Dialing It In

Companies and government inaction are standing in the way of progress. But let’s be clear: The cult of “me first”—whether it’s at the scale of nations hoarding vaccine doses; leaders ignoring the plight of the marginalized in their own backyards; or the mad, individual-level scramble to get a jab as soon as one can figure out how to—is the source of the problem.
Gregg Gonsalves "The Vaccine Line Is Illogical"

I'm not going to disagree with the good Professor in his assessment that "the cult of 'me first'" is a problem. But I will dispute that it is the source of the problem. It's been ten or eleven months since the SARS-2 coronavirus hit the United States, and in that time, most of the public has been turned into cowering paranoids and many of them have come to see the less-paranoid as dangerously irresponsible. Those people who suspect that they might not be in very much danger of dying have been constantly warned that even on the off chance that they are correct, they could give the disease to someone who could give the disease to an elderly relation or neighbor; and would this be responsible for an unnecessary death. Even now that remarkably effective vaccines are becoming available, the doomsaying continues, with talk of continued ability of the vaccinated to spread the disease to the unvaccinated (which kind of wrecks one of the primary goals of mass vaccination in the first place) and new variants that might be completely able to escape the vaccines (which kind of wrecks the point of vaccines, period) being common in the media.

It's been a highly effective machine of fear. And in the face of such, why would one expect people to calmly wait their turn in line? If you want an orderly queue for the lifeboats on a sinking ship, you first have to convince everyone that even the last person in line will be well underway before there's a chance for them to get their shoes wet. That's a difficult message to convey when one is also attempting to frighten those who refuse to leave into heading above decks.

If in fact the shelf-life for vigilance in the U.S. is only about 3 months, new surges may occur in the fall in previously hard-hit regions such as the Northeast—unless residents remember to stay afraid.
Professor Robert M. Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF.

In this case, the supposed "cult of 'me first'" is not the source of the problem, but a symptom. If public health officials are telling the public that they need to "remember to stay afraid," and a vaccination is the solution to that fear, why would people not be clamoring to the first in line? I'm not particularly worried about what would happen if I contracted the novel coronavirus. I live alone, so there's no-one else in my home to infect, I've survived severe respiratory illnesses before and I'm not yet old enough to be in the high-risk population. So while it would quite likely suck out loud, I think I'd get through it. I've encountered people who consider me to be something between insane and insufferably arrogant for thinking this way, seeing my lack of outward concern as indicative of willful ignorance of the risks.

Fear may be an excellent motivator, but it's not a particularly precise too. It's difficult, if not impossible to simply turn it on or off when one thinks it should be. If the only thing that people are supposed to fear is the SARS-2 coronavirus, then it's reasonable to expect that they'll act as though they are afraid. And the whole point behind fear is to motivate people to do something to relieve it. If that means doing whatever it takes to get to the front of the line, that's what will happen. If Professor Gonsalves wants people to be willing to wait longer in the name of equity, perhaps he could have a talk with Professor Wachter.