Dear Carolyn: I don’t know how to deal with my feelings about how the COVID-19 vaccinations are rolling out. I have a very close group of friends, none of whom are high-risk. A couple have managed to get vaccinated through what I think is some level of abuse of privilege. One is a doctor, but hasn’t seen a live patient or stepped into a store since March, but qualified for a vaccine because she’s affiliated with a hospital that offered them. Another fully remote worker, who does not leave the house, lives in a state that allows the public to volunteer at vaccination centers and offers them a vaccine, which feels problematic because only so many people can volunteer a full day of time.
I’m conflicted because ideally I think everyone who wants to should be able to get vaccinated right now as doses sit on shelves. But something about these specific stories isn’t sitting right with me.
I’ve reacted by just not participating in this group’s conversations, but is there a better way?
— Anonymous
Anonymous: Yes. Release it. Let go of any sense of responsibility for individual outcomes like this. Tell your friends, “Good for you,” and be glad for each micro-step toward collective immunity that isn’t slam-dunk-grotesquely entitled: bit.ly/VxFakers.
The rules are the rules and neither you nor your friends made them. When the rules serve up a legitimate opportunity, it makes sense to take it.
You are certainly entitled not to, in hopes that your dose will go to someone you believe needs it more.
But neither you nor your friends would have any say in who gets the shots you turn down, if anyone, so who’s to say your sacrifice serves a greater good? The only certainty you have is that shots need to find arms, so when your number is called, it’s okay to stand up and say “Here!” And maybe jump up and down and wave.
I answer this question at my peril, because I file in advance and to call current events “subject to change” these days is understatement to the point of hilarity.
But there’s a theme here that will outlast the vaccine-rollout story, and leads to another point:
When something dominates the national news, it’s common to feel highly engaged but also mostly, if not entirely, helpless. We feel it, but we can’t fix it. So our very normal, healthy impulses to do something start to wander around, looking for a place to go.
And like any entity with a lot of energy and nothing to do, these impulses start to cause trouble around the neighborhood. Namely, we can feel very tempted to judge, correct, fixate on, fume at and try to micromanage what we see, or rename it Karen. Our friends, relatives, neighbors, colleagues, that guy behind us in the checkout line.
Sometimes bystanders must get involved, of course, as the last line of defense against bullies, abusers, even terrorists.
But most of the time, and especially when the impact of the person we’re correcting is drop-in-the-bucket negligible — or when the stakes are highly abstract — we risk doing more harm by butting in than by a strategic choice to look the other way. Our affectionate ties to others, after all, are the most potent, underrated weapon we have against just about every threat we face as people.
So when you catch your sense of righteousness loitering outside the minimart, looking for trouble, please call it home and find it something constructive to do.
