The first two paragraphs
Few Americans have received the latest vaccines against the coronavirus: Just over 7 percent of adults and 2 percent of children had received the shot as of Oct. 14, according to a survey presented on Thursday to scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The uptake is weak even among those most at risk of severe illness. Only one in five people age 75 or older has been vaccinated, along with about 15 percent of those ages 65 to 74, according to the survey of nearly 15,000 people.
I remember the vaccination centers and testing facilities. They were under tents and in stadiums. The message the whole time was
“This is impermanent”
“This is not normal”
Now the vaccinations and testing have retreated inside private medical facilities. There will be someone behind a desk in that building that could hand you a piece of paper telling you that you have incurred a debt that you cannot repay. And now everyone will know that they shouldn’t rent you a room or an apartment for the next seven years. No one wants to stand in front of that desk. They can tell us on the TV and write it on billboards that everything will be free, but we know what happens at that desk. No level of reassurance will get the masses of Americans to enter those buildings for something like a vaccine or a PCR test.