Be Patient, Seniors

The current coronavirus pandemic sure is getting people down.  Having to stay home or wear masks in public places is a drag.  But we must be patient.

Everyone is hoping that a vaccine will soon be found that will end the current situation and make everyone healthy again.  We are told that work is going on all over the world on such work.  We are told that clinical trials, that important step to determine the efficacy and safety of promising products, will soon be underway.  But in the meantime, be patient.

I am confident that a vaccine will be found, probably next year, hopefully early.  There then comes the challenge of producing over 8 billion doses.  Hopefully, it will be available for labs all over the world to make.  But you can be sure that if the US has it first, they will only allow it for their own population first, and when it does become available to others, there will be a huge price tag.  If China or Russia get it first, they again will restrict it to only their own people first.  I found it interesting the other day when a man, supposedly a business executive, told the US Congress that they would have all the vaccine they needed in only a few days after approval.  That will not be the case.  Production facilities will have to be geared up to make the particular strain of vaccine that is finally approved. 

The vaccine will be made and delivered at a steady pace, but not fast enough to have everyone vaccinated at once.  Some sort of priority system will have to be developed.  Where would you start for the first priority?  Health care workers should be the first including care givers in seniors’ homes.  Where to from there?  How about teachers and children so that schools can be opened with no fears.  Next will probably be parents of those children.  Somewhere you must make room for politicians and senior bureaucrats. Next will be other workers who can get the economy working full time again.  So, who is left?  Non-essential workers?  Notice that we have not yet come to senior citizens.  We will be the last.  We have no priority.

On a cynical note, you must remember the problem of the retiring baby boomers who were going to overwhelm the health care systems as these people aged and got sick.  Health care systems were going to collapse by 2030.  Now imagine some bean counter in one of those health care agencies rubbing his hands in glee because so many seniors have become victims of the corona virus that the risk of bankruptcy of the health care budgets is less likely.  Oh well!  

So be patient seniors and try to stay well.  Let’s try to beat the bean counters.