This Might Solve Vaccine Inequality
Despite big-pharma who prefer things broken, this might actually help.
Disclaimers:
A) This is written from a position of vaccine privilege to an audience who also share this privilege.
B) An ideal solution would involve big-pharma sharing their recipe so that worldwide production could be ramped up. My idea is a workaround, not an ideal solution.
FYI, Oxfam are working towards forcing these production problems to be addressed head-on. Here’s a link with details.
Background:
When yet another COVID variant of concern established itself I was outraged that the vaccine privileged had allowed this to happen by leaving the rest of the world unvaccinated. Then talk of ignoring WHO recommendations to give booster shots ramped up, then we started offering them, and then I choose to get my booster.
What helped me decide is the realization that declining a booster won’t get that dose into an arm that needs it more. Declining will just see it go to waste.
I got my booster and I felt dirty. Feeling dirty upset me at first but eventually I came to the realization that this dirty feeling is appropriate. I’m now comfortable with the discomfort if that makes sense. That’s because this discomfort is healthy, a natural part of my humanity. Such privilege anyways, to live with an expectation of comfort.
The Proposal:
A vaccine equality tax with a full rebate to the vaccinated.
What, that’s it? Taxes? What the heck Mikey? The government are in cahoots with big-pharma. Our dysfunctional government is part of the reason vaccine inequality is an actual thing. Giving them more money will only make things worse.
Hang on & hear me out. I never suggested giving this tax money to the government. What I’m proposing is that these funds go directly to organizations who are working to resource populations in need of vaccine doses and/or the means to deliver them. By all means, keep our government out of this work. They’ve done nothing but bungle our country’s efforts to help, delivering only 10M of the 177M pledged by Trudeau.
OK, tell me more about this rebate.
Offering a rebate to the vaccinated will makes this easier to find politicians to sign off. Here in Canada I can’t imagine anyone but the PPC opposing this. Down in the states this would never fly federally but, with other layers of government, it just might.
Also, the rebate faces head-on, the horrific obscenity of our governments purchasing vaccines their citizens won’t take, only to have them rot away, expire, and be discarded. There’s a moral cost to this and it’s time to add a financial cost, paid by those who are responsible for this waste.
OK, well who pays for the rebates?
Well, that depends on who & where but here in North America there’s plenty trickling down from our economy of death to cover this. If we’re talking Canadian federal income taxes why not take the taxes the good folks at Terradyne paid on their $15 Billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia & apply some of that towards the rebates. If we’re talking US I’m sure some of the $770 Billion Biden just spent on war would trickle down to the state, county or civic level where these vaccine equality taxes are applied.
Yeah but my government prefer to keep things broken.
I get it. Actually, I expect my government to do the same and even if I am able to help vote them out I doubt the new batch of politicians would be any better. Let’s not stop with our governments. Once you’ve been ignored by your feds, provinces, states, counties, city’s, towns, and rural municipalities let’s ask our condo or home owner associations. Anyone who collects a fee could add an extra bit & send it to an NGO that’s helping with the vaccination effort.
I’m not in a HOA but I am in a professional association and my dues are due this month. If they asked me to chip in an extra $5 I’d have no problem with that.
Our 2600 members wouldn’t change the world with the $13K but if the idea spread to other groups maybe it would. Richard Wagamese said this much better. From One Drum.
We were walking by a river and I told her how discouraged I was. I told her that I wanted to be a force for change. I wanted a better world, not only for my people but for everyone. She listened and walked silently. When we got a small inlet cut out by the current she stopped and bent over to retrieve a pebble. Then she looked at me and smiled and I knew she understood that I was sincere.
“This is how you change the world,” she said and tossed the pebble.
It plopped into the water and we watched as the ripples spread out from the splash and ringed to the shore at our feet.
“The smallest circles first,” she said. “The smallest circles first.”
It took some time for me to grasp the implication of what she said and put it into the proper perspective for myself, but when I did I realized what an incredible gift my friend had given me. She was telling me to do what was doable and to do it right now. The smallest circles first. Because sometimes the face of change is huge, galactic, and trying to discern a method to implement it confounds us and we don’t know where to begin.
…
Small circles of influence would develop everywhere and more change would happen. That humble energy, the kind that says, “I will do what I can right now in my own small way,” creates a ripple effect on the world.
