, that some Americans will jockey for position, try to nudge the rules or use outright bribes to get the vaccine early. Think about the rich who have bought children’s ways into the Ivy League, and elected officials breaking their own Covid rules.
Can we agree on and play by the rules?
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