2021 has seen the rise of a new genre in op-ed writing. I call it “the angry COVID nurse” op-ed. They can vary in aggressiveness and shrillness of tone, but they generally hit the same core beats: 1) I’m really angry/frustrated/tired. 2) It’s your fault that I’m so angry/frustrated/tired, because you won’t get vaccinated. 3) Get vaccinated already, idiots.
Sometimes, the formula takes the shape of a viral video instead, generally with even worse results. See, for example, this Alberta nurse ranting that urgent care should be rationed at the expense of the unvaccinated. Most specimens of the genre stop short of this point, but many are still playing a blame game. For obvious reasons, such op-eds enjoy wide circulation in mainstream outlets like the Huffington Post or the LA Times. (Meanwhile, people have noted the irony that other valuable frontline workers are now losing their jobs en masse for vaccine hesitancy, their courageous dedication discounted, their usefulness to The Narrative expired.)
For the Times op-ed, by Dr. Anita Sircar, we can assume that Dr. Sircar herself didn’t write the headline “I’m running out of compassion for the unvaccinated.” But someone did. And Sircar does use the phrase “compassion fatigue” in the body of the piece. For our consideration, she presents a middle-aged man succumbing to COVID in her ward. He tells her he’s “not an anti-vaxxer or anything,” he’d just been waiting for FDA approval before becoming “the government’s guinea pig.” Sircar cares for the man while fuming under her N-95. Now that he’s dead, she wants to make sure we understand this is all on him:
The burden of this pandemic now rests on the shoulders of the unvaccinated. On those who are eligible to get vaccinated but choose not to, a decision they defend by declaring, “Vaccination is a deeply personal choice.” But perhaps never in history has anyone’s personal choice affected the world as a whole as it does right now. When hundreds and thousands of people continue to die — when the most vulnerable members of society, our children, cannot be vaccinated — the luxury of choice ceases to exist.
This is chilling talk regardless, but the essay also contains no serious engagement with the deceased gentleman’s actual concerns, nor the concerns of others like him. Because this is not that sort of essay.
In fact, contra David French, it is perfectly possible to question the prevailing COVID narrative while not being a conspiracist, a white nationalist, a white evangelical, or a white evangelical nationalist. Just look at a sober evaluation of the hospitalization data, or ask the JCVI in the UK about adverse effects of the vaccine for younger men’s hearts. Or this woman’s story, or this girl’s. Or any of these stories, compiled on a site with a “pro-vaccine, pro-science” splash page. These latter include reports of sudden-onset debilitating pain and inflammation, paresis, and more. I myself can contribute from my own circle the case of a loved one with a confirmed vaccine injury after a single Pfizer dose, now facing an array of symptoms that present like Guillaine-Barre or CIDP. So, suffice it to say, the debate is not nearly as one-sided as it is popularly painted.
And it’s not just an academic debate. Dallas doctors have been forced to walk back triage rubrics that would privilege the vaccinated. As the argument initially went, the rubric was purely based on objective survivability considerations. But by the end of the Dallas News report, as awkward questions are raised about disparate impact for racial minorities, the invisible lines between “deserving” and “undeserving” unvaccinated are coming into focus. Other stories have leaked out: People on transplant waitlists turned away here, an Alabama doctor refusing to see unvaccinated patients there.
Last month, The Washington Post hosted competing op-eds on the subject, with Ruth Marcus flatly saying “Vaccine resisters are different,” and doctors should “put their thumb on the scale” accordingly. Nancy Gibbs demurs, but she doesn’t exactly demur robustly. She still has to imply that doctors and nurses who treat the unvaxxed are doing something supererogatory.
That sense of supererogatory effort also hangs about certain of the “frustrated nurse” op-eds, the “I love my patients but…” op-eds. A good example is this Arc Digital piece by Daniel Summers. He routinely asks new patients if they’ve been vaccinated or have plans to be if not. Sometimes, he’s met with stubborn resistance. In such cases, “I summon what cheer I can still muster and do my best to maintain the warm and friendly demeanor I strive for when I see patients, and move on. It takes effort.” “For months,” he rants, “there have been safe, effective, accessible, free vaccines that would have kept this catastrophe at bay. Just sitting right fucking there.” In conclusion, he laments the fact that more people won’t simply take his recommendation on faith:
Many will believe a bad study about vaccine side effects on the heart, rather than my interpretation of that study, or the unsubstantiated word of a pop star, rather than mine. Many will trust me enough on all manner of other matters, but not the one that presses most upon our lives. Many will not do all they can to keep schools from being a place where the virus can be easily passed.
And I will keep asking and trying and caring as best I can, regardless of that decision, because I love my patients and I love my work and I chose this profession for a reason. But I am so very tired.
On Twitter, I suggested an exercise: Take this op-ed and re-write it, but pretend it’s not 2021. Pretend it’s 1991. And replace the question “When do you plan to get vaccinated?” with “When do you plan to stop having promiscuous sex?”
