Paris/COVID: Feb. 2021 Vaccine Dreams
Writing this from an escapade to a tiny village in the Burgundy wine country for my husband’s birthday, the virus seems as far away as the moon. Enjoying while we can. In a few days we’ll be back in Paris where the number of cases has exploded again and we’ll be contemplating a third confinement of uncertain length and severity. Meanwhile the vaccination campaign seems to be a rumor or a myth. No one I know except for an elderly relative and first line health workers has had a vaccine. Even my very media savvy friends say they haven’t found any viable explanations for this anywhere in the French press.
And it’s not just in France. A post from my friend Guida de Palma in Portugal:
“The UK vaccination plan is well-organised and running at a military rate. Over thirteen million already inoculated. Portugal has had the worst of infections, not getting the amount of vaccines needed at all. Info is diverse and incongruous: One says 70.000, the other 32.000, the truck breaks down and vaccines jump into the arms of bakers and social security employees…Anyway, opacity and wind reign. Yes, here months ago I promptly received a text saying they would contact my parents, 90 and 80 years old, but no one has contacted them yet…Who is negotiating buying vaccines for Portugal? Get them out now…The official news announced proudly, with pomp is: Portugal will receive x doses through April and by the end of Summer 70 % of adults will be inoculated… maybe if I dream deeply, convince myself … Hey what happened?”
The US and UK are moving fast but we can’t accuse them of speculation or hoarding as they seem to be using vaccines funded and produced on their own turf? Did a European manufacturing facility in Belgium shutdown for repairs? Is it ineptitude due to EU oversight instead of country by country management? The NYT ran an article about private contractors being hired in France to facilitate logistics, now under criticism:
It’s all the more puzzling because in so many other ways France has great healthcare. COVID testing is fast, free, and available.
In this context, I stopped by my local pharmacy a Monday morning two weeks ago to pick up a supplement and asked the owner if she had any information. “Call your doctor right away, “ she said, “We just got word that doctors can register to pick up 10 doses for their clientele, to use at their discretion. You might be able to get one if your doctor agrees. The deadline for registration is Wednesday at midnight.”
So of course I phoned my GP and he said, “Yes, that’s correct, I’ll call you back.” Not only would this be reassuring in the context of living with a teenager during a pandemic, but it might mean we could plan a flight to see US family sooner than expected, since many there have already had the vaccine. I told my husband and contacted several friends who aren’t anti-vaxers. Their pharmacists and doctors hotly denied the info and said they could only vaccinate patients in a certain age group and only if they had underlying conditions, called “comorbidity” in Franglais. From my friend Sylvia: “Your doctor must be a fan, I haven’t known mine very long. Maybe having a teen qualifies as an underlying condition?” she joked. Other people sent irate texts and links to articles as proof.
Hmmm. How interesting that both my pharmacist and my GP had said the same thing with no mention of comorbidity. Is it a rule in France or life in general that everything depends on whom you know and how you approach them?
A week later there was a voicemail from my GP saying he hadn’t been able to find 10 people among his clientele who wanted the vaccine. So we’d have to wait and he’d keep us posted. Consolation prize: this avoids ethical issues for both of us. If he’d vaccinated us would that have taken a dose away from sonemeon who needed it more? I’m hearing tales of doctors having to throw away “extra” uninventoried doses in distribution vials on pain of sanction.
This time the brand was AstraZeneca. Honestly, I’m ready to take the Russian version if we can get it here. Rumor has it the general public may be vaccinated in May?
Then there are the articles from French health websites about the 500,000 sharks that will be killed for an oil in their liver that goes into the vaccine recipe… WTF?
Pandemic fatigued,
Aliss
Originally published at http://thankyouparis.wordpress.com on February 27, 2021.
