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Now that I’ve written a couple of times about coronavirus vaccines, I’ve noticed, readers, that some of your correspondences about the matter have taken on a certain …edge.
There was the one from a reader in West Seattle, irked that his brother-in-law, in his 30s, was able to get the shot as part of some leftover vaccine because he’s affiliated with a union. “This shouldn’t be how it works, and it makes me mad,” he wrote.
There was the University of Washington employee who wrote questioning why some lab workers and professors there have been getting vaccinated: “They’re not on the front lines. They’re at home on Zoom!”
The other day an emailer called out our local congressional reps, after they had been featured in a story for proposing a nationwide ban on vaccine providers giving out special access to the shots.
But weren’t members of Congress among the first to be vaccinated, the reader asked? Why yes they were, in late December and early January, as part of a special provision the in-house congressional doctor called a “continuity of government action.”
“I’ve voted for you twice now … but this is a bad look for you,” one elderly constituent wrote to Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Sammamish, who had posted a photo of herself being inoculated. “Can’t understand why you are more eligible than me.”
They’ve already coined a name for this phenomenon: vaccine envy. It’s said to be a rising pandemic of its own.
People really went nuts when some Republicans, like Sens. Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, posted selfies while getting the shot.
“Republicans spent the last eight months politicizing the coronavirus, telling their constituents not to wear a mask, that it’s a hoax, and now they’re getting the vaccine before front line workers and teachers. Just pisses me off!” read a typical response on Twitter.
I admit to having similar feelings. The other day I saw a friend who happily volunteered that she’s been vaccinated, and I blurted out: “Really? You?” I immediately felt stupid and petty — which psychologists say (yes, psychologists have already weighed in on this) is all perfectly … normal.
“Sometimes you’re going to blame it on another person, even though it’s the system that’s really causing the stress,” one therapist told USA Today.
Feeling excluded is OK, the therapists said, contributing to a psychological divide in the country. I call it the “have-shots” and the “have-nots.” (This is starting to sound like a Dr. Seuss story.)
When you’re around other people who are vaccinated, and you’re not, you need to ponder why you feel left out. Is it “deliberate exclusion — not being invited to the party?” Or “indirect exclusion — when you couldn’t get to the party because of traffic?”
I don’t know, what if you feel more like you made it to the party, and you’re standing in a long line for the keg, but then Ted Cruz cuts in front to take the last beer? And then flies off to Cancun with it?
That’s not envy, that’s resentment, psychologists say. Resentment is bad.
One summed up: “The resentment, in the end, it’s not going to make the vaccine more available.”
Assuming it doesn’t become a national psychosis, there might be an upside to vaccine envy. It could be the secret antidote to vaccine hesitancy.
The worry going into this worldwide health experiment was that so many people would refuse to get the vaccine that the have-nots may outnumber the have-shots, allowing the virus to continue its run.
But if you’re hacked off that your brother-in-law got it, or that your work-by-Zoom boss got it, then surely you will be motivated to get it, too.
Eventually — I’m hoping around April or May — we’ll lose interest in who’s a have-shot and who’s a have-not. Or we’ll just become confused. In either case, instead of eyeing one another as nothing but virus vectors as we walk down the street, we can go back to being individual people again.
That’s what happens in the Dr. Seuss story, anyway.
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