Losing the Game

Remember the "game changers" of the past?  Remember how the Renaissance Center was supposed to enliven downtown Detroit?  How grunge was going to rescue rock and roll?  How Christian Pulisic was going to make the U.S. men's soccer team a potent squad?  

Ah, game changers.  Well, here's something to consider as you drive through the Motor City's desolate streets listening to the latest Lil Nas X record on the radio while wondering whom to root for if the U.S. doesn't make the 2022 World Cup.  Johnson & Johnson's COVID vaccine was supposed to be a game changer in the fight against the disease the stopped the world because it required only one shot and could be stored at refrigerator temperature.  Then a few young women got blood clots after having received it.  The vaccine was paused, and so were people's enthusiasm about getting vaccinated.

Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which obviously has had a hard time in both of those endeavors, and the Food and Drug Administration allowed the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine to go forward with a blood-clot waning label, saying that it is highly effective and that blood clots are extremely rare.  Too little, too late.  This pause in the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is expected to boost confidence in the vaccination efforts because the government took questions about the vaccine seriously enough to investigate the issue and put it through the rigors of great scrutiny before concluding it's safe.  No one buys that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is safe.  And the fact that Johnson & Johnson had Yugo-like quality problems in producing it in the first place only makes people wonder if getting it - or the much more effective and reliable Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, for that matter - is worth it.  Even President Biden has given up on the idea that the COVID vaccine from Johnson & Johnson could boost the number of Americans vaccinated because of its one-does regimen, saying it has enough of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to vaccinate everyone in the U.S. Besides, so few people have actually gotten the Johnson & Johnson shot compared to the the two.

This snafu with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine isn't just going to cause vaccine hesitancy; it's going to cause vaccine refusal.  Hesitancy is one thing - "Oh, I'll wait see what happens, but I'll probably take it eventually" - but refusal slams the door on getting a shot. And with herd immunity now in doubt because of all that, hopes to end the COVID pandemic before Thanksgiving have been dashed. And all because a turkey of a vaccine.

By the way, I'm probably going to root for Germany next year.