Commentary

How often have you heard that our most vulnerable populations are desperately seeking access to the COVID vaccine? Almost never? Instead, the prevailing narrative is that people who are Black or impoverished or isolated or elderly or homeless or who use various drugs and so forth are suspicious of, and resistant to, the vaccine. There is, of course, some truth to this narrative. For a variety of reasons, many people in these groups and others are not yet ready to get a vaccine. Many will require discussion and outreach from trusted sources to make a well-informed decision. They deserve that and should receive these services and much more.

A moment of triumph has arrived for David Bramble. A man whose parents once ran a corner grocery in West Baltimore has succeeded in developing a shopping center for his hometown with a big, bright, brand new supermarket. That’s a pretty good storyline, but just one way of looking at Bramble’s most recent accomplishment. There’s more here than meets the eye.

I was not yet 4-years-old when my dad died from a rare, but treatable virus. He had just been sent home from the hospital hours earlier with instructions to get some rest, and with doctors asking my mom if he was prone to exaggeration. My family has long felt that race played a role in his care — or lack of it. Even beyond the emotional trauma, the economic damage to my family was severe. Thrust into single motherhood, my mom worked multiple hourly jobs to support my sisters and me. She couldn’t find full-time employment that included benefits until I was 13-years-old.

Suddenly, progress seems real. The good news is mounting up. Just over 30% of the Anne Arundel County population has received their first COVID-19 dose, and 18.7% are fully vaccinated. Everyone in Maryland who is 16 or older will be eligible next week to get the coronavirus vaccine at any site offering shots in the state. Anne Arundel County will stop requiring preregistration for vaccination appointments, allowing the public to sign up directly for clinic openings on the schedule that will be released on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The Georgia debacle is a perfect example of the rolling collective action problem of our democracy. A collective action problem, simply put, is when there is a goal that would benefit everyone — in this case, confidence in our machinery of democracy — but the incentive structure for the individual players makes it impossible to cooperate to reach the goal. The Georgia electoral mess goes back to the 2018 Georgia governor’s race — and every faction in that state has made it worse over the last three years.