The Vaccine Roll Out: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

 "Two steps forward. One step back…One step forward. Two steps back.”  --Idioms, anonymous

Can’t we do better?!

We are doing the best we can!!

Yes, I’m of two minds these days when it comes to the work by the state of Massachusetts to vaccinate some 5.5 million adults against COVID-19. As of the third week of February, almost a million of our citizens had received their first dose and 330,000 had received their second dose.  That’s the facts, the lay of the land, where we stand.

Depending upon how you look at those numbers, you could argue the state is doing a good job, or a bad job. Could say that we are taking two steps forward for every one step back or, that we are taking two steps backward, for every step ahead.

Two steps forward: considering just how unprecedented this herculean public health effort is, the fact that nothing in our history even comes close to this complicated, multi-faceted, work…we are in fact doing pretty well. All while trying to figure how to balance the needs of so many competing groups. How to ensure that the most vulnerable and at-risk populations—folks of color, the very old, essential workers like teachers—get their vaccines, and stat. How to deal with an often spotty supply chain from Uncle Sam. How to speed up the ability of Moderna and Pfizer to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses. How to deal with the COVID variants that threaten to throw a curve ball into our efforts. How to convince the up to 33 percent of our population, according to recent polls, who say they do not yet want to be vaccinated. 

This is when we pat ourselves on the back.

Two steps back: the Bay State has fallen woefully short (39^th out of the 50 states) in this initiative and stumbled badly, as our state created vaccine appointment website freezes or crashes or seems to be put together with chewing gum and twine. How to explain that we, a high-tech hub for the nation, boasting one of the most robust state governments in the country: we cannot get it right, still. What’s the deal? We can’t even set up a call center to speak to our panicky seniors, who are rightfully angry that they can’t get through to talk with a live person? How to explain the work of the Baker administration, who has done such an amazing and competent job, up until now, with the pandemic. What happened?  They knew a vaccine was coming and that Massachusetts needed a solid plan to distribute it to our citizens. And yet the ball has been dropped so many times.

This is when we kick ourselves in the keister.

When two truths exist in the same thought or reality or argument, it’s called cognitive dissonance. The hard part is keeping both opposites from canceling out or denying the other. This is where we are living right now in our home state, in this place where, like so many other places around the world, our efforts in the fight against the virus are going well and going badly. Our leaders are doing their best and our leaders are falling short. Collectively we are doing what we can to face into COVID and, truth be told, we are also making it up as we go along.

What I am trying to focus on right now is intention and effort.  I have no doubt it is the intention, the best intention, of our government in partnership with our health care system, to vaccinate as many people as fast as possible; to begin the long road back to whomever, whatever, we will be as a world, post-pandemic. I am trying to remember just how hard everyone involved in this effort has worked and is working: overtime and weekends and nights, because these people want their loved ones and neighbors to be safe too.  I am in awe that Governor Baker still goes before the cameras and the press almost every single day, regularly takes responsibility for his mistakes, and hasn’t blown his top or just collapsed from exhaustion.

My faith teaches me to have high expectations and high hopes, while also remembering our vaccination efforts are being led by plain old human beings. Fellow children of God, trying their darndest each day, to do the right thing. They are not superhuman. They are not infallible. They are just as caught up as we are, in this once in a hundred-year cataclysm called COVID.

But this I know and trust: with each passing day, more and more of us are being vaccinated, more doses are being manufactured and delivered, and together, we are getting closer and closer to herd immunity. To a better day.

Two steps forward, one step back. One step forward, two steps back. We are getting there.  I pray we can remember this fact. Almost. Not yet.

But…on the way.