The Big Push Blues

I’ve got the Big Push Blues this week. All I can think about are the negative aspects of the vaccination campaign that’s Coming To A Major Public Facility Near You.

First of all, I can’t bring myself to watch the COVID-19 news on television anymore. It’s not that I’m squeamish (although my wife would say it is). It’s just that every story has the same visual. I’m sick of looking at needles being plunged into people’s arms just below the shoulders, I’ve seen it so often, I could probably vaccinate myself. Can they not come up with something more imaginative? They can do amazing things with graphs and charts these days.

If I need to watch endless vaccinations, let me do it on some obscure cable channel that already gives detailed coverage to facelift and tummy tucking surgeries. They don’t cover the testing of Olympic athletes for performance enhancing drugs with the same graphic intensity, which is probably just as well.

Turning to another reason for my Big Push Blues, we now have four approved vaccines in Canada. This should prompt scenes of rejoicing. Yet I worry this is going to give rise to a wave of one-upmanship and consumer finickiness. “Oh, I could have got the Pfizer vaccine, but I chose the Johnson and Johnson because it’s just one shot and you’re done.” “Yes that may be true, but I prefer the AstraZeneca because it’s got a higher success rate among seniors.” We’re not oenophiles choosing from a wine list in some fancy restaurant: we are in the middle of a pandemic. We should consider ourselves lucky to be offered anything with a high degree of efficacy, and take it graciously—more graciously than this column approaches its subject.

And then there are those little ethical issues that a mass vaccination campaign throws up. We’ve already coped with deciding who gets the vaccine first and how access to ventilators is allocated when there aren’t enough of them to go round. But there are lots more ethical sand traps awaiting us.

For example, can a person sell her priority access to vaccine status to someone else, or switch places in line with his favourite niece?

Are the first, second and third cadres of vaccinees (if that’s a word), going be allowed to go to live events and shop in stores while the poor stiffs in the fourth, fifth and sixth cadres still have to abide by the isolation rules of the colour zone they are stuck in?

And how will people prove that they have indeed been vaccinated? Will they have to produce papers? Wear a computer chip? Federal health minister Patty Hajdu informed us the other day that Canada along with other countries is considering the issuance of a ‘vaccine passport’ to facilitate international travel. Once it’s out there, what’s to stop banks from requesting this information in deciding whether to give you a mortgage?

Will the unvaccinated become de facto second-class citizens, and have to wear some sort of distinguishing symbol to warn the vaccinated of their presence? Will getting a job post-pandemic depend on you having had your vaccination?

What about distinguishing the ‘yet to be vaccinated but anxious to get it’ group from the ‘don’t want to be vaccinated for personal reasons’ conscientious objectors? Shouldn’t those who refuse to contribute their bodies to the task of developing herd immunity suffer a little pain for their conviction that it’s aII a plot by Bill Gates to control the world (or at least, that part of it that Jeff Bezos doesn’t already control)?

Too many vaccination shots. Vaccine consumerism. Secondary status for the unvaccinated. They’re all giving me the Big Push Blues. I’m just hanging on until March Break. No, wait, that’s now the April break; another month to go. At least we’re getting an hour of daylight back this weekend.