The American bubble

The world makes no sense to me.  At some point, I should just give up trying to understand the world.  But, I persist like a mad man!

Here in the US, people are dilly-dallying getting vaccinated.  Some are even refusing the shots.  There is no out-of-pocket cost to get vaccinated, and yet there is a high level of hesitancy!

So much so that state governments are offering lotteries as incentives to get vaccinated.  California has the largest pool of lottery money at $116.5 million.

Meanwhile, there is the rest of the world where there is severe vaccine shortage.  Let them eat cakes!

On my part, I have been regularly tweeting about the urgency for vaccine equity.  It doesn't matter to me if my tweets, like my blog, will not have any effect on the world.  After all, I am a mad man!

If only even the terribly selfish America First person understood that "we risk a forever pandemic with long-term cycles of lockdowns, economic damage and constant fear. We cannot just vaccinate rich countries and hope that we will be safe."

Even if we do not care a damn about the rest of the world, "the longer it takes for the United States to lead a global response, the more the risks compound."

In a politically polarized country in which millions believe that masks are useless, I am not sure how much the President can provide the beacon for the world.  The world "needs a Marshall Plan to invest billions in global health infrastructure, technology transfers, and exports of raw materials, ... and not just a patchwork of disjointed solutions."

The Marshall Plan happened under different circumstances.  But then the plan was also to primarily assist white people in European countries.  Now, the need is to help out a whole lot of brown people all over the world.  The America First voters have made it clear that they do not care about brown people.

Many Americans already struggle to sympathize with their neighbors—convincing them to care about poorer countries, particularly while recovering from what has been a tragic and difficult year, will surely be a tougher pitch.

A very tough pitch! It doesn't have to be that way :(