90. The Race(s)

Yesterday’s news of anti-vaccine protesters at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles follows on the Capitol siege and a year of sporadic resistance to safeguards against C0vid-19—and denials from partial to total about the virus itself. The California story is notable, because California is a Blue state with Democrats in control of most reins of government—and because California will soon eclipse New York as the state with the most Covid deaths. 

I wait my turn—my appointment is for Tuesday, February 9—to get my own vaccination, and watch the daily numbers of Covid positives among the 7,000 of us here in Wallowa County, Oregon. We’ve been a poster community, our schools up and running, our hospital and health care system on top of testing and tracking, and the rush of summer tourists apparently unable to bring us the virus. We’ve not been affected by the church outbreak in nearby La Grande, or by the relentless numbers of positives in Umatilla County to the west. But recently, in the last week, daily numbers of positives in Wallowa County moved from 0 to 1 with the very occasional 2, to daily positives with a high of 5. 

 

It feels like I am—we are—in a race to get our vaccinations as the virus finally makes its way through the long windy road from La Grande, or up and down Rattlesnake Grade from Lewiston, Idaho (a state with recent jumps in cases and deaths amid protests at masking and distancing). There are only two roads in and out in the winter, with one more open just a few months each year. We wait—and watch the Idaho license plates on Main Street and the daily numbers from the Oregon Health Authority (1 on Friday; 3 yesterday) against the days we get vaccinated and the weeks before efficacy. 

 

The country too is in a race, on one side the protestors, naysayers and deniers, who are wary of coronavirus vaccines, or don’t believe in vaccines at all, or who believe that the virus itself is a concocted story promulgated by Democrats or aliens. On the other side are the hundreds of thousands of health care workers who continue to risk their own lives to stop this thing; the survivors mourning lost relatives; the children and grandchildren who have parents and grandparents like me, 78 years old and in good health but nevertheless deemed “at risk”; and the new Biden administration and its efforts to get a grip on the pandemic and move on to the economy and climate change. 

 

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